HERE IS A ROUGH MIX OF A NEW SONG!
For those of you who aren't audio engineers (most of us): a "rough mix" is basically just a very basic leveling of parts; not much production work, and definitely not mixed or mastered, two things that need to happen before a song is ready to be thrown out into the world.
SHERWOOD IS BACK?!
Great Scott! What year is this? Yep, we're just as surprised to read that headline as you are. Why? Because back in 2002, when we were a bunch of college kids tinkering around in a friend's garage, we never thought we'd be receiving emails, tweets, and messages about our music to this day.
Flash forward 13 years—people continue to ask us if we'll ever make another Sherwood album. Truth is, we always wanted to keep making albums, but obstacles kept that from happening, some personal and some logistical. We won't bore you with the details, but the point is, we recently decided (despite our long distances and busy lives) that if we could write some songs we were all very happy about, we'd make another album.
They say if you put your mind to it, you can accomplish anything—and that's exactly what we did. Somehow we were able to write several new songs (via texts, emails & voice memos) that we're excited about. It wasn't easy, but we did it, and now we think it's time to see if anyone is interested in helping us turn these songs into a full-length Sherwood album. Unless of course, you guys aren't ready for that yet... but know this: "Your kids are gonna love it."
1.21 Gigawatts?!
That's right, making an album takes a lot of manpower and resources. We're asking for $20,000. That might seem like a lot, but making a great-sounding album (one that's up to par with our previous releases) is a very tedious process, with many hidden expenses, guitar cables, studio rentals, flux capacitors, etc. And then there's mixing, mastering, printing, artwork, and travel. In the past, we had a record label take care of all these expenses up front, but the future of making music looks nothing like it did ten years ago.
We teamed up with the guys at BC Music, who will help us promote and distribute the album, but the production is up to us. Bottom line: whenever anyone chooses a perk, it directly helps us make this album that much better. Each perk has a detailed description of what you will get in return for making a pledge. Since we all live in different states, we had to be a little extra creative in our rewards, but we think we came up with some fun stuff.
Here is an approximate breakdown of our minimum budget to make this album (not including any promotional costs):
Studio time, Producer, Engineer: $6,000
Mixing & Mastering: $5,500
Travel: $1,500
Artwork, Pressing CDs/LPs, Printing Shirts, Shipping perks: $6,000
Total: $20,000
Roads? Where we're going, we don't need roads.
In the future, bands don't need record labels, just some fans' support. Supporting the album might sound risky, but we're here to assure you that it's not. The only risk is if somehow your postal worker can't find your house! There's zero chance of us not delivering a great sounding album to your email inbox or doorstep, we promise.
We obsess about the quality of our albums. That's part of the reason we don't want to cheaply self-produce this one. We want to continue to deliver the best we can with the help of professionals. That means we can't make an album without your help. We'd also like to promote the album, create some beautiful music videos, and work on other fun content to help spread the word. So anything ABOVE the goal will also be a huge help to go above and beyond. Lets to get this baby up to 88mph.
"Why don't you make like a tree and get outta here?"
You know we'd never say that to you right? Look, even if you can't contribute you can still help. Obviously getting the word out to your friends on social media is huge. There are small pockets of Sherwood fans all over the place, we need your help to find them. The more our fans talk about the campaign, the better the project will go overall and if this project goes super great, you never know what the future holds! All we mean to say here is a tweet or FB status really goes a long way.
