As ever with Kickstarter, the basic options essentially allow you to pre-order the album while helping the artist, and there are a number of juicy prizes for those with a few more dollars to spare. Head on over to the Tulsa Kickstarter page and give what you can.

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The product of the tour was a tour album, entitled Milwaukee To Edinburgh, 2013, comprised of recordings made at various venues that Umhoefer visited whilst in Scotland. The tracks range from recordings from shows (e.g. ‘Less Words’ at Henry’s Cellar Bar) and live sessions for Song, By Toad, to rather more intimate performances in less conventional environments. A personal favourite is ‘Unanswered Echo Verse’ from Small Hours, a field recording at Euan and Ali’s (presumably the home of mini50’s Euan McMeeken), with its ambient baby noise and resulting shushing from its parents.

There is also a video of the tour, filmed by Lindsay Slepekis, basically a short film, a collage of performances in a multitude of locations. The film ends with an incredibly intimate shot of Umhoefer’s performance of ‘Unanswered Echo Verse’ which I mentioned above, in which he is approached by the baby from the front and a cat from behind.  The whole thing is great and serves as a collage that perfectly illustrates the trip. It also shows that Old Earth’s songs hold up well in the live setting, and sort of proves what I already knew in that I could sit and listen to him play guitar for hours.

You can buy Milwaukee To Edinburgh, 2013 via Old Earth’s Bandcamp page.

P.S. Old Earth are playing a show with White Hinterland and S. Carey on April the 24th, so if you’re in Milwaukee get yourself along!

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Nicholas Krgovich – Who Cares?

Nicholas Krgovich, the man behind projects like Gigi, No Kids and P:ano, is back with a solo album under his own name. With little more than a guitar/ukulele and his voice, the LP is a minimal acoustic folk record. This, however, does not do justice to the multitude of styles he manages to reference/borrow from. Who Cares? is out now on Jaz Records.

M. Lockwood Porter – Chris Bell / Secrets

M. Lockwood Porter is an Oklahoma-born, San Francisco-based folk/country artist. Last year he released an album, Judah’s Gone and opened for acts such as John Moreland and Samantha Crain. Porter recently released a new double A-side 7″; one a country-tinged tribute to Big Star’s Chris Bell, the other a “Malkmus-esque” ballad. You can buy both songs on a pay-what-you-want basis over at Bandcamp.

Family and Friends – Love You Mean It

Family and Friends are a folk rock band from Atlanta, Georgia. They describe their sound as, “Equal parts indie, rock, and sincerity, sliced, diced, smothered, covered, and rooted in folk.” This is a pretty accurate description, and if you like bands such as The Head and The Heart, then I’d highly suggest checking out Family and Friends. The band recorded their debut EP, Love You Mean It, after a successful Kickstarter campaign, and you can get it right now for just $5 over at Bandcamp.

Nicole Dollanganger – Observatory Mansions

Toronto’s Nicole Dollanganger makes a haunting brand of bedroom pop that juxtaposes gently crooned vocals with weird, often extraordinarily violent lyrics. It’s a strange listen that delves into some really interesting areas, challenging the presumptions of the listener. Observatory Mansions is taken from the book of the same name by Edward Carey, a story about love set in a sad, strange setting inhabited by odd people. I can see the link.

Fronts – Kind Rays

Next up is Fronts, a singer-songwriter from the German city of Jena. ‘Kind Rays’ is a beautiful little indie folk song, perfect for the dawn of Spring. Fans of bands like Blind Pilot will love this. There is currently very little information available, but what I do know is that ‘Kind Rays’ is the first track from a forthcoming EP. I’m certainly excited to hear more.

Joe Nolan – Tornado

What is it about Edmonton and folk singers? Joe Nolan is a singer-songwriter from the Albertan capital who makes everything from Americana tinged folk-rock to delicate, melancholic slow burners. His latest album Tornado, was released back in January on Six Shooter Records. Check out ‘Pawnshop’ in the player below and then order the album here.

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That’s all very exciting for American fans or those braving the trip to Texas, but why should the rest of us take notice? The answer lies in the ingenious method of fundraising that the band used along with the good folks over at Song, by Toad Records. The basic premise was that anyone who pledged support to the Kickstarter campaign was asked to vote for up to five songs that they would like to hear the band play on a specially produced album. And they weren’t limited to Meursault songs, suggestions of covers were welcomed.

The result is a pseudo-covers album (pseudo as there are a couple of re-imagined Meursault tracks thrown in too, such as the re-worked version of ‘Dearly Distracted’ in the player below), which has been wonderfully captured and produced. It must also be said that Meursault fans have great taste, with some of my all-time favourite songs making it onto the album (see ‘No Children’ by Mountain Goats and Wolf Parade’s ‘I’ll Believe In Anything’ in particular).

Each track has its merits, and I really don’t think there’s a dud amongst the fourteen strong collection. A personal favourite is the cover of Chad VanGaalen’s ‘Rabid Bits of Time’, which is perfectly suited to Neil Pennycook’s emotive vocals.

You can get the album now via Song, by Toad Records.

