1) “The Last Holiday : A Memoir” by Gil Scott Heron

I’m so thankful to a friend for introducing me to the wonderful work of Gil Scott Heron a number of years before he sadly died, and though I’ve only just started reading this newly published book I find myself mesmerised once more by his way with words. I can’t wait to read more about his tour with Stevie Wonder, who worked so hard to get Martin Luther King’s birthday recognised as a National Holiday in the USA.

2) Martin Luther King’s “I Have A Dream” Speech – Full Text

I hadn’t read this before, but as last Sunday marked what would have been MLK’s 83rd birthday, it was about time.

And oh what a tune.

3) “The Mast Brothers” by The Scout

A really beautiful short film about Brooklyn chocolate makers the Mast Brothers, who discuss the adventure of handcrafting their product from the chocolate itself to the printed paper – they’re restoring a printing press so they can do it all themselves and get their community to create designs that mean something to them.

“Everything roots back to our love affair with the spirit of craft…We’re looking for an inconsistent product – so your tastebuds are not only enjoying the sensuality of it but they’re also learning – your brain is learning something while you eat it.”

How utterly lovely.

4) Centre Point

Despite living in London for 12 years I had never had an opportunity to experience the breathtaking panorama from the 32nd floor of Centre Point, barely giving the building a glance as I passed it hundreds of times. Arriving in the swanky Paramount Member’s Club laden with cameras for a filming job on Thursday I was breathless at the view (and the exertion), then when we were shown up to the viewing gallery even higher up I got really excited.

More photos here.

5) “Why You Do This” by Michael Dafferner

A full length film by satellite engineer and vocalist Michael Dafferner about touring with “math core” metal band Car Bomb. I’m not a fan of metal – but neither are most people, a point Dafferner explores through interviews with fellow band members and members of the other bands Car Bomb support. The musical style is less interesting than the footage, anyway, as this film shows the stark reality of DIY touring, if you’re a band who think one of the reasons to tour is to try and make money that is.

I watched this with a fellow DIY musician and the deadpan voiceover and truthful editing (no hiding the bad bits to make the band look cooler or more popular/successful here) definitely caused some hollow laughs and prompted a discussion about why *we* do this, BUT Dafferner definitely emphasised the economics over other far more enriching elements of performing live music – performing your songs to others (whatever the number), seeing new places, having new experiences, living a musical life… There was no mention of any efforts the band had made to ensure there would be a crowd waiting for them at the various towns they gigged in, and I suppose there are still a lot of bands who just expect people to magically appear at shows and love them, but to be fair these tours were in 2007/8/9 so perhaps the band would do things differently now.

An interesting watch, whatever sort of music you make:

1) Chris T-T – “Binker” – the video!

I don’t know how I missed this on Twitter last week but I only just stumbled across this gorgeous film. Chris’ 2011 Edinburgh Festival show “Disobedience: Chris T-T Sings A.A. Milne” was one of the musical highlights of the year for me, a heartwarming tearjerker delivered with purity and passion, so I was very pleased when he released the songs as an album – listen here, you’ll love it.

The video was directed by John Panton and is a really lovely accompaniment to the music.

2) Maybe She’s Born With It…Nah, It’s Probably Photoshop

This superb spoof ad by Jesse Rosten highlights the unrealistic beauty standards foisted on us by pointless gossip magazines and companies who work hard to make us feel insecure then try to sell us stuff and manages to be geeky, informative and pretty funny to boot. Brilliant work!

Fotoshop by Adobé from Jesse Rosten on Vimeo.

3) Hula hooping in the Arctic Circle – in shiny silver trousers

Matthias Elliott, real life Arctic scientist and hula hoop performer, gives us a tour of his exploration vessel and shows off some very neat moves against some seriously breathtaking scenery. Note the bare arms in the outdoors scenes (it’s nigh on impossible to hoop properly with sleeves on) – major kudos for your dedication, Matthias!

4) “Hello Giggles”

I have a brand new TV series addiction – “New Girl” – and came across “Hello Giggles” because the marvellous Zooey Deschanel is one of the co-founders and bloggers. It’s cute in a non-nauseating way, lighthearted and fun but with some really interesting content, and this post “On Making New Girlfriends” by Danielle Hampton stuck out for me this week because I can very much relate to how hard it can be to make proper new friends of any gender when you’re past your school/college/university days.

Their Illustrated Tweet Of The Day series by Maritza Lugo is also pretty fabulous.

5) Bike Doctor

My first bicycle trip of the year was thoroughly unsuccessful. Skimming through the back streets of Brixton in a sneaky attempt to avoid the crazy traffic my bike and I lost a battle with a pothole and the front tyre was kaput. I had to dash to a meeting so wrapped my beloved silver steed with locks (3, yup) and got the bus. On my way to collect it this afternoon I realised I was pretty rusty in the inner tube replacement department and quickly searched the Android Market for help.

