Galen’s First Album and Tour
Donation protected
A small demo from the kitchen.
https://soundcloud.com/galenhefferman
I have been getting stronger and stronger messages that I need to share my music with more people, and life has steered me down this path and led me towards my gifts in loud, though sometimes confusing ways. I have learned through the pressure cooker of life that my voice is the most precious thing I have to give. I would like to give it to you, and I could very much use your assistance in helping me do so.
_____________________________________
I would like to tell my story, if you would hear it, of where I am today and how I got here.
I have come to believe that I came to earth for a purpose, and that I am here to share my heart on this earth in this great time of change.
I have been listening and listening, praying for guidance and strength and clarity to finish what I have started.
Today is the day to ask for help. With this vision, with this purpose. To share my music with dear souls across Turtle Island and across the whole earth.
I awoke to my voice at the age of 10, inspired by Julianne Johnson's voice and a song about Harriet Tubman. This started a life long journey of what to me is sacred music, though coming from my own spiritual context.
My next awakening was onstage at a school of rock camp at age 13, through Ziggy Stardust by David Bowie. Despite being a shy kid, onstage felt like home. This was the beginning of the next 6 years of going to School of Rock, developing my chops as a singer and multi instrumentalist, and having the immense gift of a whole family of teachers and fellow sensitive, artistic kids in a net of mutual support. I covered everybody from Jeff Buckley to Tom Waits to Radiohead. Every time I was onstage, which so thankfully was quite often, I felt electric. Alive and full of energy to give, expanding light. A group of friends and my partner at the time formed a band and started busking and performing at venues around town. I wrote 4 songs, the first I had finished, for my senior year capstone project.
And then..... I graduated from School of Rock, and from high school, and participated in a wilderness immersion for a summer. I slept outside every day, learned to tan hides, to felt garments out of wool, to make shelter, fire, food, to track animals, and to try my best to listen to the cycles of birds and wind and trees around me. I also was awoken to psychic abilities lying dormant. One of my teachers introduced me to ways of listening remotely, which found their way deep into my cosmology. I remember waking up one morning before the sun rose and seeing an elk in my mind's eye standing in a forest glen on the land telling me;
"I'm here!"
I arose and walked to that spot to find still warm elk scat, and fresh tracks in the mud.
After that summer, my partner and I found a place together in Portland. We moved around a lot. I tried my best to reintegrate to city life after that, but I was a changed person. I found job after job, and would, inevitably, have a panic attack a month in and quit. I felt like a fox in a cage.
I found a certain sort of peace doing odd jobs around town, doing landscaping, forestry work, and sometimes teaching at the same outdoor skills camps that I had been a student at. Music took a back seat, and I often had trouble reconciling my love of music and of the stage with my love of wild and natural spaces. Songs would, however, find their way in.
I began hearing songs from the ocean. From places deep inside, bubbling up. From dreams. I would sing something and it would come like automatic writing. The place I come from would give me songs, they would ask to be shared at certain times, at protests, in forests, wherever people or beings to listen were gathered.
In 2015, after something like seven years together, my partner and I split up, right after the death of a family friend. I was completely devastated. I lived at a friend's house over the winter and then started traveling in my little pickup truck, exploring the desert east of the Cascades, meeting new friends, learning the wild foods there, and trying to find some sanity in movement. I also saw, in a larger way, the circumstance and tentative nature of life on earth as it stands today.
Every six months I would go study with a teacher named Martín Prechtel, who made the connection for me between beauty making, and nature, and earth based indigenous cultures. Everything started coming together, my love of music somehow given a place in the world, the living world that I had come to grow so familiar with.
The grief cycle tore me apart and put me back together again over and over.
I returned to Portland yet again after a year and a half of on and off travel and tried my best to reintegrate. Mostly I came back to doing odd jobs, but something didn't quite feel right. I would make plans and they would fall apart. My little pickup blew his engine, and then I went through seven different borrowed vehicles with check engine lights and strange circumstances.
I wasn't sharing my music in the best way I knew how, and I wasn't putting my all into it. I did have an album or so's worth of songs captured over the years after school of rock, but I didn't know how to share them. I played a couple of shows in town, with my friend playing cello. The more music I played the more I returned to the knowing that music, at least for now, is one of the main things I am here for.
