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WE ALREADY GOT WHAT WE NEED!!!
WE ARE FUNDED AT $5000!!!
Now for the stretch goals. And with STRETCH GOALS come EXTRA PERKS!
Donate anything from $5 and up, and you'll get a rough recording of me singing/reciting ALL THE SONGS AND POEMS I committed to writing for EVERYONE who donated at the $100 LEVEL. Like a little audio chapbook, just for YOU. ALL OF YOU!
ESTIMATED DELIVERY, JUNE 1ST, 2015! STRETCH GOAL 1: Up to $5,500: I am under strict orders from Friends in the Know to do no further stretch goals until I budget to PAY MYSELF. Which... I, uh, did NOT do in my original calculations. I figure, since I'm paying my collaborator $500, it's probably fair wage for me as well!
For your listening pleasure:
Here is a rough rehearsal recording of "Mockingbird and Kestrel Girl" from THE HEADLESS BRIDE. The Banjo Apocalypse Crinoline Troubadours [C. S. E. Cooney on vocals, Amal El-Mohtar and Caitlyn Paxson on backup vocals] recorded it in a guest room of The Buttery in Dorcester last year while on tour with The Celtic Musketeer [Jeremy Cooney on guitar and vocals].
I wrote this song for writer/poet/editor Dominik Parisien to cheer him up one day. Mostly because he told me I had pretty eyes and he'd like to pluck them out. BEST COMPLIMENT EVER!!! STRETCH GOAL 2: $5,550-$6,500 (super duper smiley face)I have these incredible FILMMAKER FRIENDS in Canada. I would love to pay Magill Foote $1000 to make one or even TWO music videos, probably of "Lysistrata, Strut Your Stuff," and/or "Dido in Effigy." He has professional puppeteer friends, is all I'm saying. Not like MY Wicked Naked Puppets. Like, PROFESSIONALS. And he has a GREEN SCREEN. So. Yeah.
HERE IS A FILM MAGILL AND GRANT MADE!!! IT WON AWARDS! ALSO, IT MAKES ME LAUGH!!!!!! "Hold onto your BUTTS!" STRETCH GOAL 3: $6,500-$8,500 (tee hee. HEE!)
I sing with another band called The Banjo Apocalypse Crinoline Troubadours. We have a song cycle all written and rehearsed and performed called "The Distant Star Ballads."
I would love to fund us making this an album.
This is "Sisters Lionheart," a song I wrote for The Banjo Apocalypse Crinoline Troubadour's "Distant Star Ballads" project. Sung by the Apocalypse Gals ourselves, at Mercury Lounge in Ottawa!
STRETCH GOAL 4:
$8,500-$10,000 (ah ha ha ha mwahahaha)
About a year ago, I started adapting Charles Dickens' A Tale of Two Cities as a stage musical.
I know, I know. It's been done before. But not like I'm doing it. Oh, believe me. Believe me.
It's possibly my best work. Possibly because I'm standing on the shoulders of a dead genius.
What I need is to fund the finishing of it and the GREAT QUEST for a musical theatre composer as dedicated to his or her own art form as I am, and as excited about this project as I am. Because... Because it is beautiful. And what's more, in this age of disparity, of privilege versus poverty, it is NECESSARY. That's what I think anyway.
GOALS. I HAVE THEM.
But if we don't get there, know that I'm just so grateful to have made my initial goal.
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Hail and how-do, neighbors! I'm fantasy writer/poet/lyricist
C. S. E. Cooney, and I want to share 16 songs with you.
To aid me in this endeavor: COLLABORATORS! I have an awesome (real) rockstar musician composer friend named Glenn Kendzia and an awesome (entirely imaginary) rockstar friend named Brimstone Rhine.
And I have you. YES, YOU!
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(That's me. And that's the aforementioned Brimstone Rhine right behind me. You can't see her because she's ENTIRELY IMAGINARY.)
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(That's Glenn Kendzia. Rockstar, right??? RIGHT.)
Basically,
Brimstone Rhine has two EPs worth of music. The first is called
Alecto! Alecto!,
eight songs about women of Greek myth and legend as you've never heard them sung. Medea, Medusa, Alecto, Dido, Lysistrata, Calypso, Scylla and Circe: they're all there, each bright-lit under the spotlight she always deserved. Every song assumes its own musical genre, including blues, calypso, rock, waltz, lit-hop, and cabaret.
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("Medea, you are golden / Like your grandfather in heaven / Who is sunlight and the daylight and whose chariot is fire..."
