Help A Songwriter Return To Her Roots

Hi, I'm Courtney Yasmineh, a songwriter and published author, mother of three grown children.

I have until November 18th to raise the funds for this recording opportunity in my hometown of Chicago, an opportunity I'm finally ready for as an artist and as a woman, to revisit old wounds and old memories and make something meaningful for the future for myself and my fans, and to include these great musicians on this new leg of my personal journey.

I have eight great albums of original songs that I've made mostly in Minneapolis with beloved studio guru Rob Genadek, and I've been very lucky and grateful for the support of Rob and his crew, but this would be a chance to work in a whole new environment with new musicians and find out what's next for my music.

I'm originally from Chicago but I ran away to the Northwoods of Minnesota at seventeen and never went back, and I've had a dream brewing of wanting to return to my hometown, and in many ways the scene of the crime, and try to write and record some new songs to honor all the beauty and the heartache and the loss I've for so long associated with my past, particularly the memories of my father and my big brother.

I have a first novel, published in Chicago by Gibson House Press, that tells the tale of my fleeing Chicago and my winter alone in my grandpa's old cabin near the Canadian border in 1978.

Now I have the opportunity, something that has come about with great serendipity and good fortune, to record brand new material with three excellent and kind musicians in Chicago, and to record at the "King Size Recording Studio" there.

The musicians I'll be working with are Scott Tipping on lead guitar, Chuck Lacy on drums, and Matt Thompson on bass. I first heard these guys when they came to Minneapolis to play at the Dakota with songwriter Peter Himmelman three years ago and I was so taken by how they somehow sounded like my hometown of Chicago to me and it sparked a yearning in me to find some of that sound for my own music. 

This trip to Chicago would combine time to soak in the old memories and the new energy of a city I love, to write songs that will somehow capture what I'm yearning to say, and then to collaborate for the first time in a totally new environment for me, with a totally new group of musicians.

I work in a restaurant and play shows every week, and I'm grateful for what I've been able to accomplish, but now I need your help to rise to this next challenge, to take my music career where it needs to go, to take my story where it needs to go.

When I think about going to Chicago to write and record with these guys, I picture myself stuck in traffic on a highway in the middle of Minneapolis and suddenly seeing a big sign that says "Chicago" and taking that turn and heading off onto the open road and into the sky blue yonder!

This just feels like the most exciting plan in the whole world to me right now!

I'm including the costs for travel and a place to stay in Chicago, the fees for the musicians, the fees for the engineer and studio time, and the additional recording and mixing fees to get some proper demos made from this session.

If this can happen, and if it goes well, my dream is to make a full studio album in Chicago with these guys in early 2022.

These demos can also be used to solicit help from a record label, to get support for the next leg of promotion and touring for me.

This is a way forward, it's a way home, it feels like my destiny.

There is a very narrow window of opportunity for this to work out.

The studio has availability and all the guys are in town (in Chicago) between November 18-22, 2021.

I'm asking that we meet this goal by November 18th so I can confirm all the details to make this happen.

Help if you can.

Love,

Courtney