Bike Doctor to the rescue!

The app is available for iPhone and Android and you either select your repair from a list of categories – general / brakes / wheels / crankset etc – or by tapping a location on a drawing of a bicycle, and you get step by step instructions for your chosen repair with really good accompanying photos. I found it immensely helpful – I wasn’t doing anything particularly difficult but Bike Doctor showed me the quickest, safest and easiest way. I even learned how to use a tyre lever properly for the first time! Unfortunately I misread one of the instructions, which was totally my fault and made the whole process take longer, but I’ll definitely be looking through the list of tutorials to see if I can use any more.

OVER TO YOU, DEAR READER – what floated your boat this week?

This year I have found reflection to be one of the most vital parts of my life; the space and time to assess, evaluate and plan for the future. Trying to balance a busy freelance career and musical life is a challenge but I have enjoyed spending time this winter coming up with some new approaches that I think will help. I like imagining my most happy and productive day/week/month and figuring out what I can do to make that happen. It will take some time and hard work but it certainly won’t magically fall in to place if I don’t get involved!

So, in 2012 I will mainly be working towards finding a better balance in my life, trying not to be quite such a workaholic and spending more time with the wonderful people I call my friends. However I also have a lot of grand schemes to get off the ground so I’ll be throwing myself in to those alongside integrating good food, more exercise and more fun hobby things like hula hooping and drumming in to my daily life.

This is the first time I’ve actually got round to doing an end of year blog post, though I remember really wanting to find the time last year, so hold on to your hat as brevity has never been my strongest skill. I won’t be at all offended if you just scroll down and look at the pictures!

JANUARY

Kicked off the New Year with a snowy trip to Leeds to start talking about my new album with Rich and Ed from Hope & Social, who were supremely helpful and asked lots of good thought provoking questions. What’s in YOUR musical rucksack?

My first SMW gig of the year was supporting Viv Albertine at The Enterprise and playing in her band alongside the fabulous Milly McGregor, who I later stole to play on “Little Battles”. It was a really memorable night, packed with lots of faces I recognised and lots of new friends too.

Full of renewed enthusiasm for hooping I attended an excellent weekend of workshops in North London run by Emma Kerr from Hooping Mad, and continued my daily hooping practise for quite a while afterwards, and cultural highlights of the month included Kristin Hersh‘s “Paradoxical Undressing” show at Queen Elizabeth Hall and a screening of “Ride, Rise, Roar” at the Ritzy followed by a Q&A with David Byrne. Both madly inspiring pieces of work.

FEBRUARY

Finished vocals on a song called “Piece Of You”, a collaboration with Michael Gray, Luciana Caporaso and Nick Clow. You can get the song here (or on iTunes) and watch the video here. There be robots!

Saw Thumpermonkey, The Andy K Show, Orders Of The British Empire and Djevara at the New Cross Inn and started enjoying gig photography again.

Finished off the month with a spot on Dubber‘s Outside The Box panel for Unconvention at the Roundhouse – alongside Steve Lawson, Tom Robinson, Bobbie Gardner, Mark Williams and Ammo Taylor, then a very late night Megabus to Edinburgh to play a couple of warmup shows before my first support slot for Midge Ure in Dunfermline (via a brief trip to Clutch Daisy‘s house in beautiful Burntisland).

MARCH

Ditched the red hair for my natural blonde after seeing 6 fake redheads in a row in Tooting Common tube station, then spent the weekend at Manchester Hoop Congress learning more snazzy new tricks.

Received the lovely news that “Scared To Capsize” had won the Soundcloud Backstage Pass competition so I played my winning slot at Club Fandango at the Bull & Gate, then nipped up to Glasgow and Leeds for more shows.

While oop North I was privileged to sit in on Hope & Social recording a gorgeous song called “Cotton Wool” for their latest album “Sleep Sound”, a snippet of which appears in this video blog. SO GOOD.

APRIL

Somehow I managed to run 53km this month, the most I have ever managed. I have a very on/off relationship with running but am always trying to keep starting even if I’ve stopped for a while. It makes me feel so much clearer and energetic. Aside from hitting the tarmac I got involved with Dana Jade‘s “Little Sister” video shoot, both as studio manager and set photographer for the day and for one of the cameo appearances.

My Pledge Music campaign launched on the 15th with a view to raising around half the money I would need to pay for recording and mastering the new album. It all went a bit nuts and eventually hit 217% of the target, which means I can now say “Little Battles” was completely fan funded. It was a really wonderful, heartwarming and humbling experience, which I wrote about here, here and here.

