As a THANK YOU, we will give this FREE Scythian E-Book to all our contributors. Only 6 hours left to be a part of this special album!
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Check out the NEW Scythian Hoodie design!
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The Album T-Shirts are HERE! Grab yours today!
Check out the snappy design:
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UPDATE: The DC Album Listening Party has been set! July 9th at Flanagan's Irish Pub in Bethesda, MD - where it all began for us!
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NEW PERK! JOEY WILL READ YOU A STORY! A dramatic reading, with impeccable dinosaur accents.
CHECK OUT THE AWESOME BRANDED USB DRIVE! When you order the
Digital Super Fan, you get a beautiful maple finish custom-branded USB drive LOADED with exclusive Scythian stuff!
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It's really hard to believe, and we
really do have to say it out loud twice to believe it, but this March,
we are celebrating TEN YEARS of Scythian! And to celebrate, we are
excited to announce that we are recording our
5th full-length studio album!![]()
But wait, TEN YEARS, really? The story goes something like this: One
day in early, wintry 2004, Alex, Joey and Dan's seasonal winter jobs of
running ski trips to the great North were coming to a close, and as
they sat around a table in the house they shared, with few exciting
prospects on the job front, they scribbled some numbers on a pad, looked
at each other, then said "Let's do it."
That was well over 1,000 shows ago, most of those pub shows,
driving up and down Interstate 95, loading heavy PA's in and out of pubs
like a one-night circus act, nights as exhilarating as they were
grueling. Playing the old music, that old powerful magic that could get
any crowd dancing and turn any place into a barn dance. We had the
golden ticket in our hands, and we quickly learned that music opened
doors, to people of all walks, to places we could never have dreamed of
seeing. The wrong side of the sunrise was the usual fare, but we were
alive and
in love with the music, the people, the sweat at the end of a hard and
crazy night's work, the characters, the stories that came with them.
[You can get this totally rad lunchbox with 12 Twinkie capacity!]![]()
Now
ten years later, though some things have changed and the leather has
shown some wear, one thing has stayed the same: if we ever stood a
chance in that unforgiving world of the music industry, it was due to
one simple thing - your good will.
Most bands are sea turtles, and
survival often means playing by the rules of the purse holders, but
thanks to your support, your constant encouragement by showing up to
show after show, you gave us permission to play our genre-defying,
misfit music, and though the two words seem hardly to suffice, we
nonetheless say THANK YOU for giving us that rare
freedom.
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To celebrate our 10th year as a band, we wanted to make an
album that tips it's cap to those pub years where it all started, where
you told us to keep doing what we were doing, but also an album that
brings in who we've become today.
In February, somebody was kind enough to let us stay at their
remote, rustic, Revolutionary War-era log cabin in the mountains - no
internet, no cell phone service - and we unplugged it all. We came to pull
together something special, to look back on the 10 years with gratitude, and to look ahead to what might be. In doing that, we felt
energized to make 2014 the busiest touring year we've had in years.
The
music started flowing; we wrote new songs in the kitchen, played deep
into the night around the fireplace, and outside, it snowed, and snowed,
and snowed, and we played and played, and when it was all over, we had
enough material for two albums!
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So we are here again asking you to help us make this album (possibly
these albums!) a reality. Making an album the right way is an expensive process,
from recording in a studio, mixing,
mastering, album artwork and printing, and promoting (from start to finish, our last studio album ended up costing us over $30,000, sans promotion). Because of this high cost, usually a record labels are the only ones who can afford to front the money.
But when this happens, the record label calls the shots, and
we would never be where we are, playing the music we play, had we been
in a label's stable.
With IndieGogo,
you all have become the label in a
real way, and now your valuable dollars and support will go towards paying for
studio time, engineering, mixing, mastering, artwork and printing. Your support frees us from being forced to go to labels for this funding and really frees us to play our music.
This is
truly invaluable.
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Our first album will be a full-out Scythian
album, the way you know us, with some great new songs that we've never
played out before. You're hearing this first here: we're going to call this one
Jump at the Sun after one of the tracks we wrote in the cabin. We won't give away too much, but it's a song about the Irish tinkers, combining Celtic and gypsy music into one song. We had a bunch of fun with this one.
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This will also be Tim's first studio album with us, and
we're especially excited to bring in Ben-David into the songwriting mix,
who will have three songs debuting on the album. Sister Larissa and her 5 string cello will be featured all over the album, adding a great new feel to the songs. The material we have
for this one, with the creativity brought by these young guns, has
really made us singularly excited about this album.
If we can reach our goal, what next???
First off, we'll be doing somersaults! Secondly, we'll be looking at making a
second album! Anything beyond that would go to hire a real-deal publicist for the album, and maybe even a real pro music video!
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Our second album? This one will be one that we've never really had
the chance to do, and will be a nod of respect to the old tradition that
passed the music to us in the first place. Over the last few years,
meeting people like Tommy Makem, Liam Clancy, Doc Watson, Levon Helm,
Richie Havens, and seeing them play their music left a deep impression
on us.
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So we've felt the pull to make a more acoustic album of songs in
the ballad tradition, some Irish, some Americana, and some even in
Ukrainian, and not until we were in the cabin did we decide it was time
to lay down these powerful songs. All sharing the same blood of the
peasant folk, of hard work and earthen poetry and melodies that had
surely been brought by the wind.
If we can raise additional funds
beyond our goal, all monies will go toward making that album. If we can
raise enough, we will send each and every campaign contributor a signed
copy of the second album as a thank you!
["The Benefactor" essentially gets this, but with less Elvis, The Monkees, and Gustav Mahler:]
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So anything raised beyond the cost of the album(s) will go toward the promotion of
the album(s), new website, and maybe even the making of a pro music video, which we've
never really had! And like last time, we will give 10% of all funds
raised to charity. How can we not give as we receive?
We will keep you all posted on the recording process in the
studio and on any updates. We can honestly say that we've never been
more fired up about the new material we have on hand, and can't wait for
you all to hear it. We've
added a bunch of new funding packages and hope you have fun with them. If you
have any suggestions for packages please let us know! And if you
could please help us in getting the word out on Facebook and the
Twitter, we'd be much obliged!
[Here's the ridiculous boy band blankie - totally awesome!]
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We appreciate your time and your help, no matter how small. You've been there with and for us since the beginning, and we can honestly say we have the best fans in the world.
Mucho thanko and God bless you all!
Danylo, Joey, Alexander, Ben-David and Tim
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