After working odd jobs in Portland for the better part of last year, making trails, assisting on natural building projects, pulling blackberries, I began to grow more and more uncomfortable with the growing rift between my life as it stood and the music that wanted to burst out of me every minute of every day. At the height of these feelings, I came down with a sudden bout of tendinitis in my left hand. My whole body seemed to be saying,
"I just don't want to do this anymore."
I couldn't play music or work, but simply had to focus on healing, which I am still focusing on. Thankfully, living with my family allowed me to begin to heal without the financial pressure of paying rent, and I in turn was a helpful support, in a time of upheaval for my entire family; as my grandparents' transition to assisted living wasn't easy for any of us.
What I did have to share still was my voice.
I began to sing in a way that I never have before. At a recent open mic, I leaned into a fear I had; to share music improvisationally, singing the words as they appeared, the audience singing a lamenting simple melody in unison. I don't know if I will ever be able to do the same thing again, but I do know that I felt cracked open, and experienced an energy go through my body that was unlike anything I have ever felt. Someone who was doing live painting painted me singing and gave the painting to me at the end of the performance. I had blue lines emanating from my face, my whole body a whirl of blue and orange.
A month later, I received a vision of how I was to share music. I saw myself singing my songs in a large room, a circle of people standing together, singing all different parts of the songs, audience as musicians. I saw a mandala of tree limbs and bones and flowers and stones, petals and leaves, radiating out from the center of the circle. There were only candles lighting the room. I was taken up to a mountain above the city, and saw these flowers of growing, alive, beautiful beings growing as mandalas of rainbow light throughout the city, and then throughout the west coast. They were growing inside of people's hearts, spreading to others, a web of light slowly being woven across the earth. I arose from the vision changed, and with the knowing of what I was to share.
I have fought my music for so long, felt unworthy, too spiritual for my rock and roll past, too dark for the spiritual music community, telling myself that I need to only live in the woods, that music was not important.
But truly, I breathe music, I eat music, I drink music. If I do not play music I deny what I came here to share. The music just gets louder. I must allow myself to share.
_____________________________________
So here is what I am asking of you all:
First, I need assistance with taking my music on the road, playing down the west coast in forests, big rooms, houses, communities, hot springs and beyond.
Second, I am asking for your help to record my first album as I would like it to be heard, a collection of songs from dreams, visions, pain, and transformation over the past 7 years, inextricably tied to my inner world and to the living world.
Third, And this is only when the first two goals are achieved, is building a small home on the road on a van or larger pickup that I can live out of for years to come. I am not including this in the cost estimate, as the first two goals are primary.
_____________________________________
Here are the specifics of what I am asking for, in order of priority, along with a cost estimate the best I am able.
For Touring:
-Funds enough to hire a good friend to make a promotional video to send to spaces around the country and world. Cost estimate: $400-$600
-Support in purchasing a canopy that is secure for a little pickup of my family’s, so I can keep my instruments safe as I travel and share music- $500-$900 (secure utility canopy) I will be searching for a used one.
-Support for extra music and field recording equipment I may need. $500-$1000
-some extra funds for food, gas, and camping/being hosted on the road. $1000
For my first album:
-Support in recording my music at a studio called The Unknown, in Anacortes, Washington. They have reasonable rates, a great and cavernous room, and are friends of friends. $2000-$3000 including paying studio musicians
-Funds for mixing and Mastering-$500-$700? I'm not sure on this one yet.
-Album art costs, and printing costs for cds/records. -Unsure of cost $500
Promotional costs and website upkeep. (Squarespace) -$500
_____________________________________
When, all willing, we get this far, and I tour and record and print this album, and get to share my music with all of you up and down the West Coast, I will begin saving for a vehicle that I can make into a little home on the road.
I am having a show likely in December in Portland, which will be filmed, and shared with you all here and elsewhere.
This is the culmination of my life’s work for my first 26 cycles around the sun. Your helping hands and voices will make all the difference, and mean more to me than I could possibly ever tell you.
Thank you so much for reading, sharing, donating, or just spreading the word.
I hope to see you somewhere on the road or at a show.
https://www.instagram.com/p/Bnts3WahD3q/?utm_source=ig_share_sheet&igshid=1bixt689uw9q3&fbclid=IwAR1eH2wI2EQyy1tEUiwPFI-2U_NAGU6VAdBCxpuwe1fHkemJZ0y_qJoqYP4
https://soundcloud.com/galenhefferman
I have been getting stronger and stronger messages that I need to share my music with more people, and life has steered me down this path and led me towards my gifts in loud, though sometimes confusing ways. I have learned through the pressure cooker of life that my voice is the most precious thing I have to give. I would like to give it to you, and I could very much use your assistance in helping me do so.
