The Hero's Journey

Final totals and next steps
over 5 years ago – Wed, Oct 31, 2018 at 08:21:50 PM

Hello friends,

When all was said and done, The Hero's Journey raised $6,158 on Kickstarter, or 116% of our original goal. All of us are more grateful than we can possibly say for the 132 backers who have helped to make this dream a reality. Thank you so much for your contributions and your support during this campaign - none of this would be possible without you.

Now that the campaign has ended, I wanted to let you know what you can expect next from us. Most importantly, you should know that backer surveys for this campaign will not be sent out until sometime in early 2019. As you'll recall, many of our reward tiers involve your choice of art prints of the album art. For obvious reasons, we can't ask our backers to choose between the prints until you can actually see the finished art or something close to it - which means no surveys until the images are completed. So please don't be alarmed when you don't see a survey from us for a few months.

However, this doesn't mean that we will be out of communication with you! You can expect monthly updates from this campaign at minimum, filling you in on our process in the recording studio and showing you art samples as we receive them. (Of course, you'll hear from me more frequently than that if I have anything especially new and cool to share.) Broadly speaking, our timeline for completion of the album is as follows:

November 2018
Wetdryvac, our project artist, gets paid as soon as campaign funds are disbursed and starts painting
Beth's remaining vocal and guitar parts are recorded

December 2018 - January 2019
Final recording sessions for local band members and guest/session musicians
Some finished art begins to be available

February 2019
Elizabeth visits to record her remaining violin and vocal parts
Album art complete; graphic design of album package begins
Dave works toward final mixes of all tracks

March 2019
Backer surveys sent out
Final mixes completed
Package/graphic design completed
Album sent away for mastering

April 2019
CDs replicated and received
Rewards assembled for shipping and distribution

May-June 2019
The Hero's Journey is released!

I'll be sure to keep all you informed on our progress as the next phase of our journey unfolds.

Until later - cheers!
Beth

OVFF recap - and 100 BACKERS!
over 5 years ago – Sun, Oct 28, 2018 at 05:02:22 PM

Hi everyone,

My bandmates and I have returned from our trip to the Ohio Valley Filk Fest, which was wonderful beyond our wildest expectations. We had an amazing weekend playing music with old friends we don't see enough and making new friends too. Just as importantly, we played one of the best shows we've ever played.

All four of the Player Characters also participated in OVFF's songwriting competitions in one way or another, and we acquitted ourselves quite nicely. Dave won the main contest with the theme of "Psychedelic" with his poetic original guitar composition "The Storm Sublime," while Elizabeth won Iron Filker (in which participants were challenged to write a song to the prompt "Mad Catter" by Sunday noon of the convention) with a jazzy little number about a weird Australian caterpillar that wears extra heads on its head to fool predators. (Beth and Justin will have to try again in future years - better luck next time, us!)

A special thanks to those of you who backed this Kickstarter after hearing one of our performances at OVFF, sitting with us in a music circle, or just listening to us rant about it in the hallway between events. We're so happy to be able to share this with you!

During OVFF we also passed an amazing milestone - 100 BACKERS! (Well, there are now 102 of you, to be exact!) Your pledges have brought us to 85% of our goal amount with just over a week left to go in our campaign. We greatly appreciate all your support. Please keep sharing our page with your friends and anyone you can think of who might be interested in backing this project.

Next steps: take a little time to recover from our trip, finish this campaign strong, then get back into the studio to make some more progress on the remaining parts needing to be recorded. We are so grateful that you've all chosen to join us on this journey.

Thanks again,
Beth (for all the PCs)

FUNDED!
over 5 years ago – Sun, Oct 28, 2018 at 02:25:33 PM

YOU DID IT!

From the bottom of my heart, thank you to the 120 backers (and counting!) who helped us reach our goal! Because of you, The Hero's Journey will soon become a reality.

