Grassroots 2SLGBTQIA Music Tour Needs Funding!

Welcome to The QUEERANTINE Tour!!

TLDR: Indie artists need funding to maximize impact of their all LGBTQ+ North American concert tour! More resources equals more marketing campaigns, shows, artists elevated, and less crippling debt!!

Link to all shows: https://queerantineshow.com

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Full Story:

When lockdown hit in 2020, my friend Cory Stewart and I (Kisos), wanted to create a digital community hub for our LGBTQ+ musician sphere to gather around, make friendly connections, and enjoy each others' art, since traditional venues were closed.

And thus, our livestream music video showcase QUEERANTINE was born March 22, 2020 on Twitch. Within the first 10 minutes of our first episode, we knew something special was happening, and made it a weekly event that spanned two years!

40+ episodes and 400+ music videos later, we raised over $12,000 for social justice organizations fighting for immigrant rights, racial justice, trans rights, and prison abolition. Not to mention the network of collaboration we fostered within our indie musician community and the buzz we built from working with Threadless, PAPER Magazine, It Gets Better and more.

As the world reopened, our digital audience began calling for in-person concerts. So we put the livestream show on hold earlier this year to plan the inaugural QUEERANTINE Tour.

Months of pitching, designing, budgeting, and booking later, the tour is HAPPENING!

Starting September 8th in NYC, the seven-stop east coast leg will ride down to Atlanta and back up to the northeast, finishing in Providence on September 21st. All dates here.

But that's only step one!

The hard part begins now. Selling tickets, finding funding, and pushing these artists and this tour to the national story it deserves to be. We pitched many interested sponsors, brand partners, and media publications, but almost all fizzled out along the way.

Our total expenses for this tour will be about $8000 between Cory's US performance visa (he's Canadian), car rental, gas, lodging, food, merch, & more. And that's including the generosity of dear friends offering their homes, discounts on their services, and other personal sacrifices to save money.

Even if we sell out EVERY tour stop, we will STILL have about $2300 in debt remaining.

Cory and I have already accepted the risks that come with pursuing our vision, and invested $5000 of our own money to cover advance payments of visa, car rental, lodging and more. But we are at the tip of our financial limits, and still have many costs we need to take on.

Our first goal being $2500 would allow us to break even on this tour IF we sell out every show. A tall order, but not impossible.

This $2500 would also bring us back from the danger zone by reimbursing:

plus give us more bandwidth to reinvest in ordering physical merch for our live shows, launch social media ads to sell more tickets, and begin to cover gas and food on the road.

And fun fact, this isn't going to just be a music tour; we have aspirations to make this a docu-series, and already have donated equipment from friends to make it happen. Cameras, mic packs, & more for added polish to this DIY endeavor.

This is a 100% LGBTQ+ effort at every level, from the artists (obvi), production on our tour song, merch design, to even our booking company. Help ease the financial pressure on us, so we can focus on throwing the best events possible, amplify the LGBTQ+ economy and arts to new heights, and take this tour across the world!

<3 <3 <3

Kisos & Cory

Not able to donate? Please help spread the word by sharing the fundraiser, our posts on social media, and by following QUEERANTINE! Instagram & Twitter