At the end of the month I hit the road again to support Midge Ure for three more dates, travelling across the South West of England on trains (regular and steam) and car ferries and enjoying some really beautiful sights along the way. Dartmouth was a particular favourite. Playing with Sick Of Sarah in Bristol was a lot of fun, too.

MAY

I completed my little tour with a show at Port Mahon in Oxford, as part of Little Fish‘s “Shoal Of Talent” night alongside Djevara Redux, Spring Offensive and Adam Barnes, all brilliant and inspiring artists. It was the perfect end to a really fun tour, surrounded by friends in a sweaty room over a pub, then it was straight home to start relearning bass parts for 30 Tricky songs as I’d been called up for a two week tour of South America and Mexico.

It was a wonderful though too-whirlwind trip stopping off in Uruguay, Argentina, Chile, Peru, Colombia, Venezuela and Mexico – see blog posts here, here and here and check out all my photos here.

Highlights included climbing the pyramids at Teotihuacan outside Mexico City, travelling in a cable car in to the mountains above Caracas and watching a lightning show from very high up later that evening, going on a cycle tour of Lima and playing a SMW house concert at an animation studio in Buenos Aires. The Tricky gigs were really fantastic; as atmospheric and intense as I remember from my four month stint in 2008 but with the added excitement factor of knowing that none of the people in the audience had seen the songs played live before.

JUNE

One night at home after the tour then straight out again for a brief but lovely birthday trip to Weymouth, to enjoy the summer sunshine and visit Portland Bill to take photos for my album artwork. Recording commenced at Myles Clarke‘s studio in London Fields on the 6th, then on the 7th and 8th I skived off to go and sing backing vocals for Carina Round‘s shows at Dingwalls in London and Hare & Hounds in Birmingham. A truly magical experience, getting to sing on some of my favourite songs ever and sing cool parts on magical new tracks from her new album out in 2012. Thanks so much for the invite, Carina!

Photo by Mister J Photography

Note the new tattoo there, drawn and inked by Kanae, who also did my art nouveau butterfly a few years ago. It was finished later in the month and I’m very happy with it – it’s a depiction of Daphne turned in to a tree at the end of the Apollo/Cupid story that I wrote about in my song “Olympian”.

June finished with three video events – the AmpNMS webcast streamed live from Leeds with Rich Huxley and Andrew Dubber, then promo shoots for “Piece Of You” and “Slow Puncture”, the latter my final (for now) video to accompany debut album “Disarm”. Read the blog post here, visit the microsite, watch the video here and watch the making of here. Stormtrooper alert!

JULY

Around really getting my head down in the studio recording with all sorts of weird and wonderful instruments I played gigs in London, Manchester and Leeds for Organ Zine, Ben & Jerry’s and Hope & Social respectively. It was a hectic but satisfying month, and running a hula hoop workshop with my sister at the Sleep Sound Garden Party was a real highlight of my year, as was performing on the Hammock stage on top of a pile of earth and planks under a tree! My looper got some mud on it…

AUGUST

Started off with a weekend driving trip all the way to St Emilion in Bordeaux for a wedding gig, reading Ted Hughes and Plato in the van and finishing off lyrics to the last few album tracks ready to complete vocals the following week. We spent an entire day at a working chateau and didn’t get to drink any wine!

Back in London I met a couple of nice French boys and had a chat about doing some singing on their album, then hit the studio with them for three days at the end of the month to get started. They’re called The Penelopes and they’re ace.

My next trip was to Edinburgh Festival to do some work with Amplified and I got to see some great shows too – Chris TT had me in tears, Kristin Hersh had me in stitches and Evelyn Evelyn were much funnier and more affecting than I’d anticipated PLUS I finally got to shake hands with Amanda Palmer, who is my sort-of bandmate after she collaborated with The Young Punx on “Map Of Tasmania” last year. She seemed very nice.

Album recording continued apace and August ended with a listening party at the studio for a select group of fans who had kindly pledged for tickets to be the first to listen to the new album all the way through. I played a couple of songs acoustically in the kitchen then sat in the corridor with my dog, Anna Madeleine and Dina Karklina while the album blasted out from Myles’ marvellous speakers.

SEPTEMBER

Around the final few days of mixing the album I gigged the new songs at the Hospital Club, Malcfest and Strongroom Bar, Hertford Corn Exchange (raising money for Teenage Cancer Trust for Katie Huttlestone) and St Gregory’s Church in Norwich as part of the Sound & Vision Festival. I also talked on a panel about artist development there with Chris T-T and Dave Rowntree and found the whole event really interesting. Watch the roundup video here featuring yours truly.

