i’m taking TRISTAN INTO THE STUDIO!!! help us pay for it, mofos.

HOLA COMRADES!!!!

what? more fucked-up weird left-field exciting news?  bet yo’ ass.

i cannot sit still for one minute, i swear. whatever, i’m used to it. you should be used to it too, at this point….

and….here we GO.

last month – amidst planning the dolls reunion tour, rehearsing for “cabaret” (and planning the VIP experience/LNFC shows), and digging in to a boatload of other crazy shit – i found a lad and some of his friends, hanging outside the Berklee School of Music while walking home from a lunch with brian on newbury street:

i started talking to them and it turned out this lad was a fan, and he asked if i would listen to his music. so i invited him to my apartment on the spot and he played me his songs. the FULL story is well chronicled via my blog, HERE.

and? of course, i webcasted him. he didn’t seem to mind, the kid is 17 and a total rock star. a lot of you saw it, or have seen the archive of it.

the lad is named Tristan Allen. he’s from upstate NY. HERE he is on myspace and HERE he is on facebook, and HERE he is playing my piano:

t & me & alejandra & nicola:

his piano songs BLEW MY FUCKING MIND. and everybody else’s. here’s the whole 90 minute webcast:

so?

tristan doesn’t have any decent recording of his piano music.

i thought maybe i’d help him out with this. i know people with studios and pianos in boston. and i’m home, so why not?

so now, ladies and gents….i am proud to announce that on sunday, i am taking tristan into a studio in cambridge, MA, to record his first EP record! hoorah.

i cleared it with his mom. serious.

she’s driving him here friday night, they’re going to see “cabaret”, we’re going to practice sunday, and then they’ll peel out of here late sunday night in time to get tristan back to school on monday.

tristan and i are planning on coming up with a few duos of improvised (yet slightly structured) music to include on the recordings.

this is so awesome.

we’ve been emailing back and forth about artwork for a CD and tristan and one of his artist firends at home in upstate NY are working on it. it’s absolutely BEAUTIFUL. really.

i’ve decided to team up with the amazing folks at kickstarter, who i’ve gotten to know lately. why? because we need a way to pay for this (the recording studio and printing up CDs cost BREAD).

it doesn’t cost a LOT, but it costs something (about 3k), and i figured this would be an awesome use of their site…lots of my friends have been using it (zoe boekbinder, sxip shirey, and bunches of others), but i have yet to use it for one of my own projects. but THIS…is just perfect.

you can go HERE and chip in anywhere from a dollar on up to help fund this thing. it works kind of like a pre-order as well. (and to incentivize you – we may be musicians but we’re not idiots – we’re adding some cool bonuses at the higher levels):

• $5: digital download (delivered via our other good friends at bandcamp, so that you can get the album in all sorts of schmexy geek-friendly formats…and yes, they do MP3 too. plus we’ll send out the download codes to the kickstarter supporters before the EP’s available anywhere else)

• $15: limited edition tristan allen debut CD (yes, the very one you’re paying to help me & him make) + download code (sent to kickstarter supporters before anyone else)

• $25: limited edition tristan allen debut CD SIGNED by me and tristan with a thank-you card from us + download code (sent to kickstarter supporters before anyone else)

• $100: your name in the CD (under a special “thank you” section), a copy of the CD (signed and personalized by me & tristan), a thank-you card, download code (sent to kickstarter supporters before anyone else), AND an invitation to the recording session THIS WEEKEND (more on that below)…

we’re aiming to raise $3,000 for the recording, production, and shipping of the CDs (which i think is pretty damn reasonable and awesome and we can TOTALLY do). if we make more than that, tristan will have some money to put towards his next recording, or maybe we can put the money towards capital for printing vinyl.

plus, honestly, aside from wanting to show tristan some love and help him get his stuff out into the world….you guys need to know about kickstarter. they&#8
217;re helping all sorts of people FUND THEIR ART PROJECTS. some of it might be spontaneous (like this), and some of it is well-planned and orchestrated. in early july – before i knew if the radiohead release was going to succeed or tank – i put up a little video about THE FUTURE and ART and how I SEE THINGS GOING. you should watch it:

kickstarter (and bandcamp) are helping do THAT. while you’re there pitching in some cash towards tristan, you should really poke around their sites, there’s some great stuff going down. really.

