NEW "JUDY BLUME" VIDEO & my essay for HuffPo (+ new U.K. DATES) (Patreon)

hello loves.

please don't skip this one, because....THIS IS A GOOD ONE. 

but if you're in a rush...

1) **NEW UK DATES AT BOTTOM OF POST !**

2)  tl;dr...it's judy blume's 80th birthday and i have a brand new awesomesauce video and essay up today on the huffington post: https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/amanda-palmer-judy-blume-matters_us_5a7b03a5e4b07af4e81fcadd

3) WATCH THE JUDY BLUME VIDEO ON YOUTUBE
https://youtu.be/_k02Waw4WXk

4) HERE IS YOUR DOWNLOAD CODE FOR THE SONG ITSELF:

MP3: https://we.tl/vl8mvB05ld
WAV: https://we.tl/IWLGLVGd4z

once again, i'm giving the download of the song to ALL patrons (including $1 ones). the song is up on bandcamp FOR FREE/PWYW (https://amandapalmer.bandcamp.com/track/judy-blume-4) and the $3+ patrons are going to get sent a download link for the video itself in a second. $5 folks...we have a surprise coming :)

breathe, amanda, breathe

in generalllll, i owe you a long-ass post about all sort of patreon-related stuff, and i'm still reading through all of your epic comments from this last post about patreon-stuffs. don't get me wrong, i love having this problem. reading 1,000+ real, deep comments is my pleasure. it just takes a long-ass time to read evvvverything.

RIGHT NOW, i'm hitting "thing" and you're getting a beautiful audio recording of "judy blume" and the beautiful (and kleenex-worthy) video jason webley and i made for her 80th birthday.

this is jason's directorial debut for another artist and i think he KILLED IT. a local new orleans filmmaker, sean o'grady, also came on super-last minute and did a stupendous job with a fantastic local crew (on almost no notice). 

i also wrote a long essay called "why judy blume matters" to go along with the video, and the huffington post is premiering the video along with the writing. 

JUDY BUME OVERLOAD. but that's okay. it's her goddamn 80th birthday and why not.

so you get to watch...and read.

please **share the hell** out of the huffington post link!!!!! it's going out on a lot of their international channels today and i’d love for it to get a lot of traffic. 

and....thank you, thank you, thank you for helping me make this. it literally would have been impossible without this patreon. it stands to make no profit. indeed, as per that facebook-killing-comedy article i shared yesterday: this is the kind of stuff that just dies an existential death...since you cannot possibly “make money“ making a weird video like this. how?
nobody would deal with a paywall to see it. nobody would buy the DVD. there's no way i would have done a 3-day kickstarter to try to convince people this was a necessary Thing (and with no rewards but the art itself). you get the idea. videos like this don't make money (for me, at least) unless they're patronized.

and huffington post (bless them) paid me exactly nothing for the piece i wrote. but i got to happily sit at home and work on it for two whole days because...patreon. 

so THANK YOU. without you, nothing. 

ok: here it is!

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/amanda-palmer-judy-blume-matters_us_5a7b03a5e4b07af4e81fcadd

......

and now, since we didn't build a project page on amandapalmer.net for this one...here's some backstage background on the project.

WARNING: spoilers, so please PLEASE watch the video FIRST. k? k. PROMISE. 

also: i wanted to post a ton of photos here but i don't wanna spoil the video in case people scrolled... so i'll post em up in a few days. 

ok. 