MEDEA'S DRAGON, Alecto! Alecto!)
The second EP is called
The Headless Bride. This is a darker journey into carnival-noir-weirdo territory. These eight songs lean hard toward rock and even (gasp!) go a bit METAL at times. But we also have a creepy trad folk tune about a ghost (you know, the eponymous "Headless Bride" herself), and a few more waltzes about beautiful monsters who like to eat people. Oh, and there's a nautical dirge. I call it "Kenning Song, or The Barrow Brine." Get it? Ha! Oh, also there's a VERY naughty nursery rhyme!
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("Black are her widow’s weeds / Red is her windowpane / Black are her mourning beads / Red is her lipstick stain / Black is the blood she seeps / Red are the tears she weeps / Black are her pleasures / And red is her pain."
BLACK WIDOW'S WALTZ, The Headless Bride )
So often in the classics we grew up with, women are peripheral players in some hero's journey. What I wanted to do with the Alecto! Alecto! EP is write love songs to gorgons and sorceresses, furies and queens, infamous leaders, monsters, nymphs, and to Circe, the awesomest witch in the western world. I wanted to celebrate their power, swoon over their cleverness, and retell their myths with all the sexy, gritty, cheeky modernity at my disposal.
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("Now it's just me and my cat's tail / My four eyes and twelve legs in all / And that's not to mention my dog heads / On six necks so slender and tall..."
SCYLLA ON THE ROCKS, Alecto! Alecto!)
With
The Headless Bride, on the other hand, I wanted to take you dreamtripping into lurid nightmare and bawdy playfulness. If you ever wanted to mosh with vengeful djinn, hang out with Gilles de Rais on the eve of his execution, succumb to succubi, flirt with outrageous Mockingbird Men, and drown so sweetly and so deeply "where the shark dreams in the dark, down in the barrow brine," this EP is your vacation into the bizarre!
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("Sweet Chevalier, my Gilles de Rais / My bloody butcher boy / My right hand man, my one man band / My faithful friend, my holy angel toy..."
CHEVALIER, The Headless Bride)
With the help of contributors, Glenn and I want to to raise enough money to pay fair rates to
all our musicians, collaborators, cover artists, and studio engineers. We want to release the two digital EPs separately, and press a small run of Brimstone Rhine CDs with all 16 songs.
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ORIGINAL GOAL
* $1000 to Studio Sound Engineer
* $500 to Composer/Collaborator
* $250 for Original Cover Art for Alecto! Alecto!
* $250 for Original Cover Art for The Headless Bride
* $1000 for Session Musicians ($200 per musician: Drums, Pianist, Guitar, Double Bass, Strings or Horns as needed)
* $1000 Press CDs and Promote Them, USPS S&H, a Concert or Two
* $1000 for Taxes and Fees
** If we make $4000, we will record and release the EPs only digitally, rather than release a physical CD.
** If we make under $3000, we will record only one of the two EPs. This will be Alecto! Alecto!, as we already have rough demos for seven of the eight songs.
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If you donate and we make our goal, you will get all the rewards listed below. If you donate and we fall short of our goal, you will get as much as I can give you without having the funding to give you more! Deal? YAY!
$1.00
HURRAY! AWESOME! YOU GET A HIGH FIVE!
And, you know, I'll add you to my newsletter!
$5.00
PERFECT! WONDERFUL! YOU GET THANK YOU A BAJILLION TIMES ON MY WEBSITE!
Plus, newsletter!
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$10.00 JEEPERS! FABOOSH! YOU GET MY 3 EBOOKS AS PDFs!
Book 1 and
Book 2 of the Dark Breakers Series, and
The Witch in the Almond Tree, An Erotic Fairy Tale. Plus the other stuff.
$15.00
HOLY MOLY IS A REAL MYTHOLOGICAL HERB, BATMAN!
You get the Digital Download of EITHER Alecto! Alecto! OR The Headless Bride! Contributor's Choice! Plus the other stuff.
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$20.00
GA-DOING! GA-DOING! SHAZAM! KAPOW!
You get Digital Downloads of BOTH Alecto! Alecto! AND The Headless Bride! Plus the other stuff.
$25.00
QUOI? HOW CAN ANYBODY EVEN BE THIS COOL?
You get a digital copy of Bone Swans: Stories, forthcoming from Mythic Delirium in July 2015. Plus the other stuff.
