Sarah McQuaid: News

Sarah writes ...
I’m typing this very quickly, as I’m due to set out in less than two hours on a six-week tour of Ireland and the UK and I haven’t even packed my suitcase yet! It’s been a lovely two weeks at home with the family since I returned from my March tour of the Netherlands and Germany. You’ll be able to read all about that tour very soon in my Tour Diary, and in the meantime there are a whole bunch of photos from the tour up on my Facebook Page.

I’m particularly excited about this tour, because it includes so much collaborative work with other musicians and singers. In Scotland, I’ll be performing a series of four concerts “in the round” with fellow songwriters Bill Adair and Richard Grainger; in Farncombe, Surrey, I’ll be backed on a number of songs by the Godalming Community Gospel Choir; and later in June, as part of the Golowan Festival in Penzance, I’ll be supported by young songwriters Theo Black, Shania Curnow and Nat Dwelly, all students in the Music MixX programme run by well-known local musician and music educator Luke New at Mounts Bay Academy, where I gave a songwriting workshop earlier this year.

Being a solo artist, I don’t often get the chance to perform with other musicians and singers, so this will be a real treat. I know the gigs in Scotland with Bill and Richard will be great – I’ve done a couple of ‘in the round’ gigs previously over in the States, at the Bluebird in Nashville and at Anderson Fair in Houston, and it’s really nice to be able to exchange ideas and harmonies in a really off-the-cuff, informal way onstage. And when Julian Lewry at Farncombe Music Club asked me if I’d like to try working with a gospel choir, I was thrilled -- I sang with a children’s choir for many years and still sing with my local church choir, and it’ll be a real honour to have the choir in Godalming joining me on songs I’ve written!

I’m delighted to report that in addition to Golowan I’ll also be performing at two other festivals over the summer: Festival at the Edge in July and Sidmouth FolkWeek in August. Yet more opportunities to see and hear some of my fellow artists! And a big honour to be invited.

I’m sure there's more I ought to be telling you, but I really do need to run and pack now, so do keep an eye on the News page of my website for, well, news, on the Calendar page for details of all the gigs, and on the aforementioned Tour Diary for photos and stories from the road in the months to come. I’ll be posting updates on Facebook and Twitter as well, and if you can make it to one of the shows it would be great to see you there!

APRIL-MAY 2013 TOUR DATES ANNOUNCED
Click here to download a print-ready PDF of the tour flyer, or here for an emailable JPEG image.

Sarah writes ...
Once again I must apologise for leaving it so long since the last newsletter and also for falling behind on the Tour Diary! Plus ça change .... I’ll try very hard to keep up with both from here on out, but had better refrain from making any promises. Just in case.

Following an action-packed autumn that saw me touring like crazy in the US and UK, I’ve had a very nice three months at home with my husband and kids, doing family stuff and catching up with the admin backlog. My biggest achievement was getting up to date with my accounts for the first time in nearly ten years!

Now I’m heading out on the road again for a three-week tour in the Netherlands and Germany, to be followed in April by a brief tour in Ireland which in turn will be followed by a longer UK tour in May. I’m particularly looking forward to a series of four gigs at the start of May that I’ll be doing in the round with fellow songwriters Bill Adair and Richard Grainger – should be fun! 

I’m pleased to report that The Plum Tree and The Rose finished out the year in the top 20 of both the FolkDJ and Euro Americana charts for the year 2012, as well as making it onto “Best of 2012” lists on both sides of the pond – see the various entries below for all the details. Do keep an eye on the aforementioned Tour Diary for photos and stories from the road in the months to come, and if you can make it to one of the shows it would be great to see you there!

MARCH 2013 TOUR DATES ANNOUNCED
Click here to download a print-ready PDF of the tour flyer, or here for an emailable JPEG image.

Today saw Sarah featured in "Best of 2012" programmes on community radio stations on both sides of the Atlantic. Host Bob Weiser of "The Old Songs' Home" on WOMR in Massachusetts, USA, played 'The Sun Goes On Rising' from The Plum Tree and The Rose in his "Favourites of 2012" show, while over at Trent Sound in Nottingham, UK, DJ Roger Williams included Sarah in his "Discoveries Of The Year" list on "A World Of Difference."

