Composing during Dark Moments

The pressure of fundraising for an art project

It was about that time period when I was playing around town and opening for traveling acts when my family in Arizona alerted my wife and I that my sister, Natasha, was diagnosed with Stage 4 Breast Cancer. No doubt a horrible shock to everyone, and just like every single family member, I felt helpless.

Natasha was one of my first music fans. Long ago, Bird and I recorded our first couple of songs, and then posted the tunes on our band’s Myspace page. She really enjoyed “Bluhia Flower”, and made it her page’s theme song for a long time. The reflection of this memory helped me come up with an idea to support Natasha during her fight.

I started to think about things I could do for her. I felt that the experience of recording and releasing my first album with Bird had given me some good experiences in releasing recorded music. I thought that maybe I could write a six-song EP album and dedicate music sale profits to Natasha. Crowdsourcing was new at the time and provided an innovative way to raise money to do projects, like recording an album.

I asked Natasha and my family, including my dad and stepmom, permission to do the project. They liked the idea and appreciated the good intention, giving me the go-ahead to move forward. I created a video and an Indiegogo page asking for support to help pay for the costs of creating an album.

The way the platform worked is if you made your goal, you were paid in full. If not, better luck next time. Honestly, I was not expecting to raise enough money to do the project. I really wanted it to be successful, but I was apprehensive that it would make the goal.

I posted a flyer of the project on the bulletin board in the breakroom. The news staff decided to feature the project in the news, and aired a short segment with a link for the page. Within a couple weeks of the 1-month campaign, the project raised over 120% of funds. I was so amazed and flattered how my community had supported the project.

With success came the stress of delivering what I was campaigning to achieve. I had some ideas, but hadn’t written any songs for the album up to that point. I had all the money I needed for the project, but I didn’t have the content ready. This was perhaps the greatest creative challenge I have ever put on myself. I had two options, either write the music, then record it and publish as planned, or give the money back to the donors. I decided to begin writing and composing the music. I created a bank account and used it to help fund the album.

It took me a few weeks to write the songs. I started practicing the songs and, after feeling the songs were good enough to record, I contacted a studio in Portland, Oregon that seemed to offer the perfect environment to lay down the tracks. We negotiated the charges and I set up a time.

Artists generally put very high standards on their work, and can quickly become dissatisfied with the work. This was the case with me. I got my first taste of what it must feel like to be a musician who wins a recording deal without having the material quite ready yet.

At this point, I wanted to finish the project at minimum budget and get the album released with a fundraising party. There’s always a look back, and I’d hate to say “Hindsight’s 2020”, but if I were to look back to myself at that time, I would say: “Brian, that's a great idea. Write an album for your sister, get some money, but first make the music. Maybe collaborate with other artists get the music down before you go ask for money to produce an album.”

It would have been great advice rather than predicting that I was going to create a celebrated masterpiece. Collaborating with other artists on writing and composing is where the magic comes from in music. When you have different streams of consciousness going into one project, especially when you have a balanced creative environment that's empowered by really good collaboration, you have what it takes to create an amazing album.

I was lucky. The studio engineer I hired offered the project the needed collaboration to help make something out of it. He jumped in and offered advice, and we both worked very hard to cut the tracks within 2-days. It was a lot of hard work, but technically the songs were done.

I still can’t say that I was ever really happy with the songs, but they were there to do a job: enabling me to host a fundraising release party. The Bend Bulletin did a nice write up about the project and helped me promote the show. I invited a few other singer/songwriting artists to help me perform with me wrapping up the night, playing the recorded music. Breedlove guitars offered a guitar at cost so I could sell raffle tickets. The local public access radio station hosted me before the fundraising show, and played the album on the air. Again, I was overwhelmed how supportive my community was on this project.

In the end, I made nearly all the money back from what I spent on recording the album and purchasing the guitar for the raffle. I was able to donate all the money to Natasha as I had planned, and then I closed the books on the project. The music certainly would still be collecting funds today for her family if I had released an album that had the magical elements needed to be popular for radio and distribution. The challenge and learning experience were complete. I wouldn’t have forgiven myself if they weren’t.