Having recently relocated to London from Paris, Axel and Vincent made me a veggie lasagne, renamed my dog “Milou” after Tintin’s faithful companion Snowy (he’s called Milou in the French version, geddit?) and got me along to Strongroom Studios for a few days of vocal recording.

I’m very proud to be part of their new single “Now Now Now”, which is going down a storm on the blogs at the moment. The C90s did a remix which is getting a lot of love over at Hype Machine at the moment so please feel free to tweet about it if you like it!

The Penelopes – Now Now Now (The C90s Remix) by TheC90s

“Now Now Now” is accompanied by two videos, a behind the scenes mini-documentary and a promo directed by Ollie Evans:

Click here to stream/download from Bandcamp.

And here’s the latest SMW newsletter that went out yesterday featuring ticket buying links for the London launch gig on November 15th, news on my collaborative art show “In This Boat” and info on the forthcoming Kim Boekbinder Kickstarter tour. Phew!

Back to album artwork Photoshopping…more soon…

Big thanks also to Tom Lillywhite for asking me to play and to everyone who came along to watch, I had a wonderful night and managed to grab some time to relax and enjoy myself and get to catch up with all of you.

Yesterday I played the atmospheric Blue Tent at Malcfest in Charing, Kent, and had a marvellous time serenading festival goers and having my socks knocked off by some of my favourite bands: Djevara, Orders Of The British Empire, Thumpermonkey, Silent Front and The Andy K Show and found a new one – Scratch Latin.

Well done to the organisers for putting on such an excellent DIY festival!

My set lists this weekend went a little something like this:

MINEFIELDS
NEVER WAS
OLYMPIAN
A-HOLE (Sunday only)
LET THIS BE (Sunday only)
EXIT STRATEGY
SLOW PUNCTURE
IN THIS BOAT
SCARED TO CAPSIZE

“her vocal range and multi-instrumental ability endows her with a genius of delivery and versatility that allows for “thirteen tales of love, loss, crap mates, betrayal, homicide and genocide” that many artists and bands would be hard pushed to achieve in an entire career, let alone a single album – especially their first.”

Read in full here.

Yesterday afternoon Andrew Dubber from New Music Strategies, Rich Huxley from Hope & Social and myself did a live streaming session on entrepreneurship, responding to a provocation video from Nick Moreton. Then at 8pm we all tuned in to take part in a session streamed live from Nashville, facilitated by Steve Lawson with Kira Small and Stephen Mason talking about making friends with fans, discussing a provocation video by Nancy Baym.

The sessions so far are archived here and here, and in 15 minutes the next UK session is due to start, around learning from underground music scenes. You can get involved by watching the live stream here and getting stuck in to the chat room, and at 8pm UK time there will be the fourth and final session on music and technology.

It’s wonderful to be involved in an event like this where the conversation starts from a more sophisticated start point than usual. As Dubber wrote so neatly on the NMS site:

“Here at New Music Strategies, we’re bored with the same old conversations about whether or not the internet is a good thing for musicians and for music. It’s a brilliant thing for music. Best thing that’s happened to music since microphones. So now what?”

You tell us!

Inconveniently, time ticks on regardless of how much I try to achieve and that’s probably how my Pledge Music project deadline is suddenly just 11 days away. Bugger!

I want to outline what Pledge Music is and why I decided to use it to raise some of the money to pay for the recording of my second album, alongside quoting some of the people who have contributed to the project so far. One of the most wonderful things I’ve found about being a DIY artist and using social media tools to communicate with my friends/followers/fans is the number of supportive emails I receive from people, and the way we can build proper relationships through Facebook comments, emails, tweets and so on. Of course it’s always lovely to see a new name pop up online but it’s even nicer when I see the same people supporting me across the various sites I use.

Before this incredibly long blog post continues, CLICK HERE TO VISIT THE PLEDGE MUSIC PROJECT PAGE to see what on earth I’m going on about!