SO

this sunday, we RECORD in CAMBRIDGE at a SECRET LOCATION!

you can learn more/donate (which is kind of like a pre-order assuming you donate more than $5) HERE.

and if you want to come to the recording session/show, be sure to throw that $100 in quick ‘cause space is VERY limited. once you donate – and this is VERY important – e-mail sean and he’ll take your name for the guestlist and get you the info on where to be and when to be there.

tristan will record (and play). i’ll play. and we are just gonna go ‘til we go. i have monday off and there’s no curfew, so we’ll see what happens.

we’ll probably also twitter away some tickets for the hell of it so be sure to follow @AFPwire for that.

i’m sure some of y’all have questions, so i’m gonna turn this blog over to sean (@indeciSEAN) who is helping run this whole thing….

SEAN, TAKE IT.

_____________

While I am sure there are some very specific questions some of you have, there are a couple of things I just know are gonna come up. Please read on a bit and see if maybe I gotcha covered, and if I don’t feel free to ask us HERE on The Shadowbox or HERE on Twitter (I’ll respond ASAP).

No, no, you’re not out of luck, and being that we’re not entirely sure how this is going to go I can’t fully answer your question, but I’ll try. We’re printing 1000 CDs (actually a little more than 1000 so Tristan has some for his family and such). If those sell out REALLY quickly, we’ll have a pow-wow and see about printing more (but like UkuleleHead, make sure there are some really special differentiations). If they don’t all sell by the time we close down the fundraising (Sunday evening EST), then we’ll put up the remainders on Bandcamp when the album goes up for sale. And that’s part 2 for yah: If you want to support this kid but won’t have money ‘til October or something, you can grab the digital download from him and throw in a few extra bucks.

Motherfucker, you have no idea how much I loathe CDs. But that story’s for another day. Yes, the CD medium is on its last legs, BUT, we wanted to be able to keep this simple and QUICK. Vinyl ain’t quick (and it certainly isn’t as simple as CDs). Tristan, Amanda, and myself are working with our friends at Furnace MFG (who did UkuleleHead and who will surely be doing some other AFP-goodness in the future) to create something nice (and as enviro-friendly as possible). Hopefully despite the fact it’s not gonna work on your turntable and you could’ve just burned the content of the disc onto a 30 cent CD-R, we’ll give you your $15+ worth and you’ll feel incredibly special for the rest of your life that you have a real-deal Tristan Allen debut. And who knows, maybe he’ll blow up and that investment will put your kid through college in twenty years…you never know…

Yes! As soon as it’s ready to go, we’ll add it to Bandcamp (follow @AFPwire to know when). Depending on how things go, I’ll talk with Tristan and Amanda and see about adding it to iTunes and Amazon and all that jazz, but as a friendly reminder: BANDCAMP WORKS WORLDWIDE, CAN DELIVER MUSIC TO YOU IN ALMOST ANY FORMAT imaginable, WE CAN BUNDLE FUN LITTLE ‘EXTRA’ STUFF WITH THE MUSIC, and IT IS THE MOST DIRECT WAY TO SUPPORT A MUSICIAN IN EXCHANGE FOR THEIR (DOWNLOADED) MUSIC. I know most people don’t yell “friendly reminders”, but I yell it with LOVE.

Any other questions?

Again, feel free to hit us up HERE or poke me HERE on Twitter.

And thank you all for your support, both with Amanda, and – in advance – for Tristan.

CLICK TO SUPPORT/FIND OUT MORE: