About
The Story
My name is Patrick Shea. I'm an elementary school teacher in New York City, and a musician.
Three summers ago, I set two goals for myself: read Moby-Dick, and write a new song every day. Moby-Dick is such an amazing book that those two goals very quickly became one goal: write a song about every chapter of Moby-Dick.
I recorded and posted one song per week to a blog -- http://callmeishmael.org -- which pretty quickly gained a sizable and regular following, and got a lot of attention on the web, as well as from The New York Times and WNYC's (NPR) Soundcheck. You can check out links to the latter two below.
This past summer -- three years, a marriage, and a baby daughter later -- I recorded and posted my 136th and final song about Moby-Dick, but I wanted to continue the work somehow. I got a band together, and we started playing shows around NYC. I also met a designer named Zach Mattheus, and an illustrator named Lauren Kolesinskas, who want to help me make the project into a book.
The Book
I want to create a cohesive experience of the project in book form. That means one package, which includes:
- all eight albums of music from the project;
- a book containing the full text of Moby-Dick, and
- the lyrics of every song, and
- corresponding endnotes that annotate both the text of each chapter and each lyric, giving insight into how my thoughts on the book influenced the writing of each song, and
- illustrations of some of the songs, so that you can see the Moby-Dick that I see while you hear the Moby-Dick that I hear; all produced into
- a beautiful, well designed, high quality hardcover book, that deserves to contain the work printed on it.
Right now, I plan to print the book myself, with your help and support.
The Project
The best way for you to get a sense of the project is for you to experience it for yourself, along with some of the press milestones along the way. So, please take some time to listen and read:
- http://callmeishmael.org -- This is the original project, a weekly blog including a song and my thoughts about that week's chapter. There are 136 songs/posts that span a wide variety of genres, which I chose to communicate something I thought or felt about each chapter. The work also spans three years of time, in which I slowly grew and changed as a musician, recording engineer, and writer. So, caveat, to get a true sense of the project, you have to spend some time here, and listen to more than a couple of songs.
- http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/01/nyregion/thecity/01ishm.html -- A few months into the blog, The New York Times ran this article about the project.
- http://www.wnyc.org/shows/soundcheck/2009/aug/03/imoby-dicki-song-by-song/ -- Soon after the Times article, I was interviewed about the project on WNYC's Soundcheck.
- http://www.facebook.com/pages/Call-Me-Ishmael/248134935226158 -- Like me on Facebook so I can keep you informed about shows and events and such.
The People
I'm incredibly lucky to have found two amazingly talented people to make a book with:
- http://zachmattheus.com/ -- Zachariah Mattheus is an independent art director and graphic designer with a penchant for the telling of great stories. Over the past 10 years has worked with Warner Music, Sony Music, Vox Guitars, Bloomberg, NYC Ballet, HBO, Showtime, GQ and Rolling Stone and with artists including Keith Richards, The Stooges, Tim Buckley, Delaney & Bonnie and The Doors.
- http://www.flickr.com/photos/melt_alaska/ -- Lauren Kolesinskas was born in Connecticut, graduated from Pratt, and lives in Brooklyn. She enjoys drawing lots of things, some of them mutated, and has worked on a wide range of projects, such as graphic novels, album covers, story-board/concept art, set decoration, and editorial illustration. Past clients include Pfizer, Fox Studios, and Jenkem Mag, among others.
The Money
This is a really big project, and so this is going to be a really big book -- 900 pages big. Plus, we want to make the book beautiful and artful in and of itself, using high quality materials and classy design. Plus, we're adding new content; new annotations/comments by yours truly, and new illustrations by Lauren; and we need supplies for the design and layout, primarily toner and paper. I'd also like to fix the website up to match the design of the book. And I'll need to pay for the digital distribution of the music itself, because every book sale will include the download of eight albums of music.
If we exceed our goal, things get even more exciting. We can find someone to turn the book into an interactive, multimedia iBook; we can do more illustrations; we can print a bigger run of books, which will bring down the cost per unit, and therefore bring down the sale price of the book. And if we really exceed the budget, the sky's the limit with a deluxe vinyl boxed set edition, in full color. In other words, we will put every penny we raise into making the project better. The more money we raise, the more awesome things we will do with it.
The Thanks
Many, many thanks in advance to everyone who supports this project!!! You are making my creative dreams come true.
Questions about this project? Check out the FAQ
Support
Funding period
- (60 days)