In between all the shows I made a “Little Battles” teaser video using Lomography’s brand new LomoKino 35mm film camera, with help from Dina Karklina and Laura Ward.

OCTOBER

This month saw my first trip to the Isle of Wight since I was a teenager, not for a holiday but to talk to students at Platform One music college about using social media tools for a DIY music career. There were some wolves on the ferry on the way back to the mainland…

Seeing Feist perform at the London Palladium was one of my musical highlights of the last few years, she was in fine voice performing songs off new album “Metals” as well as some interesting rearrangements of older tracks and I was especially gripped by the inclusion of Mountain Man, a three piece a capella group who added a lot to the general atmosphere as well as contributing gorgeous vocals.

Towards the end of the month I was invited to appear in the video for “Now Now Now” by The Penelopes – we had a really fun day and there was a really cool behind the scenes video made alongside the promo itself. After that I took a little break in the countryside visiting friends and abstaining from the internet for as long as possible, learning to love writing in notebooks again.

Oh, and the album returned from being beautifully mastered by Dick Beetham!

NOVEMBER

#vlomo11 (video blogging month) went well – I managed 20 out of 30 entries but was really busy with client video work and wanted to give myself a bit of a rest towards the end of the month! Gigwise, Bonfire Night at The Half Moon in Herne Hill supporting Birdeatsbaby was brilliant – the venue was jam packed with firework-singed revellers and it was wonderful to finally see the Brighton punk cabaret outfit live. They were really great.

Spending a day recording and filming a live EP with my shadowy supergroup The Olympians on boat/recording studio Lightship95 in East India Docks was pretty special, followed by a few days in Reignier near Geneva eating fondue, drinking wine and playing a show at Perce Oreille. I arrived back in London just in time to play at the inaugural Clit Rock night at The Lexington alongside Dana Jade, We Rock Like Girls Don’t and Thrush Metal, raising awareness and funds for Daughters Of Eve, an organisition concerned with preventing, fighting and ultimately ending Female Genital Mutilation. Amazing atmosphere, brilliant bands, wonderful cause.

Another contender for gig of the year came in the form of a house concert in Leeds, where I played alongside the brilliant Middleman and Soulmates Never Die in a front room filled with fairy lights and warm hearts. Ed Waring shot a really lovely video and took some wicked photos with his CCTV lens. And then performing at Strummerville‘s Winter Sessions alongside Hysterical Injury and Kai Fish from Mystery Jets was a real honour.

DECEMBER

I’d planned a month off work so I could catch up with personal projects but that didn’t happen because there were some really interesting jobs to get involved in, alongside which I was lucky enough to interview Janet Weiss of US band Wild Flag (and ex-of Sleater-Kinney) for the Wears The Trousers Yearbook (on sale now) AND see them perform at The Lexington (gig of the year, hands down!), rehearse with The Penelopes for live shows in early 2012 and do video interviews / gear demonstrations for Roland UK and soon-to-be-launched website Kitmonsters.

My last two gigs of the year were a relaxed house concert at my place for close friends and an acoustic set at one of the Crisis Christmas centres, during which a lovely man called Gus danced around gleefully to “In This Boat”.

Arty highlights included meeting and interviewing members of The Invisible Circus at The Brick Box in Tooting Market, going to see Howl’s Moving Castle at Southwark Playhouse and watching Stewart Lee being hilarious at Leicester Square Theatre.

And finally, my “Disarm: Remixed” album went online just before Christmas and has already been downloaded more than 100 times, with nearly £400 raised for Crisis UK. Thank you!

If you’re still with me – thanks for reading! Having finally finished writing this behemoth I am pretty certain end of year posts are an exercise for the benefit of the writer, not the reader, and I’m sure I’ll look back on this in a year’s time and find it useful. I wonder what adventures will have happened by then! All the best bits of this year took me completely by surprise, so I’m excited to see what 2012 will bring.

And finally, people who contributed to my excellent adventures in 2011 – thank you so much!

Everyone who pledged on “Little Battles” – thank you again!, Bass, Julia Kidd, Laura Ward, Dina Karklina, Dana Jade, Myles & Becks Clarke, Milly McGregor, Viv Albertine, Carina Round, Midge Ure, Annie Gardiner, Tom Gardiner, Kat Arney, Anna Madeleine, Chris T-T, Tasmin Archer, Rich & Hannah Huxley, Ed Waring, Gary Stewart, Simon Goff, Clutch Daisy, Emma Kerr, Nick Broyd, Gail O’Brien, Mark & Susie Bowers, Cat Munro, Sue & Nigel, Steve and Lobelia Lawson, Ben Read, Mishkin Fitzgerald, Kim Boekbinder, Dan Thompson, Khalid Amin, Richard Kirstein and YOU. Happy New Year! xxx

The third free track is my cover of Tom Waits track “Hoist That Rag”, recorded for Adventure Club Records last weekend and starring my brand new Copperphone mic, lovingly handmade by Mark Pirro at Placid Audio. I’m going to be using it a lot live as well, it sounds fantastic and is quite the conversation starter because it also looks amazingly cool.