Featuring traditional and contemporary folk and acoustic music, "The Old Songs' Home" airs every Monday from 9:30am to 12:30pm EST on WOMR, Community Radio for Cape Cod and beyond: 92.1 FM Provincetown, 91.3 FM Orleans, streaming live at www.womr.org. "A World of Difference" airs every Monday from 7 to 10pm GMT on www.trentsound.com, a community broadcasting service for Nottingham.

Sarah McQuaid’s album The Plum Tree Tree and The Rose finished out the year in the No. 14 place (tied with These Old Dark Hills by Robin & Linda Williams) for 2012 on the FolkDJ chart, based on 156,671 airplays from 194 different DJs who host folk and acoustic music radio shows.

Sarah McQuaid made one US public radio station's "Best of 2012" list not once but twice! DJ Lilli Kuzma, the weekly show host of Folk Festival since July 2007 (and back-up host for over six years prior), placed The Plum Tree and The Rose at No. 10 Album and "In Derby Cathedral" and "Lift You Up and Let You Fly" in a tie for the No. 10 Song in her Folk Festival Faves of 2012. WDCB 90.9FM Public Radio broadcasts 24/7 jazz, blues, acoustic/Americana music and news to Chicago, Northeastern Illinois and the world via their iTunes and Windows Media Player compatible audio stream.

On Sunday, 30 December, 2012, a full-length live concert (two 45-minute sets) by Sarah was the special feature on Roz Larman’s well-known syndicated radio show, Folkscene. The concert was recorded by Peter Cutler on 16 October 2012 at Fiddler’s Crossing in Tehachapi, California, with Martin Stansbury engineering. Click here to listen. Now in its 42nd year of live broadcasting, FolkScene is a program of traditional and contemporary music featuring live music, interviews, remote recordings, and the finest in recorded music. Many thanks to Roz and Peter for their kind permission to publish the broadcast here.

In October 2012, Sarah travelled to Albuquerque, New Mexico, to record an interview and session for Art of the Song Creativity Radio, a syndicated public radio programme heard on over 150 stations across the USA. Each show devotes a full hour to one artist or band's music and thoughts about creative expression, exploring universal truths through interview segments interspersed with live in-studio recordings and album tracks. Previous artists featured have ranged from Janis Ian to Steely Dan's Donald Fagen. Sarah's interview, including three album tracks and three songs performed live in the Art of the Song studio, is now archived online at http://www.artofthesong.org/tune-in/shows/show-416/. "It's so nice to have had the time and space to give due credit to Martin Stansbury, Gerry O'Beirne, Zoë Pollock, Andy Manson and others who've helped me along the way," says Sarah. "Big thanks to Vivian Nesbitt and John Dillon for having me on the show – it was an honour."

We are delighted to report that The Plum Tree and The Rose finished at No. 19 for the year 2012 on the Euro Americana Chart!

Thanks so much to Joltin Joe Pszonek, host of Radio Nowhere on WMSC, for including The Plum Tree and the Rose in his Radio Nowhere Favorites of 2012. WMSC is a freeform college radio station located at and owned by Montclair State University in Montclair, New Jersey, USA. Broadcast on Sundays from 7 to 10pm EST, Radio Nowhere is a mix of folk, blues, roots music and Americana.

We are very happy to announce that Mathias Heijen of Blackbird Bookings is now looking after Sarah McQuaid's bookings in Continental Europe. Math limits his roster to six clients, making it completely full with Sarah added to Lucy Ward (UK), Josienne Clarke (UK), Anna Coogan (USA), Kyle Carey (USA), and Christina Martin (Canada). "I'm honoured to be in such fine company," says Sarah, "and Martin and I are both looking forward to working with Math!" For more information on Blackbird Bookings and Sarah's European tour dates, visit
http://www.blackbirdbookings.com/sm/index.html.

We are pleased to announce that The Plum Tree and the Rose has made the Top 10 Albums of 2012 list on Mike Ganley's Crooked Road, together with albums by Fairport Convention, Cathy Jordan, The Outside Track, Kate Rusby, Kathryn Roberts & Sean Lakeman, Jim Moray, Altan, Show of Hands and Gretchen Peters. Broadcast every Thursday at 8pm on Swindon 105.5FM as well as online via The Music Well, The Crooked Road is now in its 20th year.