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Hi Brian, how is life on Long Island? How does it feel to finally release the new album after the long hard process of getting it into existence?

Long Island is excellent.  It’s a pretty small town I live in.  I commute via the railroad to Manhattan for work.  It’s nice to feel the energy of Brooklyn and NYC, but also have a break from it every night, and a bit of room to stretch out.  Releasing this new album is quite an amazing feeling.  As a musician, I think every time you can finish something it feels like a triumph on one level or another.  This is the first time we’ve ever worked with a PR company, so the process of waiting and not just releasing everything immediately via Bandcamp was challenging for me.  I think my impulse is just to share stuff and see what people think, but not that we’re finally here I’m super excited.  Brian V. and I are really proud of the album.  The songs come from a really honest place, and even though some of the songs are melancholy, there was a lot of joy that went into making it.

Your explanation of the new album on the Bandcamp page gives an honest picture of your life at the time of writing – the band’s situation, your family life with a wife and kids, the economic struggle and so on – and you say this heavily influences what you write. Do you find it difficult letting the people close to you see/hear the new songs?

There are a few songs – “Stars Collided in Our Hearts” in particular, that do feel really vulnerable and emotional to perform.  “Head Underwater” is another.  I think in the past I’ve written a lot of songs that portray more of a romanticized view of love and other things. I was always trying to create a dream world that was somewhat removed from my reality – an escape.  This time I was determined to let go of that a bit, and speak more directly from the heart.  I think one of the things I’ve learned as more of a general life-lesson is that it helps to be open about things.  I think a lot of people are really secretive about their problems, especially when it comes to money.  It’s fine to be private, but handling things that way can also create this weird cycle of shame and depression.  I found myself saying things in these songs that I wouldn’t say to friends and family.  It’s funny – a lot of those people will hear the record and probably won’t listen closely enough to the lyrics to really catch what I’m talking about.  It’s bizarre and ironic that I get to speak more intimately with strangers around the world through music than I do with family, but I guess it’s also pretty wonderful and amazing that I get the chance to do that.

As a follow-on from the previous question, do you see your music as a way of speaking to your loved ones? For example in ‘Hard Times, Go!’ you sing‘I haven’t been as brave in how I’ve loved you // as I know I should have been // I thought if I kept quiet // you might think I was strong’. Do you want your wife to listen to your music and treat it personally? Or do you use your situation and emotions to mould songs that are about (and for) other people? In other words, are you writing songs concerning your life and self? Or are you writing fiction from experience?

Ha – I’ve definitely learned that speaking through lyrics is not the most effective way to communicate with my wife!  That being said, this is definitely the most autobiographical set of songs that I’ve written.  I think I resisted writing that way for a long time, and maybe I was finally just at the point where I had nothing to lose.  When I was younger I started out playing more folky, singer-songwriter type music.  I played around a lot of coffee houses where the thing is to do a more straightforward, confessional style of songwriting.  I always resented the limitation and the implication that things should only be perceived that way.  It seemed like an oversimplification.  Of course, fiction comes from some sort of emotional reality, and there’s always a connection –   but if everything is confessional than you’re eliminating the entire scope of the writer’s imagination.  I always wanted my songs to be more than stream of conscious journal entries.  I took pride in the craft of transcending that.

What are the main influences on your music and writing outside of personal experience? In the aforementioned description you say that Robyn’s Body Talk had a large effect on Hard Times, Go! But are there any others? Do books and literature play a role in song writing for you?

I take from lots of different places I guess.  I think as a writer, my work was fundamentally shaped by Bob Dylan, Van Morrison, and Jack Kerouac more than anyone else.  I still think about Bob Dylan all the time – and just the sheer power of him as an artist.  Of course there are lots of others – Tom Waits is big.  I draw on literature a bunch too – I love the Beat Generation writers, and Bukowski and Henry Miller, but also more contemporary folks like Junot Diaz, Lorrie Moore, Denis Johnson.  I feel like film is pretty closely connected to music also, and even television.  The song “Chasing a Phantom” is a direct reference to one of the episodes from the last season of Mad Men.

The album was funded via Kickstarter, and through one of the updates on there you said that you felt it allows artists to receive funding for the work they want to produce, rather than the old model of producing what others want to hear in order to receive funding. Do you think this freedom could allow bands to thrive in areas where that were previously impossible? Does the amount raised significantly influence an artist’s ability to produce their work?

I think it’s part of a larger conversation, about the whole digital revolution, but Kickstarter has absolutely been an amazing tool for us, and bands are absolutely thriving in areas that were previously impossible.  I was always an indie rock kid at heart – I grew up idolizing people like Ian Mackaye from Fugazi, so for me that fact that’s it’s become so much easier to make records than it was back then is a really incredible thing that I’ll never take for granted.  You can make a record for almost nothing.  I don’t think the amount of money raised from Kickstarter relates directly to an artist’s ability to produce work – unless their work relies on more expensive tools than ours does – higher fidelity, mastering, etc.  It does take a bit of creativity and stubbornness to be self sufficient, but it always has.   We treat Kickstarter more like an extended pre-order for the record, with merch and stuff.  Our goal was set to make the process of making the Vinyl and the T Shirts and stuff something we knew we could break even at – instead of the old DIY way of basically funding things on a credit card and hoping you did well enough to recoup your expenses.  We aren’t able to do that.  On a larger scale – signing to a label was sort of the same thing.  Most bands never recouped expenses and got dropped.  My favorite thing about Kickstarter is that if you don’t meet your goal, no one gets charged and you aren’t required to complete or fulfill the project.  It seems responsible.  If there is not an audience demand to support a product, that product doesn’t come into existence.  You make music to connect with people.  You make records if people want them – not just because it seems like a cool thing to do. 