The Pledge Music release of “Little Battles” went online on Tuesday lunchtime which felt really great – seven months of updates is a lonnnnng timmmme and it’s good to have some closure, though I will still use the PM backstage area for occasional bits and pieces in the coming months. The #smwlittlebattles hashtag has been quite busy in the last few days – thank you everyone for sharing links and commenting, you’re the best!

Oh, then these came in the post today…..pretttttty:

#VLOMO11 started this week – that’s Video bLOgging MOnth for the uninitiated – and within the 30 videos I’ll be making to keep up with the crazy challenge there will be lots of musical shenanigans so keep an eye on my VLOMO playlist to see all the latest videos.

Here are the first two:

It feels good to be back in London making things after a week away trying to rest. I managed three whole days without switching on my laptop (which might not seem like a very long time, but is for me since everything I make and do apart from creating video props and stuff is computer based) and almost a week off Facebook and Twitter, though I did lurk a little bit. My hands and eyes definitely felt more relaxed when I started using the computer again and it was good to have a deep think about a few things including my use of social media generally. A blog post on the subject may form in my brain shortly.

I’m definitely going to try and schedule in more regular time away from the machines. The best thing about the Pledge Music Exclusives that I have to start making to fulfill all the orders is that most of them are analogue creations, so I’m looking forward to getting stuck in to that as soon as this hectic November is over. Not that I want it to be over, I’m excited about every single show that’s coming up but I think December should be a quiet time to end the year off nicely.

I’m rambling now because it’s late and I’m tired, but it feels good to be blogging so thanks for your patience

In three and a half days time I will be uploading my new album “Little Battles” to Pledge Music for a super early exclusive release for the nearly 200 generous and supportive people brave enough to pre-order new music from me without hearing a note.

It’s been a wonderful 7 months. In April I approached the fan funding world with caution, inspired by my own experiences of contributing towards wildly successful projects by Juliana Hatfield and Carina Round (both of whose music I adore) but wary of transferring the responsibility for funding the album recording to others.

I knew I needed help to be able to spend as much time in the studio as I needed to create my new song world, and I wanted to give existing fans a way of getting more involved, but I also knew I was going to make the new record whether the project was fully funded or not. I decided to try and raise half the total costs, and was utterly blown away by the generosity of my Pledgers who have now contributed 207% of that sum, thereby completely funding the recording.

Thank you so much to everyone who has pledged so far! There is still time to pre-order digital and physical copies of the new album alongside all sorts of other treats and experiences – just make your pledge before midnight GMT on Monday 31st October!

So, how was it for me? Great, actually. At times being a solo artist can be pretty lonely, and just knowing that a friendly bunch of people were eager to receive updates throughout the recording process was really motivational. I would have have been video blogging anyway, but I was much more actively doing so because I wanted to share with the Pledgers.

One of my favourite “Exclusives” on offer was a Pledger Listening Party at the studio which turned out to be an amazing evening – 8 people came along to be the first to listen to the record in its entirety and it was wonderful to share the music for the first time in such a direct way.

I’ve had a few requests for advice from fellow musicians considering crowd funding, so here’s a brief list of things I think are really key:

Be clear about what you’re funding – the more specific the better, I reckon.

Set an achievable goal – remember you don’t get any of the pledge money unless you hit 100% of the total.

Have fun creating a list of “Exclusives” but keep in mind costs and time – you’re going to have to factor in time and money to deliver on everything people pledge on and do it well, which is the very least your Pledgers deserve.

Treat your Pledgers like royalty – they deserve interesting regular updates and whatever other cool treats you can throw their way.

Set some updates public, too – I wanted people who hadn’t pledged yet to get a taste of what they’d be receiving if they got involved, and this was a really effective way of reminding the world about the campaign without just going on about it on Twitter.

Be honest: do what you say you’re going to do, or if you can’t, tell people why – due to various delays I ended up pushing the Pledger release date back but because I told everyone in good time and explained why I haven’t had any complaints (thanks guys!). I have seen instances of musicians doing crowdfunding and promising all sorts of things, raising the money and then going off radar, which I think is unspeakable shady and rude. Don’t do that!

Enjoy and appreciate the experience – it’s a pretty wonderful point to have got to, in my opinion, where the line between artists and fans can get blurred in interesting ways like this for mutual benefit. I am supremely grateful that all these people took a chance on my second album and they feel happy to have enabled me to record new music. Winwinwinwin.

