KICKSTARTER

Here is a run down of what we're asking you to help us do...

1) Recording: We would like to keep it local and record at Echo Mt Studio. Plus, it's one of the best studios in the country!!! This fine studio costs about $750/ full day of recording. This does not include a sound engineer, which we need cause we're not sound engineers. On top of that we need to pay our band for their time and talent, and we do like to pay a living wage :) We have estimated total cost of recording to be around $1200 a day. When Bitter Met Sweet took five full studio days to record, and we went back several times over to do overdubs (get that vocal just right, Amanda!!!). Call that 7x1200= $8,400.

2)Mixing: Once all the tracks are recorded, we need to go back through and find the best takes of everything, as well as adjusting levels and tone. Use of the board plus payment of a sound engineer comes to about $700/day. This can be a very laborious process, and the best case scenario is to designate one full day to each song. We'll be conservative and round down, saying there will be ten songs on the record. total= $7,000.

3) Mastering: This means solidifying the levels of the entire record so that it all sounds nice together. This is also where track titles are put into place, and the amount of time between songs. This is a very important process, not everyone can do it, the ones that can charge a flat rate per song. The engineer we have used in the past has charged us $700 for an eleven song record. 

4) Album layout and design: Even though we like to use our own photos and art for our albums, it costs money to have someone put it all together and make it look pretty. We have some good friends who are very talented and do this for a living. They like to cut us a break, but it will still run us about $300-$500. 

5) Printing: To get 2,000 copies of an 8 panel digipack (which is what When Bitter Met Sweet comes in) costs us about $2500. Why so many panels? Well, we're hoping we have a lot of people to thank! We had 86 backers for that project, and the names just about filled one panel. Amanda Anne also really likes to put her lyrics in there so that you can sing along. She's a very wordy girl, so that takes up at least three or four panels. If we had two thousand people pledge $35 or higher, we would need to spend $2,500 on the reward copies alone!!! This would be a good problem to have, of course. We're just sayin'. 

6) Promotion: We make music because we love it. It's what we're good at. We want to keep bringing you more of it! In order to do that, we need to sell records and play live shows. That's how we make money. We want to make sure that we give this record a fighting chance in the world, and to do that we will need to hire a publicist. A good publicist (that is, someone who has a lot of contacts and connections, even though our mothers would happily take on the job they don't quite have the necessary qualifications) usually charges at least $2,000 (probably closer to $3,000 or $4,000 for the entire life of the album) . We will also need to hire a radio promoter, someone who the stations will listen to when he or she says, "hey, these Honeycutters are good! You should play them on your fine radio program." We are probably going to need to spend at least $3,000 to pay this person. 

These have been fairly conservative estimates of cost. The total here comes to $23,900. Kickstarter takes 5% of a completed goal. Then Amazon business accounts takes another chunk out when we pass the money through there to get it into the Honeycutters bank account (Kickstarter requires that we use Amazon). We will also need to pay for the rewards, meaning those stickers, tee shirts, posters, calendars, house concerts (getting there, paying the band), and CDs. In addition, having two records under our belts at this point, we know that there are always, always unforseen costs (someone gets sick, costs us an extra day in the studio, files get lost, minds get changed, we need to express ship cds, etc).So, in reality, we are looking at needing to raise closer to 35,000, but 28,000 would get us off to a running start!!!