Hi, we were The Lucksmiths.
Marty, Mark and Tali. We met at high school in Melbourne in the early 90s and soon decided to take our music out of the loungeroom and into the pubs, clubs and unsavoury student gatherings of Australia and beyond. We wrote a lot of songs and travelled long distances. In 2003 we released our eighth album, Naturaliste.
This album was the second time we'd recorded at Melbourne's Audrey Studios with inspiring producer Craig Pilkington; we would continue to return to Audrey over the years to record several releases, most notably the Warmer Corners album, A Little Distraction EP and farewell single Get-to-Bed Birds. Craig's jokes got better with age.
Hits aplenty!
Containing fan favourites like 'Camera-Shy', 'Midweek Midmorning' and 'Stayaway Stars’, Naturaliste was well received by the blogosphere and college radio, introducing our music to a wider audience.
The album was originally released on CD in 2003 by a bunch of our great mates with record labels: Candle Records (Aus), Drive-in (US), Boompa! (Canada), Fortuna Pop! (UK) and Clover (Japan).
What about Louis?!
Naturaliste was the final Lucksmiths album before Louis Richter joined the band in 2005, bestowing on us his joyful enthusiasm and outstanding guitar licks.
Listen to Naturaliste on Vinyl.
The Lucksmiths disbanded in 2009 having released eleven albums and toured extensively. Following the recent vinyl release of 2005's Warmer Corners, we are now excited to put Naturaliste on vinyl too.
Needless to say, we are beyond grateful for any help you can offer with funding this dream!
Our plan...
Is to press 500 vinyl copies of the album, with any left over from the Indiegogo campaign to be distributed and made available online through Mark's label Lost And Lonesome.
We are also making a stack of fun new merch to offer as perks – t-shirts, tote bags, fridge magnets, badges... all featuring vintage Lucksmiths designs. And add to that some extremely limited blue vinyl copies of Naturaliste, plus a few test pressings and also the original photographs used in the album artwork, all signed and framed up for one lucky individual, and we've got a regular Lucksmiths frenzy on our hands!
We are hoping to raise $7500 AUD to help cover our costs. In addition to the manufacturing of the vinyl LPs and additional merch items, we have all kinds of audio mastering and artwork bills to see to. We have set our campaign to 'flexible funding', so even if we don't hit our target, we'll be putting the funds to good use, while enlisting plan B, C and D to raise the rest of the money.
Our long-term goal is to keep the momentum up so we can press other Lucksmiths titles onto vinyl in the not-too-distant future.
Running a crowdfunding campaign is such a new thing to us so we really appreciate you joining us for the ride. If contributing financially is not an option, there are many other ways to help out – we would dearly love a hand getting the word out about this project. The Indiegogo share tools are good for this purpose.
We thank you!