Briefly, Pledge Music is a service set up to help artists raise money for specific projects, large or small. From recording – albums, EPs, singles – to music videos and tours, you specify how much money you’d like to raise and a time period to raise it in (30 or 60 days), do a writeup and make a list of items people can buy, post regular updates that can be public or exclusive for Pledgers and fulfill your end of the bargain once the money has been raised. If you don’t achieve your target the Pledgers get their money back and you don’t have to deliver.

I came across Pledge when I was working with Viv Albertine of The Slits earlier this year. She needed to raise money to get her debut album mixed and as Kickstarter is only available for people with US bank accounts we settled on Pledge and were very happy with the ease of setup and the mechanics in place to stay in touch with Pledgers. I was very happy to see Viv reach her Pledge target quickly, and it was interesting to see that good, regular updates definitely made a difference and bumped up the total each time we posted them. I contributed backing vocals, ukulele and percussion to the album as well so I definitely want to hear the finished product!

Shortly after this I experienced the fan side of Pledge Music when I saw Juliana Hatfield and Carina Round use the service to raise money for album recording and a 10th anniversary re-release respectively, and found myself avidly watching their targets eclipsed by enthusiastic fans who must surely have loved the updates of videos, demos and photographs as much as I have. It really did give me a warm fuzzy feeling when I saw video clips of Juliana in the studio and just a few days ago got to download the new release of Carina’s debut album “First Blood Mystery” complete with gorgeous reworkings of two of the songs.

So, I took the plunge. I wanted to up the budget for my second record to enable me and co-producer Myles Clarke to spend more time on the songs, a luxury that is very appealing to both of us as it gives us the opportunity to be more experimental with production, to invite special guests along to contribute to the recordings and hopefully even to record some extra songs for the B-sides, Demos and Rarities download I’ve included in the basic Pledge price. I didn’t feel it was right or feasible for me to ask my supporters to pay for the entire recording, so am aiming for about half the cost. On top of my half I will pay for mixing, mastering, artwork printing, duplication, video production etc etc so you can see how helpful any amount of money is up front when there is no label / manager / sugar daddy involved to pick up the bill!

The day I launched my Pledge project and raised 65% of the target in just over 24 hours – thank you all! – I happened across a link on Twitter which led to this article on “fan funding”. I found it interesting but was very surprised to discover the article had been written by a musician – I assumed it was by someone who had no experience of being a fan or having a fan, and still find it mystifying that someone who appears to have a decent grasp of the point of social media and says they sell a large amount of records has so little time for this new model.

There’s no point me ripping through the article and refuting the writer’s opinions – these are just MY opinions, after all – but it did inspire me to want to explain my decision to use a service like Pledge Music rather than set up more straightforward pre-orders. As a Pledger on the Juliana / Carina projects I genuinely found it exciting to see their targets get closer, I enjoyed and appreciated the updates and it was really cool to get to choose from unusual extras alongside the downloadable music.

I chose to use Pledge rather than set up a pre-order because I wanted to bring people along on the journey with me and I knew some people would appreciate the invite and get a lot out of it. It’s not that I won’t record the album if I don’t reach my target, but having that chunk of money up front will take the pressure off and let me focus on getting the songs happening in the way I want them to and afford me the luxury of a bit of extra time to do so.

In addition – and a big reason for using Pledge – I get to use a ready made private area to update fans, showing my appreciation for their support with regular updates that can’t be viewed by everyone. Yes I could have paid a programmer to create one for me but the idea is to raise money, not spend it!