_____________________________________
I would like to tell my story, if you would hear it, of where I am today and how I got here.
I have come to believe that I came to earth for a purpose, and that I am here to share my heart on this earth in this great time of change.
I have been listening and listening, praying for guidance and strength and clarity to finish what I have started.
Today is the day to ask for help. With this vision, with this purpose. To share my music with dear souls across Turtle Island and across the whole earth.
I awoke to my voice at the age of 10, inspired by Julianne Johnson's voice and a song about Harriet Tubman. This started a life long journey of what to me is sacred music, though coming from my own spiritual context.
My next awakening was onstage at a school of rock camp at age 13, through Ziggy Stardust by David Bowie. Despite being a shy kid, onstage felt like home. This was the beginning of the next 6 years of going to School of Rock, developing my chops as a singer and multi instrumentalist, and having the immense gift of a whole family of teachers and fellow sensitive, artistic kids in a net of mutual support. I covered everybody from Jeff Buckley to Tom Waits to Radiohead. Every time I was onstage, which so thankfully was quite often, I felt electric. Alive and full of energy to give, expanding light. A group of friends and my partner at the time formed a band and started busking and performing at venues around town. I wrote 4 songs, the first I had finished, for my senior year capstone project.
And then..... I graduated from School of Rock, and from high school, and participated in a wilderness immersion for a summer. I slept outside every day, learned to tan hides, to felt garments out of wool, to make shelter, fire, food, to track animals, and to try my best to listen to the cycles of birds and wind and trees around me. I also was awoken to psychic abilities lying dormant. One of my teachers introduced me to ways of listening remotely, which found their way deep into my cosmology. I remember waking up one morning before the sun rose and seeing an elk in my mind's eye standing in a forest glen on the land telling me;
"I'm here!"
I arose and walked to that spot to find still warm elk scat, and fresh tracks in the mud.
After that summer, my partner and I found a place together in Portland. We moved around a lot. I tried my best to reintegrate to city life after that, but I was a changed person. I found job after job, and would, inevitably, have a panic attack a month in and quit. I felt like a fox in a cage.
I found a certain sort of peace doing odd jobs around town, doing landscaping, forestry work, and sometimes teaching at the same outdoor skills camps that I had been a student at. Music took a back seat, and I often had trouble reconciling my love of music and of the stage with my love of wild and natural spaces. Songs would, however, find their way in.
I began hearing songs from the ocean. From places deep inside, bubbling up. From dreams. I would sing something and it would come like automatic writing. The place I come from would give me songs, they would ask to be shared at certain times, at protests, in forests, wherever people or beings to listen were gathered.
In 2015, after something like seven years together, my partner and I split up, right after the death of a family friend. I was completely devastated. I lived at a friend's house over the winter and then started traveling in my little pickup truck, exploring the desert east of the Cascades, meeting new friends, learning the wild foods there, and trying to find some sanity in movement. I also saw, in a larger way, the circumstance and tentative nature of life on earth as it stands today.
Every six months I would go study with a teacher named Martín Prechtel, who made the connection for me between beauty making, and nature, and earth based indigenous cultures. Everything started coming together, my love of music somehow given a place in the world, the living world that I had come to grow so familiar with.
The grief cycle tore me apart and put me back together again over and over.
I returned to Portland yet again after a year and a half of on and off travel and tried my best to reintegrate. Mostly I came back to doing odd jobs, but something didn't quite feel right. I would make plans and they would fall apart. My little pickup blew his engine, and then I went through seven different borrowed vehicles with check engine lights and strange circumstances.
I wasn't sharing my music in the best way I knew how, and I wasn't putting my all into it. I did have an album or so's worth of songs captured over the years after school of rock, but I didn't know how to share them. I played a couple of shows in town, with my friend playing cello. The more music I played the more I returned to the knowing that music, at least for now, is one of the main things I am here for.