We are thrilled to report that the new issue of Sing Out! magazine featuring "The Sun Goes On Rising" is finally out ... with Sarah's name on the cover right under Loudon Wainwright III's! Founded in 1950 by Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger and other giants of the folk world, Sing Out! has as a primary mission the presentation of new folk songs for its readers to learn and pass on. "I can remember learning songs from the magazine back when I first started subscribing in my teenage years," says Sarah. "To have a composition featured in its pages (and on the accompanying CD) is an honour beyond all imagining – and one that's certainly well deserved by the wonderful Gerry O'Beirne who co-wrote the song with me and produced the album it's on. Thanks so much to Sing Out! editor Mark D. Moss for featuring the song and to Grey Larsen for transcribing it!" For more information on the magazine or to order a copy, visit http://www.singout.org/magazine.html

We’re delighted to report that this week The Plum Tree and The Rose made it to No. 6 in the Roots Music Report Folk Top 50 –just one notch below The Chieftains, and well above such luminaries as June Tabor, Leonard Cohen and Anaïs Mitchell!

The Plum Tree and The Rose was released in March on the US-based Waterbug label (www.waterbug.com) and is currently No. 3 on the Folk Radio Chart, No. 4 on the UK Roots Radio Airplay Chart and No. 5 on the Euro Americana chart! Click here to order the album.

Sarah writes ...
I’m typing this missive in the passenger seat of Martin’s van en route from Penzance to Cardiff, where we’ll stay the night before getting the ferry to Ireland tomorrow. I’m particularly excited because this coming Saturday’s gig in Whelan’s marks the official launch of my new album, The Plum Tree and The Rose. There’s a certain very special guest who’s told me he hopes to get there on the night ... Fingers crossed ... Saying no more, lest I jinx it!

The album’s been getting quite a bit of airplay and some wonderful reviews: fRoots magazine described it as a “finely-crafted disc” that “expertly cradles Sarah’s elegantly poised, tenderly expressive singing voice and delicate guitar in quietly monumental arrangements ... Impeccable.”

I was on tour in Holland, Belgium, Switzerland and Germany for four months in March (you can read all about it in the Tour Diary on my website), then had a couple of much-needed weeks at home with the family while my kids were off school for the Easter holidays.

Now it’s back out on the road again for a seven-week tour of Ireland, Northern Ireland and the UK.

I’ll be taking most of the summer off, then warming up for my autumn USA and UK tours with a gig at Wallingford BunkFest at the end of August.

Do keep an eye on the aforementioned Tour Diary for photos and stories from the road in the months to come, and if you can make it to one of the shows it would be great to see you there!

Sarah's new album The Plum Tree and The Rose was No. 3 on the FolkDJ Chart for March 2012, and as of the week of March 30 was No. 16 on the UK Roots Radio Airplay Chart published by Roots Music Report. The album is also still at No. 5 on the Euro Americana Chart.

As of this month, Sarah's new album The Plum Tree and The Rose has reached No. 5 on the Euro Americana Chart!

Lots has happened since my last installment! I'm very happy and excited to be able to announce that I've been signed to the US-based Waterbug Records label, which will be releasing my new album The Plum Tree and the Rose on March 5th. And if you pre-order the album between now and the 26th of February, I'll send you a code that you can use straightaway to download a 3-track single featuring two songs from the album ("The Sun Goes On Rising," co-written by myself and Gerry O'Beirne, and a cover of John Martyn's "Solid Air") plus a bonus guitar instrumental that doesn't appear on the album and is only available as a download -- a DADGAD guitar arrangement of a 16th century lute piece.

I'm just coming to the end of a wonderful three-month break at home (much needed after all the touring I did last year), and gearing up to go back out on the road again. I'll be spending most of the month of March in continental Europe, then heading to Ireland in April, the UK in May, doing a few festivals over the summer and then touring the USA in September and October, finishing off with another UK tour in November.

Keep an eye on the Tour Diary for photos and stories from the road in the months to come, and if you can make it to a gig it would be great to see you there!

I’ve just returned from the longest tour I’ve ever done: 8 weeks in the USA, taking in the whole country in a great big circle that started and finished in Austin, Texas, via 37 of the 50 states.

What was nice this time round was the opportunity to perform in so many different settings. For example, at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, I did a televised midday concert and then went round to various patient areas as part of their Music at the Bedside programme; and straight after that I did a four-day run of shows in Lincoln, Nebraska, that included an outdoor concert in a park that closed out their season and was attended by over 350 people, plus a visit with 120 nine- and ten-year-olds in a local school. I told them a bit about myself and did a couple of songs for them to sing along to, and for the rest of the hour they just bombarded me with questions – which included a query as to whether there were any kiwi birds in Cornwall!

