Jessica Fore Concept Album & Anti Abuse Advocacy
Donation protected
Photo credit: RL Hodnett
Some of y'all know my story from my blog starting here: https://jessicafore.wordpress.com/2016/09/22/i-might-get-excommunicated-for-this/ And some of y'all are familiar with my music from live gigs around Athens, Georgia, or from my first two albums, which have a couple of tracks posted here: https://www.reverbnation.com/jessicafore I was a contemporary Christian recording artist and church worship leader who got fired from a PCA church job for not reconciling and moving back in with an abusive spouse. When I started speaking up more and more about the abusive dynamics in the church, the church tried to shut me up and threatened excommunication. So I went public with my story and escalated it all the way to the floor of PCA General Assembly over the course of a couple of years, fighting procedural attempts at the church, presbytery, and General Assembly level to shut me up. This ultimately resulted in a denomination wide committee currently studying abuse in the denomination and being advised by well known survivor advocates including Rachel Denhollander and Diane Langberg. I've been contacted by dozens of women with similar experiences, get involved advising and advocating for individuals in similar situations, and speak publicly to church leaders about abuse issues and corrupt power dynamics that underlie every form of oppression and social injustice.
And I wrote a bunch of songs about all of it! Catchy, pointed, poignant, snarky, even darkly humorous songs delving into tons of different aspects of the whole experience. I've been planning a concept record about narcissism, abuse, and church injustice, tentatively entitled "Scandalous Tales of Sordid Things," for about 11 years. And I'm going into the studio to start recording it! (The subject matter is dark and explicit, and there's going to be some mild cussin' in it, so please don't be surprised when a given bop isn't tailored for the sensitive ears of kids or Baptists, or mad at me because you gave money and I said "ass.")
I'm going to be working with the incredibly talented Marlon Patton (http://www.marlonpatton.com/), an Athens and NYC musician, out of Jim Hawkins' state of the art Studio 1093. Jim designed the original Capricorn Records studio in my hometown of Macon, Georgia, and recorded the Allman Brothers. It's a large space with isolation booths so we can do this in a covid-careful manner, and some of the tracks might be done remotely by various contributing instrumentalists. An all star cast of Athens musicians are signed on to the project. Creatively, the sky is the limit.
Financially, not so much! Studio recordings are expensive, and I want people who work on the project to get paid for it. 2020 was a bad year for most of us who make a chunk of our usual income from live performances. I'll know more about how much to budget after a couple of initial sessions to gauge what kind of progress we can make, but my last album on a shoestring budget ended up costing about $8,000. I'll need about $1,000 pretty quickly for the first couple of sessions. I'm putting 5k out there initially with the idea of being maximally efficient and budget conscious with a digital release only. My plan is to set that release up as a "pay what you want" download with a portion of the proceeds going to Project Safe, an Athens based domestic violence nonprofit. If I raise more, we can do more with the project. Possibilities include physical records/CDs, choral or orchestral elements, a bonus EP of fun, unrelated songs like "Robot Slave" (a love song to a Roomba that turns into a dystopian sci fi predicament) and "Zoonotic Diseases are Bad" (written during covid lockdown while watching a series about the black death. It also has a verse about ebola in it.) If I raise more than needed to do everything I want with the album, then extra funds will offset my time and travel for music and advocacy work, including things like trying to make it to the next PCA general assembly when the abuse committee's work comes to the floor-- maybe even with a group of fellow survivors and the newly released album in hand!
I'm so thankful for your support!
-Jessica
Some of y'all know my story from my blog starting here: https://jessicafore.wordpress.com/2016/09/22/i-might-get-excommunicated-for-this/ And some of y'all are familiar with my music from live gigs around Athens, Georgia, or from my first two albums, which have a couple of tracks posted here: https://www.reverbnation.com/jessicafore I was a contemporary Christian recording artist and church worship leader who got fired from a PCA church job for not reconciling and moving back in with an abusive spouse. When I started speaking up more and more about the abusive dynamics in the church, the church tried to shut me up and threatened excommunication. So I went public with my story and escalated it all the way to the floor of PCA General Assembly over the course of a couple of years, fighting procedural attempts at the church, presbytery, and General Assembly level to shut me up. This ultimately resulted in a denomination wide committee currently studying abuse in the denomination and being advised by well known survivor advocates including Rachel Denhollander and Diane Langberg. I've been contacted by dozens of women with similar experiences, get involved advising and advocating for individuals in similar situations, and speak publicly to church leaders about abuse issues and corrupt power dynamics that underlie every form of oppression and social injustice.
And I wrote a bunch of songs about all of it! Catchy, pointed, poignant, snarky, even darkly humorous songs delving into tons of different aspects of the whole experience. I've been planning a concept record about narcissism, abuse, and church injustice, tentatively entitled "Scandalous Tales of Sordid Things," for about 11 years. And I'm going into the studio to start recording it! (The subject matter is dark and explicit, and there's going to be some mild cussin' in it, so please don't be surprised when a given bop isn't tailored for the sensitive ears of kids or Baptists, or mad at me because you gave money and I said "ass.")
I'm going to be working with the incredibly talented Marlon Patton (http://www.marlonpatton.com/), an Athens and NYC musician, out of Jim Hawkins' state of the art Studio 1093. Jim designed the original Capricorn Records studio in my hometown of Macon, Georgia, and recorded the Allman Brothers. It's a large space with isolation booths so we can do this in a covid-careful manner, and some of the tracks might be done remotely by various contributing instrumentalists. An all star cast of Athens musicians are signed on to the project. Creatively, the sky is the limit.
Financially, not so much! Studio recordings are expensive, and I want people who work on the project to get paid for it. 2020 was a bad year for most of us who make a chunk of our usual income from live performances. I'll know more about how much to budget after a couple of initial sessions to gauge what kind of progress we can make, but my last album on a shoestring budget ended up costing about $8,000. I'll need about $1,000 pretty quickly for the first couple of sessions. I'm putting 5k out there initially with the idea of being maximally efficient and budget conscious with a digital release only. My plan is to set that release up as a "pay what you want" download with a portion of the proceeds going to Project Safe, an Athens based domestic violence nonprofit. If I raise more, we can do more with the project. Possibilities include physical records/CDs, choral or orchestral elements, a bonus EP of fun, unrelated songs like "Robot Slave" (a love song to a Roomba that turns into a dystopian sci fi predicament) and "Zoonotic Diseases are Bad" (written during covid lockdown while watching a series about the black death. It also has a verse about ebola in it.) If I raise more than needed to do everything I want with the album, then extra funds will offset my time and travel for music and advocacy work, including things like trying to make it to the next PCA general assembly when the abuse committee's work comes to the floor-- maybe even with a group of fellow survivors and the newly released album in hand!
I'm so thankful for your support!
-Jessica
Organizer
Jessica Fore
Organizer
Athens, GA