One thing I wasn’t so keen on was the minimum Pledge price of £8. As you may know, my debut album ”Disarm” has been available since its release on a pay-what-you-think-it’s-worth basis via Bandcamp, complete with extra secret tracks and special downloadable artwork, and I still believe that music and art should be available to everybody regardless of how much money they have to spend on it. And so to make the £8 Pledge have real value for money for my supporters I added in enough extras to make the album itself free. The basic £8 Pledge gives you:

- a download of the new album incl a PDF of artwork, photos etc
- YOUR NAME in the artwork as a massive thank you
- a download of B-sides, demos and live tracks not available anywhere else
- special Pledger only video, audio, photo and blog updates from now til the album comes out to keep you totally in the loop
- that fuzzy warm feeling you get when you help make something happen
- any other cool digital bits and bobs I can think of to add in to the zip file

At the moment I’m working on gathering together some really brilliant digital extras for all the basic packages because I’m so determined to make it truly worth the money to show my appreciation for peoples’ continuing support, and of course there are a whole host of other exclusive items to buy alongside, including album listening parties, video props, acoustic picnics, house concerts and handmade books. It was really fun coming up with personalised or handmade things for people to buy and experiences for us to share, and I like that I can easily add things – for instance, I’m hoping to be able to unveil a really fantastic new item on Monday which existing Pledgers might be interested in alongside whatever they’ve pledged on already….more soon…

PLEDGE ON SMW’S SECOND ALBUM RIGHT HERE RIGHT NOW!

When I wrote to my Pledgers asking for their comments on why they wanted to support the new album in this way I was overwhelmed with loads of great responses – massive thanks again to everyone who wrote back to me, I found it really interesting to hear your opinions:

+++

“I support microfinancing – in all its forms, from Kiva to Pledgemusic – because i can & because i want to. It’s my choice & my responsibility. I like the engagement it allows me; & the chain of expertimentation it makes possible. As i think i’ve mentioned previously, i supported SMW because PM forwarded your tweet; & discovered your link to Viv Albertine. Seemed a good enough excuse at the time & still does.

Unlike preselling, this isn’t about buying what you know (if i wanted to do that, i’d go on itunes & buy the latest top 40 repercharge). It’s more like going to a pub & seeing if the band i’ve never heard of is any good (& if it is, buying the CD to give ‘em some extra cash). Its a way of saying thanks (did i really need to buy the John Oates project?; & did he really need PM support? – probably no in both cases) & also about encouraging the process of music-making.”

Robert Clements

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“I pledged as it’s probably the only time I’ll ever see my name on an album! I also love getting the behind the scenes snippets and feeling that I’m part of making music & an album coming to fruition. Plus the money you were asking wasn’t a lot and I could come in at whatever level I want. I’m actually suprised more people don’t do it. In a way it’s no different to being a “friend” at a museum or an “angel” at an arts group or theatre.”

Annie Mole

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“To me, pledging money to a project, be it music or some other creative endeavour, means that you get to ensure that the things you like and the things you care about are able to be made. And whilst yes, there is that feeling of altruism you get from helping someone achieve their goals, there is also the more selfish reason of knowing you will get more of the stuff you enjoy listening too. In many ways, pledging to a project is simply an investment.”

Dave Callier

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“With fan-funding sites, not only is the framework already there in order to set up the system, but it takes cue’s from the idea of “pay what you think it’s worth”. There is less initial expense for the artist, so i know I’m directly helping to get the album made, and if the goal is not reached then no one is out of pocket, which is not the case with taking pre-orders, especially ones to an artists personal site.

Andrew Begg

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“Reasons I pledged: 

- It’s great to be part of making the next She Makes War album happen.
- It means you can still do your thing without the need for unscrupulous gatekeeping organisations that are record labels.”

Ash Matadeen

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“It’s my disposable income, and I made an informed decision about how to use it. If it doesn’t work out, so be it.
 
As to why I chose to donate to the next SMW album, the reasoning is simple: I loved the first one, and am happy to contribute to the creation of the next; I’d do so even without any of the goodies that come with the donation packages. I think your hands-on approach to using crowdfunding is far more engaging than the catalog manner of taking CD pre-orders, and I can’t wait to hear the final product.”

