Olivia on the Record: An Audiobook with Music

Would you rather have Kamala Harris win the election in November, or enable me to put out an audiobook of Olivia on the Record: A Radical Experiment in Women’s Music? Wait—don’t answer that. Let’s not be so binary—let’s do both. I know it’s a hard time to ask people for money, and yet, here I am because I am making an audiobook and I need your help. If you’ve read the book, you know I included a lot of song lyrics from the early days of Olivia Records. For the audiobook, instead of having me read those lyrics, I’m going to use the excerpts from the actual recordings. I have permission from all the artists (and from Olivia and WolfMoon) and it is important, respectful, and legal that I pay them to use their music. All of them are giving me a deeply discounted rate, for which I am profoundly grateful. You will hear pieces of “Waterfall”, “Ode to a Gym Teacher”, “Freedom Time”, “Leaping (Lesbians)”, “Song of the Soul”, “Kahlua Mama”, “If It Weren’t for the Music”, and more. Songs performed by Cris Williamson, Meg Christian, Linda Tillery, Mary Watkins, Sue Fink, Teresa Trull, and others, and poems by Pat Parker and Judy Grahn. To do this, I need to raise $7000, which will cover the engineering, recording, and mastering as well as the musicians and poets fees. Everybody gets paid and the audiobook gets made. So….if you read the book and would like to have a copy with the music, or if you didn’t read the book because you prefer to listen to your books, or if you know someone who really needs to hear this book and the music, or if you have no idea what Olivia Records is/was, or you have a few extra dollars lying around, would you contribute what you can?