Fuel Megan and Shane's Americana Dream

Hi Everybody,

We are a wife and husband Americana duo/band from St. Louis, MO. We started off our journey over 12 years ago in MN, then moved to AZ...then to Nashville and now we are here in the land of toasted ravioli's.

We've been playing music since before we dating and fell in love with each other while writing songs and playing shows.

We know times are tough and money is tight. Why would you want to help us on our weird and mystical journey?

The last 10 years has been quite the adventure. We left our careers to focus on our music and have released 3 albums. Two of them have charted on Americana radio and we are so grateful and proud. Our last album was produced and engineered by multi Grammy winner Brandon Bell (Brandi Carlile, the Highwomen, Zac Brown etc...). He was amazing to work with and with your help we will get to work with him again!

You can find our music here:

Megan and Shane Music

Why on Earth would you leave Nashville?

We had a love/hate relationship with Nashville. They welcomed us with open arms and we had so many opportunities and met so many amazing people. But, music doesn't pay. Streaming pays out $.003 a stream and when we toured in the 90's a show would pay $150 for a band...34 years later they still pay $150 for a band. So we had to deliver food to pay the bills in between touring and donating our time to our favorite charity Musically Fed that repurposed leftover catering from large arena and sporting events to help the food insecure in various cities. But we are hooked on playing shows and music flows through us all the time. Shane has woken up many times at 3 in the morning with ideas and we would flush them out and create while sitting on our floor in the dark.

One day when Megan was delivering, she was carjacked by gunpoint by 3 individuals. After that, Nashville became a trigger and we became agoraphobic. We had to work hard to get out and make things happen. But we were suffocating. We made the choice to move to St. Louis to be closer to family and to gather the strength and clarity to get out in the world again.

The last year, we have been working through a lot of childhood and adult trauma. During that time we wrote what will be our latest album. The songs are more cohesive and mature. We learned a lot on our last session with Brandon and the world class musicians we recorded with.

Immediately after moving to St. Louis we met our new band...Jared Rooks on drums and Josh Schilling on bass. They are amazing and our rehearsals are filled with jokes and family meals along with getting down to business.

Where will your contribution go?

Since our inception, we have tried to run our band like a record label would. Radio promotion, PR, touring support and recording budget.

We are in a unique age of music. Though streaming and touring doesn't pay much, it allows ANYONE to put themselves out there and have a chance on their own. But, it's expensive!

$5,000 for recording

We love the vibe of a studio and feeling the room. Also this will help bring in other great musicians on fiddle, keys, pedal steel and more.

$4500 for PR

We work with a great company called Baby Robot and they help to get the word out by submitting to different magazines and online music critics and fans.

$4500 for radio promotion

Even in this new age, radio is still invaluable. Especially in our genre of Americana. We have received a lot of love from radio, but we need to hire someone to follow up and to keep track of who is playing us and where we are getting played. Right now, we can only see that it has been played. But we can't see by whom and where we are on the charts. This helps with touring and marketing to the right demographic.

The rest

Anything leftover will go to touring and marketing. There will be many other costs that we will work hard to cover.

We have an East Coast tour planned for October while we celebrate our 11th marriage anniversary.

We are huge fans of Americana, not just the music...but also the culture of 50's and 60's road culture. So we are planning a historic Route 66 tour from Chicago to California. Along the way will stop at roadside attractions and stay at old school motels along the way. We will document all of this on social media and share our adventures with all of you.

We would also love to get over seas and to play the UK next fall.

Any help would be amazing and if you can't help monetarily, sharing this and spreading the word will also help.

We appreciate everyone that took the time to read this and for your help.

Hopefully we'll be in a city near you soon and will get the chance to meet you in person.

Thank you so much!

Megan and Shane