Hi, Claudia Russell and Bruce Kaplan here. We are making the best record we've ever made, and you can help!

In case you don't know us, we've been making music together for the last 12 years, driving all around the country in our 2000 Camry (or the rental car du jour) playing coffee houses, clubs, parks, churches, living rooms and gardens. It's been a ton of fun and we have met the best people all along the way. Like you!

We are very excited to have started work on our next studio CD - our first in nearly 7 years. Naturally, we want to make this next CD a great one. And we’re off to a awesome start. We've worked hard on songs for the CD and working on arrangements with our producer, Peter Case - a brilliant songwriter himself.  And late last month, we began recording tracks for the CD. It sounds great! In fact, here's a preview link to a couple of the songs we just recorded - they're not quite finished, but you can definitely hear where we're going with them.

We’ve been recording in our old hometown – Hollywood, with some of our favorite musicians - Carl Byron, Debra Dobkin, Paul Eckman and Danny Frankel - people who have played with artists like Shawn Colvin, Richard Thompson, Leonard Cohen, MIchelle Shocked, kd lang, and many more of our musical heroes.

As we said, we want to do this right. Our goal is to produce a distinctive recording that truly moves people, and stays with them like a good friend. We’re excited to say that this next CD will be mostly original songs, and we promise it will be our best one yet.

We’ve saved up and set aside more than $10,000 from gigs and record sales over the last 3 years. And we've already spent most of that money. And to record, package and manufacture the record, we’ll spend a minimum of $18890 to finish the CD. We still have more recording, mixing, mastering and manufacturing to do. So we set our goal at $8890. It's attainable, but we need your help. And you may know that if we don't make the entire goal, none of the funding comes through and all the pledges get refunded!

Why does it cost so much to make a CD? Here's where the money will go:

• Recording studio and engineer
• Pay the musicians decently (they are working for a really reasonable amount)
• Pay the producer decently (he is working for a really reasonable amount)
• Mixing and mastering
• Photography
• Pressing

Of course, we'd be thrilled to go over over our goal - if we do, we can take a little more time on the mix, do a proper promotion and publicity campaign, and press more CDs. We also hope to create a few backer exclusive bonus tracks.

So we’re asking for your help and support, and offering some cool and unusual rewards to make it fun. Just look over on the right! Even a $2 contribution (especially combined with a share to your friends) is helpful as a vote of support for what we are doing. Please join in at what ever level you can, and share our project to your friends who love music.

Song Food, our first CD is nearing its 12th birthday. It launched our career and earned Claudia Best New Artist honors from WUMB FM in Boston, receiving air play on more than 150 stations. Our second and third CDs got rave reviews from Sing Out magazine and other media outlets. With your help, we’ll have another fine collection of music to represent us to our largest audience yet.

We have come up with some great rewards. A lot of people compliment us on our graphics, which are all designed by Bruce. So we have incorporated them into a number of cool items:

• Backer exclusive Claudia Russell 2013 edition T-Shirt
• Claudia and Bruce coffee mug with home roasted coffee by Bruce
• 16 x 16 canvas poster art ready for hanging
• Stuck on You refrigerator magnet

And some unique items:

• Celebration Dinner at our home
• Tour of the Bay Area with Bruce and Claudia
• A vintage guitar signed by all the musicians that play on the CD
• And more cool stuff!

Thanks for checking out our campaign. If you like what we're doing, we hope you'll make whatever contribution feels comfortable to you, as well as forward this on to your friends. And If you're interested in finding out more about us, check out our web site - its got quick links to YouTube videos, our FaceBook page and lots of other stuff.

Thanks for reading!

Love, music and gratitude,
Claudia and Bruce