After working odd jobs in Portland for the better part of last year, making trails, assisting on natural building projects, pulling blackberries, I began to grow more and more uncomfortable with the growing rift between my life as it stood and the music that wanted to burst out of me every minute of every day. At the height of these feelings, I came down with a sudden bout of tendinitis in my left hand. My whole body seemed to be saying,
"I just don't want to do this anymore."
I couldn't play music or work, but simply had to focus on healing, which I am still focusing on. Thankfully, living with my family allowed me to begin to heal without the financial pressure of paying rent, and I in turn was a helpful support, in a time of upheaval for my entire family; as my grandparents' transition to assisted living wasn't easy for any of us.
What I did have to share still was my voice.
I began to sing in a way that I never have before. At a recent open mic, I leaned into a fear I had; to share music improvisationally, singing the words as they appeared, the audience singing a lamenting simple melody in unison. I don't know if I will ever be able to do the same thing again, but I do know that I felt cracked open, and experienced an energy go through my body that was unlike anything I have ever felt. Someone who was doing live painting painted me singing and gave the painting to me at the end of the performance. I had blue lines emanating from my face, my whole body a whirl of blue and orange.
A month later, I received a vision of how I was to share music. I saw myself singing my songs in a large room, a circle of people standing together, singing all different parts of the songs, audience as musicians. I saw a mandala of tree limbs and bones and flowers and stones, petals and leaves, radiating out from the center of the circle. There were only candles lighting the room. I was taken up to a mountain above the city, and saw these flowers of growing, alive, beautiful beings growing as mandalas of rainbow light throughout the city, and then throughout the west coast. They were growing inside of people's hearts, spreading to others, a web of light slowly being woven across the earth. I arose from the vision changed, and with the knowing of what I was to share.
I have fought my music for so long, felt unworthy, too spiritual for my rock and roll past, too dark for the spiritual music community, telling myself that I need to only live in the woods, that music was not important.
But truly, I breathe music, I eat music, I drink music. If I do not play music I deny what I came here to share. The music just gets louder. I must allow myself to share.
_____________________________________
So here is what I am asking of you all:
First, I need assistance with taking my music on the road, playing down the west coast in forests, big rooms, houses, communities, hot springs and beyond.
Second, I am asking for your help to record my first album as I would like it to be heard, a collection of songs from dreams, visions, pain, and transformation over the past 7 years, inextricably tied to my inner world and to the living world.
Third, And this is only when the first two goals are achieved, is building a small home on the road on a van or larger pickup that I can live out of for years to come. I am not including this in the cost estimate, as the first two goals are primary.
_____________________________________
Here are the specifics of what I am asking for, in order of priority, along with a cost estimate the best I am able.
For Touring:
-Funds enough to hire a good friend to make a promotional video to send to spaces around the country and world. Cost estimate: $400-$600
-Support in purchasing a canopy that is secure for a little pickup of my family’s, so I can keep my instruments safe as I travel and share music- $500-$900 (secure utility canopy) I will be searching for a used one.
-Support for extra music and field recording equipment I may need. $500-$1000
-some extra funds for food, gas, and camping/being hosted on the road. $1000
For my first album:
-Support in recording my music at a studio called The Unknown, in Anacortes, Washington. They have reasonable rates, a great and cavernous room, and are friends of friends. $2000-$3000 including paying studio musicians
-Funds for mixing and Mastering-$500-$700? I'm not sure on this one yet.
-Album art costs, and printing costs for cds/records. -Unsure of cost $500
Promotional costs and website upkeep. (Squarespace) -$500
_____________________________________
When, all willing, we get this far, and I tour and record and print this album, and get to share my music with all of you up and down the West Coast, I will begin saving for a vehicle that I can make into a little home on the road.
I am having a show likely in December in Portland, which will be filmed, and shared with you all here and elsewhere.
This is the culmination of my life’s work for my first 26 cycles around the sun. Your helping hands and voices will make all the difference, and mean more to me than I could possibly ever tell you.
Thank you so much for reading, sharing, donating, or just spreading the word.
I hope to see you somewhere on the road or at a show.
https://www.instagram.com/p/Bnts3WahD3q/?utm_source=ig_share_sheet&igshid=1bixt689uw9q3&fbclid=IwAR1eH2wI2EQyy1tEUiwPFI-2U_NAGU6VAdBCxpuwe1fHkemJZ0y_qJoqYP4
Organizer
Galen Hefferman
Organizer
Portland, OR