So, for the next few days I’ll be squirrelling away in my home studio putting the finishing touches to the extra special rarities, B-sides and live recordings bundle that will accompany Tuesday’s Pledger-only release of “Little Battles”.

I can’t wait to share it all with you!

Yesterday I announced that my album launch gig next month was postponed until spring, along with the art show that was to accompany it. Despite my breezy updates on Twitter and Facebook I’ve had a few people get in touch to ask if I’m okay, and after a very interesting discussion with Steve Lawson and Nick Moreton this afternoon which touched on about a thousand interesting aspects of what we’re all doing I decided there’s no use glossing over the fact that right now I’m just really tired, and I need a rest so that I can commit to sending my new album out in to the world with all the vigour and enthusiasm I feel it deserves.

First of all, mega thanks to everyone concerned with the launch and art show for being so kind and understanding about the whole thing – you’re lovely.

After a summer of intense recording and mixing (and gigging and working) and then a frantic rush to get the album artwork done and to the printer in time to take advantage of my Soundcloud competition prize (£530 off the CD production costs – thank you guys!) I am burned out. It took talking to some very lovely calm friends this week to really suss out that this is not how it should be, and that no-one else would be expecting me to put myself under this much pressure.

I’m the sort of person who finds it very hard to say no to taking on interesting projects and getting really stuck in to making my contributions high enough quality to satisfy myself. And of course when it’s my own musical project I’m doubly, triply, quadruply invested. I have lots of ambitious plans for this new album in terms of different ways of presenting the songs visually, making the solo show more elaborate, setting up longer tours and taking the tunes abroad, and all that needs time to plan. I want to feel excited and happy when I’m doing all of that, and the past few weeks have felt like a slog because I just couldn’t see a realistic end point in sight.

I’m not afraid to admit that I am finding it very tough at the moment to see how I can continue with the She Makes War project doing everything on my own as I do now. I always say to fellow freelancers that we need to think of ourselves as our own bosses, and ask whether if our boss was a separate entity to us whether we would hate them for making us work long hours, not feeding us properly, not letting us have a holiday…. It’s all relative, of course, and I am in the privileged (though hard earned) position of being approached regularly by people to do great work projects, thus being able to pretty much set my own hours and attempt to juggle that side of what I do with my musical art project. That’s not to say it isn’t really hard, though, and frequent late night work tweets attest to that, alongside my personal diary entries, most of which start “utterly exhausted today…”. Mmm, that’s going to be scintillating reading in my old age!

I have this dream of marrying all the wonderful DIY elements of what I do with a modest but moderately less hard fought-for budget to create all the stuff I want to, and having other people helping with some of the more arduous admin. Sadly that’s not yet my reality, and perhaps it won’t ever be, but I do know I need to take it easy for a bit.

And so I made the decision to postpone the album launch gig (and yeah, writing that post on how much DIY music costs the other day was eye opening to me, too, as I tend not to do proper budgets for things I just really like doing!). I want to spend some time making a proper release plan, based not on what other people might do at all but based on the list of things – videos, artefacts, experiences and the like – I’d like to make to support the music going out to you guys. At this point I’m not completely satisfied just expressing myself through music, because the visual world and the handmade artefacts are really key to the atmosphere I’m trying to communicate. And as I have yet to find anyone else to help me with any aspect of the project this all has to be manageable, leaving time for proper food, exercise and real life time spent with my amazingly supportive boyfriend (who I feel I have barely seen this year), family and friends.

The information I can give you right now is as follows:

- the Pledge Music campaign ends on October 31st, and pledging is the only way to get “Little Battles” as a download on November 1st, along with rarities and B-sides that will only appear in this format direct from the Pledge campaign. You will also get your name in the digital artwork.
NOTE: my Pledgers have been amazingly generous and I don’t *need* any more donations as they have kindly paid for pretty much all the recording costs, but if you’re interested in hearing the new stuff first this is the way to make it happen and any extra funds raised go towards videos and suchlike.
- Pledgers will start receiving their CDs and other assorted 3D presents in December and I hope to have everything delivered by Christmas, like the good little elf I am.
- There will be a strictly limited run of “Little Battles” CDs made available for a minimum donation on 1st December for non-Pledgers, after which none will be available until the release date, which I don’t know yet but will be some time in early 2012. Sign up to the mailing list via the “Little Battles” microsite to hear about this when it happens.

I had the sorry realisation the other day that I probably haven’t taken a day off using a computer (laptop or phone) for more than a year, and if I’m really honest it could be much longer than that. That’s a pretty sad fact of our digital age, isn’t it? I have an unabashed love for the wonderful benefits of the internet in general and Twitter in particular, but my poor peepers are crying out for paper, pens and fresh air. I might not be gone for very long, but even a few days away from spreadsheets, sickmaking To Do lists, software and social media is long overdue.

