Kickstarter

Hello dear backers of The Fires I Started!

I have a new kickstarter up for the looping cello-based covers album I'm currently working on. It's already met its goal after a little over a week, but you can still pledge for downloads ($5), CDs ($15) & t-shirts ($25), and a couple new exciting things like a half-hour phone/videochat conversation with yours truly for just $60. 

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/unwoman/unwomans-uncovered-vol-2-lemniscate-looping-cello

I'm not going to contact the backer group from this project again -- if you want on my actual email list and hear from me every 1-2 months about shows, videos, etc, please sign up here: http://unwoman.com/list.html

Everyone should have gotten their rewards from The Fires I Started (there are a couple of you I've communicated with in the last couple weeks; your packages should be on their way.) If not, yikes! I fully admit I messed up a few of the orders but I want to fix those. If you had a USB drive that failed, you should have gotten a replacement if you sent yours to me. If you somehow missed instructions on how to do that please let me know -- I'll need to collect all the broken drives in the next few weeks so I can send them in to get them fixed.

Thank you SO MUCH for your past support, I hope you were pleased with the work I did on The Fires I Started.

Erica 

Today is my birthday, and tomorrow I'm heading to play a few shows in the Eastern US. The list of those is here:

http://unwoman.com/shows.html

Obviously, I haven't gotten replacement USBs out; I *just* got drives that should supposedly work back from the manufacture, and I hope to replace everyone's once I get back. Vinyl will be getting to my house at some point while I'm gone, I think, though the manufacturer has not responded to my last inquiry, ugh. Poster sets to other countries got deprioritized but those will go out once I have a spare moment to fill out customs forms and take them to the post office.

So I am hoping to get to do a bunch of shipping in late October before I head back out of town again.

Response to the album has been terrific and I'm really glad most of you are focusing on the content rather than my inability to ship your rewards in a timely fashion.

Thanks,
Erica

I am trying not to send your guys too many updates, but I wanted to share these things that happened:

- The brand-new harddrive on my old desktop died a horrible clicky death early last week. It's being replaced for free by the Mac Geniuses but I lost a bit of work since my timemachine wasn't working, unbeknownst to me. One thing I lost was the spreadsheet I'd made of people getting special backer rewards. I can recreate this but it's going to be some work; if you're wondering why your item is late, this could be why, and I'm sorry, and you should feel free to write/yell at me at orders@unmediated.net if you're getting impatient.

- The vinyl test pressing I sent back, that was causing a 2-month delay? Actually there was nothing wrong with it, just my turntable is bad. It's a stupid, understandable, and mildly tragic mistake on my part: it's great I won't have to pay for the masters to get replaced, but the delay from my insisting they needed replacing will make it so that the vinyl won't be ready in time for my Sept 19 show (which BTW will still be awesome and I still hope my local people can come!) 
Info for birthday party/show, nonfacebook: http://unwoman.com/919show.html
Info, facebook: http://www.facebook.com/events/156740714449997/

So the vinyl release date is now Oct 19.

- No news yet on what's been causing the USBs to fail so hard. I'm really upset by this both for your sake and mine -- when I travel, those are my biggest sellers & the most convenient thing to carry with me. My trip to the East Coast will be dramatically less profitable than I'd hoped unless I can figure it out ASAP. Boo! But if you had a drive that failed before you got songs on it, I hope you wrote me so I could get you download codes for everything minus a few extras that would have been on the drive for you.

- I just (finally) hired a publicist, so maybe I'll get reviewed on Pitchfork (hah) but all of you will get to say you knew me when! 

And here's a video from the vaults, my cover of NIN's "Hurt" which had nearly 30,000 views! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rYPTUsCJt4M

Frustration and love,

Erica

The good news is that people seem to really love the album. I am glad, because I was particularly proud of it. Please feel free to continue to share this link: 

http://unwoman.bandcamp.com/album/the-fires-i-started

(If you're a backer and you missed the backer-only download link, please make sure you're logged in to kickstarter and read the previous update to this project.)

Other good news: I have the Uptown Nightclub in Oakland Sept 19 for a special show & birthday party! It's $8 at the door, all of which goes to me, but you're more than welcome to come in for free by saying you're on my list -- I want to have a big party and I want you to be there more than I want $8. I'm flying in DJ Joseph Vourteque of Chicago to spin vinyl! More info: http://www.uptownnightclub.com/events/unwoman-record-release-show/

And here are some great recent live videos of me, shot by frequent songpoem backer Joe Pate! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=daZQBNI1l88&list=PL98F9DC8B9D1AD038

The bad news is that I am feeling totally overwhelmed by issues that have never been a problem for me before:

1. the scale of the mailing and my ineptitude at it has had me unable to do anything creative for a week AND I'm behind where I want to be in terms of getting special & international packages out

2. the vinyl test pressing had issues and will be delayed 2 months and cost me a lot more money (but it's better that it turns out right, I think you will all agree!)

3. this is the worst thing: the USB drives are failing at an alarming rate, which hadn't been an issue with the gold ones. I'm going to message USB backers separately later today, but I want to say here, if you got the USB, please copy all the songs off it ASAP so you at least have those, and if at any point in your life the drive fails, please email me at orders@unmediated.net and I will send you a replacement.

I am really, really sorry about these things. 

Thank you again for your support. 

Erica