With all the said – with music and with our culture in general there is also a relationship between money and access.  There’s the challenge of reaching people through all the noise.  I try not to worry about that much.  I just try to do good work and share it, making use of the tools I have.  If there a content war going on with our culture – it’s probably a war that no one is going to win.

You wrote an essay on the evolution of the music industry and our relationship with the music we listen to, and conclude that the increased availability of music (and for free) has lessened our willingness to engage with each single album, as if in the gluttony of filesharing we no longer savour each bite and instead gulp down whatever we can (as highlighted by my first post on Beat Radio). Compare this to the positive effect of the internet where unknown bands can reach wide audiences through social media (and the aforementioned effect of Kickstarter allowing artists to create whatever they envision) and there is an interesting standoff between the good and evil of the information age. In your own experience (admittedly without the pleasure of a crystal ball to view alternate realities), has the internet been beneficial or detrimental to your musical career?

I used to get hung up on the question but I came to realize that there wasn’t really any point to look back.  Beat Radio came of age creatively at a strange time where people were still operating with the expectations of the old music industry, but the bottom had dropped out.  We were able to get the attention of lots of people – labels and stuff, but nothing ever really came of it, for lots of reasons.  Without the internet and the support of mp3 blogs and stuff, we never would have found an audience at all.  Without access to inexpensive gear where I could make records in my basement, we never would have gotten past the first album. So mostly I’m grateful that I’m able to make art and connect with an audience.  I feel really lucky to have been able to continue to develop as an artist. We’ve been fortunate to finally start bringing in revenue over the last couple years through licensing and download sales and stuff – but whenever I put pressure on music to have it be something that could take the place of my day job, it always seems to take the joy out of it.

Finally, what music are you enjoying at the moment? Could you list four or five artists that you are currently listening to? Any genre or vintage welcome.

Yeah, of course! I wrote a post about my favorite songs of 2012 here – I really loved the records last year from Will Stratton, Damian Jurado, and Father John Misty.  I also listen to a ton of Pavement over the last few years, and Neutral Milk Hotel.  I heard the new Yo La Tengo today also and that is really great.  I co-wrote a song recently with Drew Danburry and have been listening to a ton of his stuff.  The demos for the new album he’s working on are incredible.  There’s so much. It never ends.

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The album is a beautiful one. The sound (prehaps aided by the meadow artwork) evokes a summer wilderness. Not a harsh desert or tropical forest, but rather a sweeping landscape of sepiatone hills and fragrant grasses. For the ‘dream folk’ label, the vocals are very clear and I think it’s fair to say the driving force of each song. The result is somewhere along the lines of First Aid Kit, Sharon van Etten, and Mountain Man if they were based somewhere in the past; luscious voices crooned over smooth and gentle tracks that meander by like childhood summers (in the track ‘New Love’ they even proclaim ’Summer drags on, these sunsets keep on coming’).

Valley is an album of escapism, a record that allows you to slip out of whatever grey scenery that surrounds you and into a world of golden sunshine and gentle winds. There is a sense of sadness here too, as if both you and they know that such a time and place is hard to find and all too fleeting when you do.

You can buy the album on Bandcamp and the single ‘Valley’ is available for free. be sure to check out their debut album The Living Room from which the video below is taken.

West from Magic! Magic Roses on Vimeo.

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I’m sometimes a little sceptical with Kickstarter campaigns, with artists sometimes essentially asking for something for nothing, however you can rest assured that this one is worth your hard earned money. The range of prices make it easy to pledge, with the lowest being $10 (which gets you an exclusive acoustic album and is probably cheaper than your average pre-order), right up to $350 or more (which gets you a whole host of goodies PLUS a home show!). Other special items include the entire Beat Radio back catalog, handmade collages, photographs, personal cover songs, tailored mixtapes and even beercan cozies! Check out all the details here. It actually works out as pretty good value. $35 (£22 for us Brits) gets you a vinyl, two digital albums and a t-shirt. Bargain.

With all the free material Brian has offered in the past I think he has done more than enough to justify asking for a bit of help. I can’t really think of anything more exciting and inspiring than a group of people trying to pursue a dream.

Tennessee Williams’ Blanche DuBois says “I have always depended on the kindness of strangers.” Don’t we all?

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New Memory is available for download on a name your price basis from Arrange’s Bandcamp. The album has also been pressed to vinyl (as a result of a succesful Kickstarter campaign) and is available on a very limited basis from the online store.

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