Support the creation of my debut solo record

Please join me on Friday June 17th at Still Austin Whiskey from 6:00 to 9:00 for a special event featuring the Evan Charles Band, presented by Still Austin Whiskey and featuring an introduction by award-winning KUTX DJ Laurie Gallardo

PREVIEW THE BRIGHTER DAYS ALBUM DEMOS HERE 

Dear friends,

 

It is with the utmost humility that I reach out to you looking to find a way to fund the creation, release, and promotion of my first ever solo record, to be titled Brighter Days. In this modern era of free music streaming, an artist’s ability to monetize the fruits of his or her creative endeavors is severely curtailed; and yet, music, songwriting, and active and engaged listening remain as vital as ever. I know I am not alone when I say that music has always been a gateway to the soul, to what it timelessly means to be human, and at the same time is a lens through which we can ground ourselves in the here and now, whether in calm or chaotic times. This is the ethos with which I approach my craft and which I hope to capture in this collection of songs.

 

Before going any further, I encourage you to follow this link below to a Soundcloud playlist of demos of the entire record . In order to fully and transparently demonstrate the songs you'll be supporting, I am taking an unusual and rarely seen measure of publicly offering the fully arranged demos of the entire record for the duration of this fundraising campaign. Here you’ll find either completely or almost completely arranged versions of every song I intend to record, on which I played all of the guitars, bass, piano, and percussion, and sang all of the lead and harmony vocals. On half of the tracks, I was fortunate to have my friend Wes Cargal (of Harvest Thieves) remotely record drums. These recordings provide a very clear blueprint for what I hope to create: story-driven songs in the classic mode of my Tex-Americana predecessors, with hopefully more than a handful of unique melodic and lyrical phrases.

 

To help me bring these songs to the next level, I’ve enlisted producer and multi-instrumentalist Scott Davis (whose current gigs include Bruce Robison and Kelly Willis, and whose past gigs include Hayes Carll and Band of Heathens), as well as guitar and keys wizard John Calvin Abney and multi-instrumentalist Jesse Ebaugh (of The Tender Things) on pedal steel. With these three, Wes on drums, and myself, we will be able to efficiently execute at a high level of musicality to ensure that no studio time is wasted. After the songs are recorded, they will need to be mixed and mastered, and despite the great studio and mixing rates I will get thanks to my label Mr. Pink Records, these expenses do add up nonetheless. Every aspect of this budget will be to ensure that everybody involved in the process will be fairly compensated for their contributions.

 

Of course, writing and recording the songs isn’t even half the battle! After the record is completely finished being made, there’s the very complex and labor intensive business of getting it out for review, for radio and playlist submission, and generally organizing a release campaign. For this, I hope to enlist the expertise of my longtime publicity contact and incredibly kind and capable person Heather Wagner Reed and her company Juice Consulting. Being able to mount a legitimate campaign around the release of a new record can make an enormous difference in creating the widest possible reach and opening up opportunities that simply do not exist for an artist representing himself or herself. Trust me…I have sent many, many blind emails around releases, and trying to get new music heard is often a thankless task without the help of professionals. An extensive tour to support the release will follow, and again, having promotional support in advance of this will make the tour more effective.

 

Anyone reading this who knows me knows that my musical career is my absolute obsession, that it is fueled by a fire to create and perform, and that the overwhelming majority of my time outside of working my full-time job and being a supportive and engaged husband is spent thinking about and acting upon how I’ll finish the next song, how I’ll make the next show better than the last one, and how I’ll navigate the logistics of realizing the vision I have for my songs. This is where you come in. If you’ve had that playlist playing as you’ve read this, and if you’d like to hear those songs brought to their full potential and released in a way that gives them a fighting chance to be heard and distributed, please consider donating to Brighter Days. My gratitude is endless that I’ve been able to continue making music up to this point in my life. It’s a responsibility I will always embrace with love and care, and I hope to make this record the cornerstone upon which my solo career will be built.

THANK YOU!

Note: No raffles, sweepstakes, giveaways, or returns on investment are offered in exchange for any donations made to your GoFundMe.