And so I bid you a cheery farewell, take care of yourselves and see you soon!

Lau xx

The other day a Twitter friend sent me a link to Techdirt’s Case Studies contest, where they’re giving big cash prizes to people who contribute interesting posts about their experiences with fan engagement. I hope to find time to write a post myself, but I was inspired by Andy from Uniform Motion’s case study. His band published a blog post containing facts and figures about how much money they made from people listening to and buying their music online. The point is, it wasn’t much, and in some circles it’s still considered pretty brave to come out and say that.

It’s quite easy to give the perception, especially online, that you’re more popular / successful / famous than you really are, without even trying to. I come across this quite a lot myself – people seem astonished that I’m not doing She Makes War full time when I have 3000+ followers on Twitter! I’ve always been of the opinion that mystique is a nonsensical concept, and something I don’t care about for myself, and so it would never cross my mind to try and make it look like I was making a ton of cash or playing sold out shows, but some elements within “the” music industry still preach that building up follower numbers are for the benefit of impressing others (managers, labels etc) rather than about those followers themselves – creating a real community based on mutual respect.

Anyway, now the new album is finished and I have a little more time to do things like this I felt inspired to share some facts and figures about my year so far, mainly to explain why this DIY artist had to put tickets for the November 15th “Little Battles” London launch on sale at £10 a pop. I’ve been experiencing feelings of guilt about that ever since I put the event live because I just want people to be able to come along for free like they did to the “Disarm” launch last year, but the difference is that I was very kindly given use of the venue for that show for free, and was lent a small PA system by a friend. [Forgot to get lights though - oops!]

Note – this is just an overview sketch of the year so far – I’ve only estimated the tour travel costs and I haven’t included subsistence (food and drinks), any necessary equipment purchases, insurance, servicing etc or included the negative sums carried over from expenditure in 2009/2010 (“Disarm” recording costs, 4 music videos, CD printing etc), forthcoming postage costs on the Pledge items, merchandise ordering, new business cards etc etc. I’m sure I’ve left a lot out, sadly all on the “Money Out” side though – I remember every penny that has come in!

I think a more interesting spreadsheet would show time costs for each aspect of the project, but I only keep a track of that sort of thing for clients. I can tell you the album artwork took about 4 solid days to put together because either Photoshop or my computer wasn’t keen on dealing with 600dpi files and the Slow Puncture video took 1 day of planning and props making, 1 day of shooting and 2 days of editing. The new website is likely to take a solid 2-3 days to design and build, the DVD content could take 3-4 days and ongoing admin relating to festival submissions, press releases, newsletter creation and the like takes an amazing amount of time and never seems to end.

Please note – this blog post is about transparency and is supposed to be informative – I’m not complaining! I have never wanted to put pressure on She Makes War to make money, and certain decisions I make like recording at a certain level of studio, hiring good people to document the launch gig, paying the band etc have a big impact on the project’s outgoings. I’m not saying people can’t do the same as me more cheaply or more expensively, this is just my case study.

I count my success in different ways – 2011 has been a really good year for me so far because I haven’t played a single gig I regretted, I made a second album that I really love and have had the privilege of spending time with a lot of SMW fans and followers. I was honoured to be invited to sing and play on stage in Viv Albertine and Carina Round’s bands and have been completely blown away by peoples’ generosity during the Pledge Music campaign. I have talked on panels at Unconvention and Norwich Sound & Vision Festival, run social media seminars for young people in the Isle of Wight and had all sorts of other adventures directly linked to my work within the SMW project.

Suffice to say, She Makes War at present remains an art project rather than a viable business concern, which is why my dream of being able to spend more days per week working on it just isn’t possible yet. I’ve been taking it relatively easy in my freelance video / photo / social media career since the album recording sessions ended so I could focus on my big To Do list: album artwork, new website, DVD content, merch design and ordering, festival entries, and on and on…but it’s a balancing act.

Thankfully I have a really exciting month ahead, and all the emails, spreadsheets, planning and juggling will be totally worth it when the “In This Boat” art show and “Little Battles” launch gig kick off in November, immediately followed by a string of shows with Kim Boekbinder.

I am also trying out a new philosophy when it comes to the Impossible To Do list – I can’t alter the fact that it’s not physically possible to do all the things I want to but as long as I’m heading forward, even if it’s slowly, then the adventure continues. There is always beauty to be found:

Have you ever thought that it’s an incredibly inefficient use of your time to spend all day at the computer, copying and pasting information from blog after blog in to a spreadsheet when you’d rather be rehearsing / writing / recording / pulling teeth? Have you ever had the image of hundreds of other musicians doing the exact same thing pop in to your creative brain, making you laugh a hollow, frustrated laugh?