Three days remain in this campaign. Because time is relatively short, we won't be pursuing any formal stretch goals at this time. (However, I wouldn't be surprised to be back on Kickstarter again at a later date to raise funds for a vinyl release of this record.) However, know that pledges above and beyond the goal amount still help us tremendously in providing a financial cushion for any unexpected cost overruns. Also, as previously planned, any money remaining after we've covered the album expenses will be shared directly with the band and the guest musicians. So please keep sharing the link and telling your friends that it's not too late to preorder their copy of the record!

Thanks again for everything! Stay tuned for further updates when the campaign ends.

Beth

A studio outtake for the halfway point
over 5 years ago – Wed, Oct 17, 2018 at 05:17:59 AM

Hello friends,

Today marks the halfway point of our campaign for The Hero's Journey. We are pleased to be 79% funded already! Thank you for your support - please keep telling your friends about this project, as well as anyone else you think might be interested in backing an awesome concept album.

To celebrate the campaign's success so far, I wanted to share a fun outtake from some of our recent studio work. Most of the recording for The Hero's Journey happens in my producer Dave Stagner's home studio, which means sharing space with his two dogs and occasionally stopping mid-take because one of them is barking, stomping around upstairs (it's a basement studio), or otherwise making noise that might show up on a recording. The dogs were being especially stompy on the night that we had gathered a sizable group of musicians to record "The Crossing of the First Threshold" and "The Crossing of the Return Threshold," and...well, just listen.

(The voices you hear belong to me [Beth], Dave, our drummer Justin Hartley, and guest musicians Sarah Ravely and Kelly Reich of Candles Enough.)

And the lyrics to that parody, if you were wondering:

I thank you for your footsteps, o guardian of my house
You think you're big and scary, but you wouldn't hurt a mouse
We appreciate your barking when we're trying to record
Hail and welcome to the album, go lay down upon the floor

We hope you're all almost as amused by this as we were. (c:

Stay tuned for more news after we've returned from OVFF!

Thanks for everything,
Beth

Week 1 Recap: Over 2/3 Funded!
over 5 years ago – Sun, Oct 07, 2018 at 08:07:37 AM

Hello friends,

As our campaign for The Hero's Journey approaches the end of its first week, we are already at 69% of our fundraising goal! I can't even tell you how many times I've refreshed my Kickstarter dashboard in the past six days, or how thrilling it's been to watch the number of backers and pledges slowly creep upward. Thank you for everything you've done, and everything you continue to do, to support this project!

As of this writing, I've sent a download code for the Departure EP to every current backer who claimed a reward tier that included it. (If you didn't receive yours, please get in touch and I'll re-send.) The band and I hope you're enjoying the demos! Dave Stagner, our producer, wrote a lovely post on Medium about the process of mixing and recording Departure. Please check it out if you'd like some in-depth liner notes about the songs and their arrangements and mixes.

Despite all that time spent on frequent Kickstarter dashboard refreshes, work on the album has continued. Earlier this week, Dave had a recording session with Nikki Huls, a founding member of the Player Characters who will be contributing backing vocals to several tracks on the record. Her harmonies sound amazing, and Dave reports that it was wonderful to be in the studio with her again. He'll be having another session with her soon to hopefully wrap up her remaining parts.

The Player Characters are also rehearsing for our show at the Ohio Valley Filk Fest, a filk music convention which takes place in Columbus, Ohio, USA from October 19-21, 2018. We're especially excited because all four members of our band will be performing together at the con for the first time in over a year!

We'll be playing a show of entirely Hero's Journey material on the main stage on Sunday of the con. We're also covering another artist's Pegasus Award-nominated song during the Pegasus nominees concert on Friday night. Rumor also has it that several of the Player Characters plan to enter new songs in the main songwriting competition and/or Iron Filker (in which a topic is announced on Friday and contestants are challenged to write a song about it by Sunday). And of course there will be music circles. Many, many music circles. We'd love to catch up with you at the con and share a circle with you, so please seek us out and say hi if you'll be there! We have badge ribbons to share and everything!

Thanks again for backing this campaign and helping make The Hero's Journey a reality. I'll be sure to keep you all updated as things continue to progress!

Beth (for all the Player Characters)