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$30.00
FORGET ZEUS; YOU'RE THE NEW SOVEREIGN OF OLYMPUS!
You get, phew, a Physical CD of Brimstone Rhine (all 16 songs), and it will be SIGNED! Plus the other stuff.
$50.00 HA HA I'VE JUST FAINTED AND TURNED INTO GLITTER...WHOA!
You get a SIGNED PRINT of the cover art for EITHER
Alecto! Alecto! OR
The Headless Bride! (Contributor's Choice). Plus the other stuff.
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$75.00
RAINBOWS. YOU'RE JUST, YOU'RE MADE OF RAINBOWS.
All right, if you want to play it like that... So, say you're a poet like me. Well, I love to narrate poetry. That's what I do for Uncanny Magazine, and they even pay me for it!!! (I KNOW!) Donate at this level and I'll narrate up to eight of your poems and/or twenty pages for an audio chapbook to do with as you please. If you're a fiction writer, why, I'll narrate a short story of yours, 7500 words or fewer.
$100.00
YOU'RE NOT EVEN REAL, ARE YOU? YOU'RE, LIKE, THE PINK UNICORN. OR THE FLYING SPAGHETTI MONSTER.
I'll, uh... *sweats* I'll WRITE YOU YOUR VERY OWN POEM OR SONG!!! I'll write it to ANY PROMPT YOU DESIRE! There will be RHYMES! Or not! But PROBABLY! And I'll record it too, and send it to you! SO THERE!
(That's me again, but with red hair. It could be me at your house. FRIGHTENED YET? SEE BELOW!)
$500.00
...!!!...$%^$%&^*&^...???
So. Ahem. If you're within three hours driving distance of Westerly, Rhode Island, I will come to your house for a house concert. There will be AT LEAST an hour of Wild Rhyme and Glorious Song. I will wear crinoline and rhinestones and I'll even COMB MY HAIR. You can invite ALL your friends! I think we should have wine and fancy grown-up cheese together, don't you? IT'LL BE A NIGHT TO REMEMBER!!!
If you don't live within driving distance of Westerly, RI but you're just philanthropically ITCHING to shower me with your golden lucre... Well. Um. Maybe just donate at the $100 level FIVE TIMES and you'll get all those POEMS AND SONGS about you!!! :-)
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The world needs more songs of powerful women. We need songs about women who hop off the pyre they've made for themselves in the wake of heartbreak and go on to lead lives that rock like an 80's hair band. We need songs about the clever women who band together and lead their countries out of the gruesome maw of war. We need songs that lampoon our ridiculous, gorgeous selves, songs of farewell, songs of power, songs of sex and dark desire. We need love songs to the myths that make us, so that we may remake the myths in our image.
While I've never crowdfunded before, I am a collaborative artist by nature, and an artist who finishes things. Seven rough draft demos are already complete. We have our first concert already booked on March 20th at the Arts Café Mystic.
We are ready and willing to work hard, but we've gone as far as we can without the fuel to feed us. We need your help to launch this veritable SPACE SHUTTLE OF SONG off the ground and into the "bright heaven of invention."
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We've done a great bulk of the work on these already and we expect to get these albums to you by the end of 2015. Of course, collaboration is hard. Time is precious. There are always a hundred new and exciting projects to do! Seeing a project through all its stages to completion is the mark of a working artist.
If I have a talent that gives me an advantage in a project like this, it is that I love to finish the projects I begin. I have published stories and poems with professional magazines, featured in Year's Best Anthologies, and won the Rhysling Award for my poem "The Sea King's Second Bride." I am a regular actor with Flock Theatre of New London and a founding member of The Banjo Apocalypse Crinoline Troubadours. I love the songs of Brimstone Rhine, I believe in them, and I want more than anything to share them with you.
I am willing to combat lethargy, herd musicians, organize tricky finances responsibly, and create music of energy and vision and so much fun! I may have never done something like this before, but if Queen Dido can build Carthage out of an ox's hide, I can build two EPs out of an Indiegogo campaign!
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Ring the bells! Bang the tambourines! BOUNCE THE TRAMPOLINES!
Make joyful noises on your blogs, your Facebook feeds, your Twitter! Even sending out personal emails about this project would be super helpful!
Indiegogo has convenient share tools! PLEASE USE THEM!
Thank you so much!!!
(Background for the headers by user "2happy" at stockexchange.net and used under a creative commons license. Thanks to Nicholas Perry and Carlos Hernandez for video and design.)