Another new experience in Lincoln was a ‘Nine Lessons and Ballads’ church service. It was promoter Lori McAlister’s idea to put together a programme modelled after the Nine Lessons and Carols, only with songs from my repertoire (both traditional and original) and readings that echoed or developed the themes touched on in the songs. It was a beautiful evening of music and readings, and I’d love to try and do the same sort of thing elsewhere.

You can read all about my USA experience, and look at route maps and loads of photos, in the Tour Diary.

Now I’m enjoying a much-needed few days at home before I set off on my 4-week UK tour -- see dates listed on the Calendar page.

Hope to see you at a gig down the road ....

It’s been a busy summer! In June I spent two weeks in Ireland finishing off my new album. There’s one day of mixing still to be done, which I have to leave in the extremely capable hands of my producer, Gerry O’Beirne, and engineer Trevor Hutchinson. Having already made two albums with this crack team, I know they’ll do a lovely job of finishing it off in September while I’m on the road, and I hope to have the album ready for release early next year.

Tentatively titled The Plum Tree and the Rose, it’s going to be a bit of a departure from my previous CDs in that the tracks are nearly all originals – three of them co-written with Gerry. To go with all those new songs I’ve got a few very old ones: ‘New Oysters New’, a canon published in 1609 by Thomas Ravenscroft in his Pammelia: Mvsicks Miscellanie, with my old friend Niamh Parsons and baritone Tom Barry singing the other two parts; 16th century Elizabethan composer John Dowland’s ‘Can She Excuse My Wrongs’; and ‘S’Anc Fuy Belha Ni Prezada’, a 13th century “alba” or dawn song in Old Occitan – plus a cover of John Martyn’s ‘Solid Air’.

Back in 2009, when I first came across ‘S’Anc Fuy Belha Ni Prezada’, I went hunting via the Internet for a transcription of the melody and a definitive version of the lyrics. I managed to track down a copy of a book containing them in the collection of one Joseph Baldassarre, professor emeritus at Boise State University. He very kindly scanned in the music and emailed it to me, then sent me a copy of a lovely album he recorded, as an eventual result of which he’s now scheduled to be the opening act at my gig in Boise on the 5th of October! It’ll be great to finally meet and hear him in person after two years of emails back and forth across the pond.

Other highlights of the tour include an official showcase at the Folk Alliance Region Midwest (FARM) conference, as well as a gig at Nashville’s legendary Bluebird Café, where I'll be performing in the round with Louise Mosrie (who also has an official showcase at FARM! Louise was my roommate at the International Folk Alliance Conference last February, and she’s a lovely person and a great songwriter, so I couldn’t be more delighted), Peter Cooper and Ben Bedford. All four of us had No. 1 albums on the Folk DJ chart thanks to the sterling work of Nashville-based PR ace Kari Estrin, who’s promoting the show.

The final bit of news is that while I’m definitely going to continue touring as a solo performer, I’ve put a three-piece band together with an eye on next summer’s festival season. At our second rehearsal (in a friend’s converted barn here in Cornwall), we decided to set a few video cameras up on tripods to capture the band look and sound, and I hope to have the results up on the Music page within the next week or two, so keep an eye out for that!   

Hope to see you at a gig down the road ....

It’s been a very, very busy year thus far – I’ve been touring pretty much nonstop since the end of January, with brief forays home now and again to remind my husband and children who I am, and I won’t get much of any respite until the end of June.

I’m on the road – literally – as I type this, somewhere in Ohio on my way to a gig in Kirtland, near Cleveland. Having acquired a mobile wifi device and a sunshade for my laptop (not needed in today’s rainy weather, but essential on brighter days), I’m now able to catch up with emails and other admin work while Martin does the driving.

After the final date of this US tour, on May 24th (see all the remaining dates at right), I’ll be spending a week in Nashville, working on material for my new album, then heading down to Kerrville, TX to catch a bit of the festival there before I fly back to the UK on the 7th of June.

After that, I’ll have just five nights at home (including a festival gig in Helston, just up the road from where I live) before flying to Ireland on the 12th of June, where I’ll be doing the final recording and mixing work on my new album from the 12th to the 25th.

