We Want The Funds: A Crowdfunding Update

Name: Jody Porter
Project: New album
Current Status: 51 pledges, 20.5% ($4,099) of $22,000 goal, 22 days remaining.

Fountains Of Wayne guitarist Jody Porter is looking to make his second solo record with the assistance of his fans. He has put together a pretty standard package of perks that range from receiving updates for a buck to buying a guitar from him for $5,000.

Porter promises he has plenty of stories from 20 years in the music business and he'll divulge a stack of them over Skype for $200. He'll also talk about guitars, pedals, girls… whatever really. If you want the guy to play guitar on a song that you're recording, you can make that happen for $600 – he'll come to your session if you're in New York or record it himself if you send him the files. Big fans can pledge $700 for a special, one of a kind mix CD that will feature Porter singing a stack of his favourite songs, made for your ears only (and whoever you choose to play it to)…

Name: …And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead
Project: New EP
Current Status: 390 pledges, 57% of goal achieved, 85 days remaining.

Recent Aussie visitors …And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead have come up with an exciting new 20 minute composition that is thematically linked to their 2011 album Tao Of The Dead.

If you help them get this release out to the world you can score any number of cool perks. A Conrad Keely screenprint will set you back around $75, the new record on vinyl will cost around $35 and a signed CD is $25. On the upper end of the scale you can grab a signed cracked cymbal for around $150, a destroyed guitar for around $850 and $1650 gets you an acoustic show from the band (though given they were here so recently we wouldn't count on that happening any time soon.

In other crowdfunding news this week:

Eskimo Joe recently chatted to us about their crowdfunding project and seemed pretty happy at the outstanding success of it.

“It [crowd-funding] gives you a one-on-one connection with your fans because they are investing in the album before it's even written,” frontman Kav Temperley says. “At the end of the day they're investing in this project so when they get this CD, hopefully they'll treasure it and feel like, 'oh, I had apart in this!'”

Not everyone is so pumped on crowdfunding. New Jersey hardcore dudes The Banner lashed out on Facebook about bands who choose to make their records in this way.

“None of these crowdfunded albums are much (if at all)better than what we did on Frailty in maybe 3 weeks with 3 dudes and logic software for less than 1/4 the cost these dildos are asking. If these dudes were asking 2-3k it wouldn't bug me at all but 20-30-50k? kill yourselves. pay me 1k and ill write you a metal album better than anything your shit band and keyboard player could ever imagine.Not because im that great but because your other shit sucks a tidal wave of dicks.”

Christian rockers The Red Jumpsuit Apparatus are, in a way, crowdfunding their trip to Australia. While they're not asking for fans to pay for their flights or anything like that, they are asking them to buy tickets to whatever show they want to see happen. Each date has been set aside for a show in one of three cities and whichever city has sold the most number of tickets before the show gets the band for that night.

You can head to their GiggedIn page for more information and to grab your tickets. The proposed dates are as follows:

Thursday 7 November – Brisbane or Gold Coast or Toowoomba or Gympie
Friday 8 November – Coffs Harbour or Armidale or Byron Bay or Port Macquarie
Saturday 9 November - Newcastle (all ages) or Central Coast or Mona Vale
Thursday 14 November - Sydney (all ages) or Wollongong or Canberra
Friday 15 November - Melbourne or Geelong or Bendigo
Saturday 16 November - Adelaide or Perth or Hobart