Before I had time to make a video pimping the kickstarter, and at almost exactly the moment I was telling my boss that February 2 will be my last day working at my day job, the funding goal was reached.

The February 2 "take this job and shove it" date means two things. One, that I can spend a full month working on Casualties. Given that it's already half-produced and completely written, this means I'll be able to fully realize my vision, where in the past my album schedules have felt a bit rushed just by lack of free time. And two, I will be pretty poor for a while. I have enough money saved to pay my ridiculous San Francisco rent for a year, but after February will need to be making at least a little money every day in order to keep me in beans and audio cables. I'm putting myself in this position on purpose -- so that I'm forced to earn money by my creativity, how ever much or little that ends up being. I have what I believe is an extremely efficicient setup, I rely on myself yet have tons of amazing friends who help me, and I always sell lots of merch when I'm given the opportunity to perform for enough of the right people, so it might go great! On the other hand, those opportunities to play for the right people (SteamCon attendees, the people who came to see our This Mortal Coil tribute night, for example) don't come along every day, so I'll probably be busking for quarters at BART stations, too.

I feel so loved and supported in this transition time. Thank you, every single one of you for your support. I will, of course be very appreciative of every further dollar I collect, so if you can tell your friends, you are the rockingest -- $2500 is a teeny tiny budget for an album and though I can do it with that amount I'd love to feel I can splurge a tiny bit on extra touches and promotion.

The album will go to press in late March and I plan to have copies in the mail to you (if you got hardcopies) and on hand in time for a couple minitours in May. Southwest and Northwest, for now.

Thank you, thank you, thank you!

Tons of love,
Erica

I'm getting into the mode where every free moment I have, I want to put into the album. This is a good thing. At the moment I'm listening to a full mix of "Thumbalina" which I might be done recording for. But there are a bunch of songs I still need to record a lot for. I'll even be adding live percussion (in the form of a Fraggle Rock drum I used to pound on when I was seven, and various found objects I can bang on) to several tracks, which is a new thing for me. "Survival" already has cello banjo, "Loud and Clear" (which is being totally reworked) now has a touch of theremin. But "Haunted" -- possibly my favorite song on the album -- I'm saving for last. It's going to be amazing.

Visuals-wise, I have a few ideas and I'm hoping to be shot in January. I hope I'll have a rough cover image to share before funding's up; if not, well, I guess you'll all just be surprised.

Thank you so, so much to you who've pledged your support to my project. It means everything to me that you trust me to delivery fantastic work. If you are able to spread the word at all, I would be really tickled to collect a few $3 pledges from people who don't necessarily know my work but like what I'm doing or just want to support the arts.

Stay warm & have a happy new year!

Erica
unwoman@unmediated.net

A couple months ago, my boyfriend and I watched this documentary on song poems, Off the Charts.
http://www.pbs.org/independentlens/offthecharts/film.html

It was both depressing and inspiring: depressing because most of the people paying for song poems kinda believed their songs about karate and/or Jesus would be big hits, inspiring because I knew I could do genuine, loving original compositions with poems people submitted to me, without any deceit about them being chart-topping hits.* Setting poems is often startlingly natural to me. Sometimes I form songs from other people's words (for example, Thumbalina, The Next Flower, What Lips My Lips Have Kissed, Witch Wife) almost automatically. It's easy to me, yes, but very creative, intuitive, building upon the composition / improvisation talents I've been honing since I was little.

Offering it here on kickstarter should work well, because it'll give me some time (the project stops getting funded on Feb 3, and shortly thereafter's when I'd start working on the song poems) to plan some time off from the dayjob to record the poems based on how many I get, and gives the poems' authors time to pick what they want me to sing. (They can write their own lyrics or pick any public domain poem they'd like me to sing). I am really, really excited to see what people are going to come up with for me. If it goes well, I may offer song poem services again after Casualties drops.

*But I can promise that the song will be posted on my blog, bandcamp (if I get enough requests for these I may start a separate bandcamp page for them), etc., and heard by all my fans who listen. Though if a poem author really wants it to be private I'll respect that wish as well and only share it with him/her.