The Soul Who Dances On: CD Project

Hello and Welcome, everyone!  I am a Seattle-based folksinger/songwriter and photographer, in need of assistance to complete a recording project of original folk-oriented songs, and then to promote the finished product.  I began production on this album (working title: The Soul Who Dances On) a couple of years ago; and then funds ran out shortly after I'd completed lead vocal and lead guitar tracks on most of the songs.  The video posted here features a song of mine, "Penelope" accompanying a slideshow of original photographs.  I've been writing songs since I was in college in the mid-1980's; hence, some of them have waited over 20 years to be recorded for the first time!  It's very important to me that my own songs be heard, and preserved for posterity.  Heck, I could be struck by lightning tomorrow; who knows?

Anyway, what I currently wish to do is the following:

a) Add instrumental and backing vocals to each song (13 in all--yikes!), under the lead vocals and lead guitar tracks.  All of this will require editing, engineering, final production, etc.  In other words, lots of local studio time.

b) Once the finished product is ready to press, obviously it will require duplication, copyrighting, publishing and distribution avenues, both online and offline.  I am an indie/unsigned musician, and intend to maintain as much control over my recorded material as humanly possible.  However, there will still be significant costs involved at this stage.

c) I have a PC laptop, on which a lot of my music-related material is stored (including music scoring/composition software), and I can't access the hard drive, due either to loader or operating system malfunction.  Right now, I cannot afford either to fix this machine properly, or to pay for appropriate data recovery/backup; and I really need all my saved data files, for both musical and photography/graphic design work.

d) Finally, I would like to become known as a folk musician outside the Seattle/western Washington area, and am making plans to do open-mic touring, at least down the west coast and parts of Canada, soon after finishing my recording project.  My planning work was also saved on my (gulp) hard drive; and it would be great not to have to start it over from scratch.  I am planning to invest part of the money I raise in CDs to help cover bare-bones expenses of traveling and performance (whatever is not covered by product sales).

Anyhow, that basically summarizes what I would love to accomplish musically and professionally over the next couple of years!  Of course, almost nobody achieves these sorts of things completely on their own...and the support and good wishes of all who help bring about this project will be appreciated well beyond words!