Speaking of which, I’m looking for a major sponsor to help me with the recording and production costs. If you know of either a business or an individual who might be interested in supporting this project, please do pass on their contact details!

Hope to see you at a gig down the road ....

A wonderful bit of news came in just at the start of this month: My double CD (the two solo albums, released together on the North American market as a two-disc package) came in at No. 6 on the FolkRadio chart for 2010, based on playlists from 195 DJs. Have a look at http://folkradio.org/10topalbums.html -- you'll understand why I was so pleased when you see the company I’m in.

I’m also honoured that Al Kniola and Norm Mast of WVPE’s The Back Porch included the double CD in their 30 Best Albums of 2010, and thrilled that KOPN’s Steve Jerrett listed it in his Top 10 CDs of 2010.

All credit to Gerry O’Beirne for his wonderful production and playing on both of the albums that make up the double CD, as well as to publicist Kari Estrin for her sterling work.

The other big bit of news is that I've been selected for an official Performance Alley Showcase at the 23rd Annual International Folk Alliance Conference in Memphis in February. One of the five largest music conferences in North America, the Folk Alliance draws over 2,000 registered attendees each year. 200 artists are invited for official showcases each year, but of these, only around 20 come from outside the US and Canada, so it’s a great honour for an overseas artist such as myself to be selected. Other artists who will be showcasing in 2011 include Suzy Bogguss, the Carolina Chocolate Drops, Mary Gauthier, Eliza Gilkyson, Kieran Goss, Diana Jones, Si Kahn and Raul Malo.

I had a very intensive 9-week tour of the UK and USA this past autumn, and have barely had time to draw breath since -- so I’m afraid I haven’t had time to update the tour diary as of this writing. I’ll definitely get back to it for the European tour starting next week, though, so keep an eye on it for updates!

We are delighted to announce that Sarah McQuaid has been selected for an official Performance Alley Showcase at the 23rd Annual International Folk Alliance Conference (http://www.folkalliance.org), taking place between 15th & 20th February in Memphis, Tennessee, USA.
 
One of the five largest music conferences in North America, the Folk Alliance draws over two thousand registered attendees each year, including representatives of venues, festivals, record labels, broadcast and print media, agents and performers.
 
Two hundred artists are invited for official showcases each year, but of these, only around twenty come from outside the US and Canada, so it's a great honour for an overseas artist such as Sarah McQuaid to be selected. Other artists who will be showcasing in 2011 include such high-profile names as Suzy Bogguss, the Carolina Chocolate Drops, Mary Gauthier, Eliza Gilkyson, Kieran Goss, Diana Jones, Si Kahn and Raul Malo.
 
Sarah attended the conference for the first time in 2010, and received several bookings as a direct result of the unofficial "Guerrilla" showcases she performed there.

Among these was an invitation to appear next April on 'Folkstage', a live concert radio show broadcast by Chicago's public radio station, WFMT. The show’s host, Rich Warren, had previously named Sarah's album ‘I Wont Go Home 'Til Morning’ CD of the week on his nationally syndicated show 'The Midnight Special' (http://www.midnightspecial.org/syndication.htm).
 
"I'd written to Rich to thank him for the mention and to ask if he'd book me for Folkstage," Sarah explains, "but he told me he never books anyone for Folkstage until he's seen them perform live. I was well nervous when I clocked him in the audience at one of the unofficial showcases I did last year -- the showcases are in hotel rooms, so it's a slightly bizarre setup -- but thankfully he came straight up to me as soon as I finished, took out his diary and said he'd be delighted to book me.
 
"I'm thrilled that the Folk Alliance have invited me for an official showcase next year," Sarah continues, "because those are in big halls, with stage and lights and PA, and they're much better attended than the unofficial ones. It's a big deal to be selected and I'm very excited about it!"
 
Sarah's Folk Alliance appearance will follow hard on the heels of a twenty one date tour of the Netherlands and Germany in January and February 2011.
 
Immediately following the conference, she'll be travelling to Nashville for meetings with two record labels and a co-writing session with well-known songwriter Thomm Jutz, guitarist and producer for Nanci Griffith amongst others.
 
On her return to her home base in Cornwall, she'll barely have time to draw breath before setting off on a densely packed UK tour that fills the month of March, followed by an Ireland tour in April and a five-week USA tour from late April through early June.

