Hi, my name is JER and I’m calling in my community for help right now. For some background, I am an artist who releases music under my name, JER. In addition to that, I have a YouTube channel called skatune network, where I cover songs in the style of ska. For 9 years, I’ve been doing the YouTube thing, but for the past 5 years, my passion truly lies with the art that i create through the JER project and JER band. It’s been a privilege and honor to see the support of 2 full length records and 104 live shows over this time, and I’m deeply grateful for everybody who has been showing love and support to my craft!

Anybody who follows me knows that touring is volatile and expensive. So many factors can make or break a tour financially, and it’s easy for expenses and debt to snowball to a point where it’s near impossible to catch up / continue. That was 2025 for me. With the expecting of a handful of shows, I didn’t really play any shows from spring 2024 to fall of 2025. I got off the road and dedicated the back half of 2024 to working to pay down tour debt. I began 2025 with minimal debt and recorded a record, the record being Death of the Heart.

I made a financial plan for the year, which included keeping costs on our first March weekend. The additional cost was going to cover half of the bands flights to Japan, while I was already going to be out there AND all of our expenses in Japan were already covered. At the end of that March weekend, however, I was hit with the news that my merch fulfillment store had accumulated several thousand dollars of debt. All the money we made that weekend immediately went toward paying a portion of that debt off. This left me back home with more debt, and having to work my real life jobs to re-save to fly a portion of my band to Japan for our shows

The spring is my slowest time of year, since most of my work is in the summer and fall. It took until the summer for me to save the money to book the flights. Our June tour was a breakeven, but the money we made from merch at shows was immediately taken to cover the online fulfillment debt I didn’t even know existed until March. This put me in a position where every dollar I made from my 5 jobs all summer went toward covering the costs of the last tour, and the next tour booked would start before I could pay off the last. This cycle is why we had to drop off our shows leading into fest. The money that was supposed to rent the van and book the flights instead went toward a previous tour debt. This cycle has culminated to where I’m at now.

As of now, Square has frozen my account and is withholding all the merch money I made from my last few December shows. There is *still* a remaining debt on the merch fulfillment that isn’t fully paid down, and every tour has been in the red because of this lingering debt. I’m at a position where I have a lot of cool tours booked for 2026, but I am at a point where I can’t even afford to start the tour. Vans need to be rented. Flights need to be booked. Merch needs to be made. These are all costs that I don’t have, and I can’t afford to go on the road with this much debt again. It would be a huge bummer to drop off some very cool tours, but it’s just not feasible for me to make happen

THATS WHERE I’M ASKING FOR Y’ALLS HELP! Between every skatune network page, I have over 1.2 million followers. If less than 1/10th of a % of my following sent me a dollar, I’d be able to cover every expense lost from square locking my merch money, AND the debt lingering over the skatune store. I hate feeling that I’m in a position where I need to ask for this. I’ve been trying my best and working non-stop for over a year. I’ve been applying to jobs all year beyond my current work, and while I’m making enough to do everything I’m doing, the debt (and interest) is accumulating beyond my capabilities.

I appreciate the love and support deeply. The JER band is the most special project I’ve been a part of and had. The message of this band is so deeply important to me and I hope I can lean into my community to help make this possible. If you ever wanted to say thank you for the thousands of videos, hundreds of covers, all the entertainment, this is the way to do it! I’ve set the gofundme up for 10k. Believe it or not, my debt is higher than that right now, but that will pay off every debt lingering, cover the loss in merch money, pay down remaining tour expenses from this year, and set me up to get on the road next year!

And lastly, if you purchased merch from us this past weekend and used a card, expect a refund. I’m also going to honor system this and try to build some sort of forum to contact everybody. Square refuses to release all of our card transactions and is suggesting we refund it all. I know everybody we sold merch to doesn’t follow me. Some saw us for the first time at these shows. Some don’t use social media. I just have to accept that I may be out of some merch money this weekend.

Thank you all so much. I appreciate you all