I HAVE. It is time for this nonsense to stop. We are artists! We have better things to do!

SO, here’s what I propose. We share. Not fan / follower data, not on your life, not best friends in the “industry” or anything like that but the freely available email addresses of blogs, postal addresses of magazines, URLs and contact / submission details for festivals, indie label and manager info and so on. We are stronger together. We get to type less and play more music if we help each other out!

I have a not-so-shabby press list I’m more than happy to share, and as long as everyone brings something to the table (you have to do SOME work!) between us we could compile the rock ‘n’ roll spreadsheet to beat all rock ‘n’ roll spreadsheets!*

Are you in?

Email laura[at]shemakeswar.com right now with a brief description of who you are, what you’re after and what you can offer. Include a link to your music, your Twitter feed etc and we can all even be friends as well, mention each other on our blogs and all kinds of crazy stuff like that. Amazing!

GO GO GO.

* see how I am trying to make spreadsheet creation sound cool? It’s SO cool!

The main reason of course is because I have a loyal gang of Pledgers who have kindly pre-ordered the new record along with buying all sorts of other goodies via my Pledge Music project page. This page stays open until November 1st – the official deadline for the download – so whatever’s still on the list (video props, handmade tour photo books, CD packages and the like) is still available to buy and I will start posting available goodies out in September with everything else (including the new album on CD) due to hit your doormats by the end of November at the latest.

Part of the Pledge Music experience is sharing exclusive updates with the Pledgers hence me not blogging about it here much so far, but I do of course want to keep everyone else in the loop. This week I’ll be posting one short studio vBlog clip each day at lunchtime and today’s and Friday’s are both publicly accessible. Studio vBlog #5 introduces you to the mysterious new instrument I was tweeting about a few months ago.

WATCH IT HERE!

These short clips are just part of the footage I’m gathering along the way to make in to a longer “making the album” video for the DVD which will accompany the new record…so I’ve got lots of jobs to be getting on with as soon as the music is finished…

Speaking of which, after 14 studio days the album has pretty much taken shape. It crept up on me actually, one day we were making lists of songs and organising what instruments were going where and the next I was welcoming Chris TT, Anna Madeleine, Kat Arney and Milly McGregor in to sprinkle fairy dust on the tunes (in the shape of piano, keyboards, harp and violin respectively). I’ve really enjoyed hearing my songs taken to a different place by each person, egged on by me not to second guess what I might want them to play and to make sure whatever they contributed sounded utterly like them. I am only inviting people on to the record whose playing and personalities give me goosebumps so I’m over the moon it’s worked out so well so far.

What I’m finding really lovely is that this album is surprising me. The songs on my debut album “Disarm” were all complete when I took them to the studio – lyrics were written and the demos were pretty full sounding so it was just a case of changing some tempos, tightening up some words and adding extra guitar parts on top (oh, and re-recording everything through brilliant equipment with a magical wizard of a co-producer). This time I did have the album name (sssh it’s a secret!), most of the musical arrangements and song titles and a very clear sense of what each individual songs and the album as a whole are about BUT also had lots of space for guitar parts and very few actual singable words, so as it’s come together I’ve been able to be surprised and pleased at the unexpected twists and turns my song babies have made. Go song babies!

I got to try two of the new songs, “Exit Strategy” and “In This Boat” out at the Ben & Jerry’s Summer Sundae festivals in London and Manchester this weekend (supporting Ocean Colour Scene, Ash and Fun Loving Criminals – fancy!) and am really looking forward to recording vocals next week. This week is for finishing off all the music, welcoming a few more talented guests in to the studio and getting ready for my hula hoop workshops and acoustic performance at Hope & Social‘s Sleep Sound Garden Party in Leeds on Sunday – I’ll be playing on the Hammock Stage.

I’m hoping for more lush sunshine and ice cream collisions like this one from Manchester yesterday…mmmm…

More photos from recording can be found here.

Tickets are now available for a very special gig this September – I’m hosting and performing at a benefit show for Katie Huttlestone, a fantastic girl who is undergoing treatment for stage 3 breast cancer – at the age of 21. Katie has been sharing her story so far via informative and moving video blogs, and I’m honoured to be working alongside her to raise money for youth charities.

The gig will be held at The Corn Exchange in Hertford from 6pm on 10th September 2011, with a full lineup to be confirmed.

Tickets are £5 for under 14-17 year olds and £7 for 18s and over. GET YOUR TICKETS HERE.

You can “like” Katie on Facebook here and watch the rest of her vblogs right here.