Matt Baldwin

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“I pledged because I really liked your first album and would like to hear another: to be honest, I feel like I can support the artists I like by giving positive reviews on my blog though, and a big reason for my pledge is because I want to support DIY and independent models, and I have huge admiration for your approach, with all your special editions etc. As far as the article that got you riled, I can see the bloke’s point but he hasn’t thought it through: his idea that there shouldn’t be any up front production costs is daft, especially if you’re planning some nice bespoke physical packaging, and accepting pre-orders on CDs is identical, except you can’t use an established infrastructure to handle the process for you.”

Oliver Arditi

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“I’d like to say this on the subject.

I’m getting interesting music from an artist that may not be able to make her music available unless it is given away.

Unsigned bands have even more difficulty getting their music heard. ”

Michael Butterworth

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“Pledging makes perfect sense if you like an artist, are willing to preorder their music, and have an idea when said music is coming out.  For me, an album preorder as a pledge is a fair business transaction.  Instead of waiting for said artist to gather the resources and opportunity to produce an album, you can help ensure that process is bankrolled ahead of time.  It’s like work for commission.  It makes sense for small artists to prevent themselves from incurring undue debt just to get into the market place and make their work available for their fans.  It’s just good sense.  So as a fan of She Makes War, who’s happy to know there’s music ready to be recorded, I am eager to hear it, and would buy it if it was available, so why not buy it to ensure that it’s available???”

Wil. E. Smith

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“I loved Disarm; I thought it was really cool that you made it downloadable from Bandcamp; I wanted to show my appreciation by contributing in some small way to your new album (to which I’m really looking forward); and as I live a somewhat isolated life in South Africa, I wanted to feel like a “citizen of the world” for once.”

Brent Davis

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“I pledged because I love your music and want more people to hear it.
I pledged because you truly appreciate your fans and have shown it by responding in some way to every single comment I’ve made on your Facebook page.
I pledged because I know what a boost to an artist’s confidence it can be to have even the smallest support shown for their art.
I pledged so I could see the smile on my fiancée’s face when I told her she was getting the heart from the Olympian video.”

Derek Kinney

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Wow – reading through these comments again has made me want to wrap my arms around the lot of you. I cannot wait to get in that studio on Monday and set to work making something I’ll be proud enough to send to you when it’s done.

See more photos from this week’s trip to Weymouth & Portland here

WELL DONE Lambeth (my London borough) for voting YES to AV. Yah boo sucks to the rest of you – what a sadly wasted opportunity for reform. Enjoy voting in your droves on the next Pop Factor X Idol Talentless Tripe Brain Melty Telly Fest, won’t you. Not YOU, obviously, I’m sure those people aren’t reading this blog…

If you don’t have it already, my song NIMN is freely available for times like these. All together now: “Not in my name, not in my name, never never.”

Please watch, comment and share with your friends!

More photos from the tour so far can be viewed here on Flickr, or see below for the full set.

I’m a big fan of self expression in unusual and forbidden places SO for all the sarky asides I make about Shoreditch (the most typical being that when we were shooting the Scared To Capsize video, creeping around Holywell Lane, Fleur De Lis Street and various other alleyways dressed as a cacophony of animals NO ONE BATTED AN EYELID – I do actually really enjoy visiting because of the ever changing street art that pops up on and around Great Eastern Street.

My friend Jonny Hughes has taken a lot of really fantastic shots in the area and as I was there myself this afternoon visiting the inestimable Judy Jacob and Bennycrime in their freshly repainted tube-train-in-the-sky edit suite I found me some choice new offerings:

[the Village Underground tube trains get a new lick of paint]

[a sickly Superman puts a brave face on it]

[a family of Ninjas baffle me with some very British twaddle]

[love is fragile]

Benny was rocking a Roger Moore-ish getup which dazzled my eyes so much I chopped his hand out of the frame:

London’s pretty brilliant in the sunshine…it’s been a really wonderful long weekend! Now to get ready for the tour…