Within a few hours of our incredible Kickstarter campaign ending, numerous people were messaging saying they had just discovered the project and wondered how to support it. After digging around a bit, I figured out a way for you to join the party, support my artistic effort, come over and hang out with us in the private group, and get all the great perks, including the stretch rewards!

Thank you so much for your faith in me and the loving persistence of your support. We’re all looking forward to seeing you in the group!  ❤️  

For the last five years I’ve been working on some of the most intimate, encompassing songs I’ve ever written. I’ve taken what I know about songwriting, production, the guitar and my voice, and brought it to bear on these songs, so that they may bridge the gap between us and come to live and breathe inside you.

I love the music I make with Andy in Black Lab, and we’ll make another album early next summer. But these songs are my blood. They need my guitar, my drum arrangements, my production sensibility, rough and spare with roots in the dirt. 

The album is almost all written and halfway recorded, and I’ve worked on it more than anything else the last few months. But the deep connection I’ve felt with you over the last year and a half of playing live online has made me realize that this is the first big music project I’ve ever tried to do alone — and I don’t want to do it alone. 

So this Kickstarter is a way to create an inner circle of people who want to support me and perhaps participate in creating this album. I want someone to bounce things off of, someone to be accountable to, someone to celebrate my progress with. There’s lots of great rewards — signed CDs and scrapbooks and a killer lyric book — but the thing I’m most excited about is the private Facebook group, the place where I can go live on a whim, take requests, brag about my progress, get feedback, look stupid, and generally stay in closer touch with you all.

I’m not someone who can just open up my process to the whole world. I don’t want to give a studio or home tour on Instagram — It’s too public. I need people who care, who have asked to be let in. In other words:  you.

I want to show you my studio. Very much so. I want to play you early versions of the songs, ask your opinion about a title or what cover I should record, show you the thing I made last night that I’m really proud of. All of that will help me solve problems and keep up my recent pace of work.

I also want to play you unheard demos, give you the hidden backstory of songs, tell you why I love my ’67 Jazzmaster, all the stuff it’s hard for me to share publicly. 

So I hope you’ll come play with me in my little walled garden. I can’t wait to finish these songs with you. 

As always and ever, thank you for your incredible, enduring love and support. 

Paul

***STRETCH REWARDS — All Included with Indiegogo Contributions***

$40,000  ~ STICKERS. If we raise $40k each person who is receiving physical stuff will receive two stickers:  one for the solo album and one for Black Lab. PLUS, everyone who gets a house concert will also receive one of Andy’s amazing adult coloring books!   

$50,000  ~ ACOUSTIC VERSION. This is the one I’m most excited about! if we raise $50k, I’ll send everyone who contributes an alternate mix of the album that will leave out a lot of the drums and electric guitar, presenting the kind of stripped-down, unplugged vibe I know a lot of you like.  

$60,000 ~ EXCLUSIVE KARAOKE CONCERT. If we hit $60k, I will schedule and perform a free live concert for the private Facebook group, consisting exclusively of Black Lab songs done karaoke style. That is, I will take a poll of what songs people would like to hear and sing them against the original backing instrumental tracks. This will give you the chance to hear me perform songs that I can’t play on guitar, songs that will otherwise never be performed, deep cuts and impossible-to-play-live stuff.

$65,000 ~ I will do 2 Q&A’s for the private group, one each for the US and Europe, in which I will take questions in advance and also in real time FROM MY BRAND NEW USED iPAD I’m gonna buy with these here proceeds so I can keep in better touch with you all.

$70,000 ~ I will do a free concert in the private group in which we write 4-5 songs together. Contributors will provide ideas — nouns, situations, images, names — and I will write, play and sing the song there on the spot (!!!)