Hello everyone, and Happy Burns Night! Feargal and I attended a terrific celebration hosted by our friends Sarah and Geoff at the weekend, with poems composed for the occasion, some beautiful single malts and delicious haggis – here’s a photo:

CD Baby and Haiti relief
For those of you who don’t already know it, beginning today (Monday, January 25th) and continuing for two weeks, the good people at CD Baby are donating US$1 of their cut from every CD sale, and $1 from every download sale over $8.99, to the American Red Cross and to Mercy Corps, a Portland-based relief organization with a large presence in Haiti. So if you’ve been thinking about buying either my CDs or any of the other excellent albums available through CD Baby (Gerry O’Beirne’s beautiful Half Moon Bay and The Bog Bodies And Other Stories spring to mind), now would be a good time to do that. Visit CD Baby for more info.

Street teamers wanted
I’ll be heading off shortly to do a few UK gigs before I leave for Spain and the USA, and could do with a bit of help getting the word out: the organiser of the London gig, for one, has just emailed me to say that thus far he’s sold a grand total of one ticket! I’d be hugely grateful if you could have a look down through the list of gigs at the end of this email and pass on the info to any friends of yours in the places I’m passing through, if you think they’d like my music. I also have stacks of flyers listing all my upcoming tour dates from February through April, and would be delighted to send a few out in the post to anyone who’s in an area where I’m going to be playing and has a place to put them.

The week after the aforementioned London gig, I’m off to Bilbao, Spain, to perform at the grandly named Palacio de Congresos y de la Música Euskalduna, and straight on from there to the USA. I’ll be attending the International Folk Alliance conference in Memphis from February 16-21, then embarking on a whirlwind tour, playing 20 shows in 23 days.

Double CD
Along with my first-ever solo US tour comes the re-release of my first two albums as a double CD for the North American market. The idea for the double CD package came from Kari Estrin, an amazing woman in Nashville who’s been manager or tour manager in the past for such illustrious names as Janis Ian, Tony Rice, Suzanne Vega and 3 Mustaphas 3. In the short time I’ve been working with her she’s been a real inspiration. She’s looking after the radio publicity for the US release, and will be sending out 550 copies to stations around the country. The two individual albums have already been getting quite a bit of airplay on folk radio programs over there; I was particularly chuffed when I Won’t Go Home ’Til Morning was named “CD of the Week” by WFMT’s The Midnight Special, a show I can remember listening to it as a child in Chicago on New Year’s Eve – the only night of the year I was allowed to stay up late enough to hear it!

Singers wanted
The week after my return from the US, I’m going to be playing a double-bill gig with Cornish band Dalla at Grampound Community Hall in Cornwall ... which leads me to mention that I’m still looking for fellow singers to join me for ‘In Gratitude I Sing’, the canon I debuted at that same gig back in March 2009. On that occasion, members of Dalla and fellow Cornwall-based band Corncrow bravely volunteered to sing it with me, despite the fact that I’d written the song that afternoon and had only five minutes to rehearse it with the others before the show. Now anyone who wants can download the sheet music and MIDI file from my website, so there’s no excuse for not giving it a go. If you’re coming to any of my gigs over the next year or two and fancy joining me onstage, please do look it up!

New album
The new recording is still being tweaked and twiddled as I write. Máire Breatnach came in last week to put a few fiddle and viola tracks down, and thanks to the wonders of technology, I was able to listen to them on the computer less than an hour after she’d left the studio, despite the fact that the studio is in Dublin and I’m in Penzance. They sounded lovely and I can’t wait to hear the finished album, but that’ll have to wait until Gerry and Trevor’s hectic schedules once again leave them with a few free days that coincide, like some rare conjunction of the planets.

New idea
When I recorded my last album, I had a grant from the Arts Council of Ireland, which was a considerable help. Now that I’m living in the UK, I’m a much smaller fish in a much bigger pond, and in any case arts budgets are being slashed left, right and centre.

So I think I’m going to try something new. It’s been suggested to me that I invite people to become sponsors for the new album – helping me out with the recording costs in exchange for various rewards, depending on the amount contributed – for example, a sponsorship credit in the booklet, a concert in your home, signed gifts and memorabilia for you and your friends? This is unfamiliar territory for me, so I’m very much open to advice. If any of you would like to get in touch with me to discuss your thoughts, that would be wonderful.