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about a month ago, this nice lady named jennifer got in touch with me and neil and said she was throwing a celebration for judy blume's 80th birthday and asked us to come/read/perform. and i was like ARGGHHH we are going to be in cape town. she asked if we could send video messages in lieu of our person-bodies. this got me thinking. i've played my judy blume song for judy blume, but i've always always wanted to make a video for it. it just feels like a song that needs a video. the video would need lots of books in it. and people reading books alone but also being together. so i asked nice jennifer: if i sent a whole video, would she play it at the event? she said fuck yeah. and i was like: ok...the worst thing that'll happen is i'll have to find a piano and give someone an iphone and i'll play and record it. but maybe something more magical will happen. and i left it at that.

then i went to new orleans for a little more than a week. neil came with me, and ash, and jason webley met us down there....jason and i were supposed to spend a week together in new orleans working on other (secret, for now) songwriting projects. and we wanted to be somewhere fun, and warm. we'd had the idea that we might whip up a co-written song together and maybe haul ourselves over to the music box village - these wonderful local artists/freaks who are pals of ours. (words cannot explain: go see their website).

but when we got to new orleans it was BALLS COLD.

like: so cold you didn't want to work outside, or make a crew work outside, or do anything outside except maybe look at it through a window. dude, THERE WAS ICE ON THE SIDEWALK. so jason and i went to our meeting at the music box and were like, well, maybe this isn't the week to do something here, it's BALLS COLD, and everybody nodded, yeah, it's balls cold.

and so we sat there for an hour chatting with rusty and alita from the music box about the awesome things they were doing, and how their show with peaches went (awesome), and how the gogol bordello show went (um, not as awesome according to the music box folks, but still awesome), and we all got excited about doing a future project with more lead time. and then an hour had gone by, and everybody had to go, and literally as we were standing up to go, i said "jason is going to kill me, because this isn't what we came here to do, but since we're changing tracks, you guys might be able to help me with a possible other project i might try to do..."

and i explained my judy blume dilemma. and literally, i shit you not, within six hours we had a location, a piano rented, and volunteers were signing up left and right and librarians were being phoned. THAT IS HOW AWESOME the folks from the music box were. we didn't even talk about money, they just started making phone calls and helping us the fuck out to get a huge video concept made in six days' time.

it was incredible. and i was like: these are the kinda people i like working with. let's do shit people. i told jason that i thought he'd make a phenomenal director, but that this wasn't why we came to new orleans, so for fucks' sake don't say yes unless you really feel like devoting a week of your life to my judy blume song. and jason was like: i wanna do it.

six days later we had full reign over this incredible house called wonderland, owned by perpetual-patron-of-the-arts stacy hoover (yes, that hoover family). and six days later we also had 60 judy blume paperback and hardback books care of various libraries, people-donating, and my assistant michael (who as you can see, is becoming an integral part of every project) drove to three used bookstores in new orleans (walls of books, the book rack of metairie, and blue cyprus, THANK YOU). we also had a cast of paid actors and last-shot volunteers from all over the city, younger, older, people from all walks of judy-blume-worshippin' life, and we catered a party to throw at the end of the night (stacy was psyched). we bought a lot of wine. if you want to feel good about where your patreon money is going, a lot of it went to pay the cast and crew and rent lights, but a lot of it went to wine. 

on shoot day (which was a saturday), the crew loaded in at 6 am and i showed up around 8 am to get into costume and minimal hair-n-make-up while neil took care of ash around the corner. i did the main piano take at around 10 am - which has to be a record for earliest recorded-amanda-voice in the history of my studio career. 

the rest of the day was spent keeping the cast and extras happy as everybody waited for their shots, and luckily (REALLY luckily) it wasn't balls cold out anymore...it was a beautiful 70-degree day, and stacy opened up her gorgeous backyard and everywhere you went, there was peoples. 

here's a shot of me and the crew...that's jason with all the hair.

here's our wonderful sound team (that's steve in the purple & AFP shirt) hiding out in the hall....

and here's sean o'grady shooting neil....who is reading a special book :)

and i hope i don't need to say too much about the song itself.

i think it speaks for itself.

and as for my feelings about judy blume and her importance....just read the article.

i love you all.

AND VOILA

THE NEW U.K. DATES!!!!!! not on sale yet, but will be in a second. SAVE THE DATES. i'll be announcing these far and wide later this week. patrons of all levels, as usual, get first dibbs on all tickets. git ready!

May 4 – Gateshead, The Sage

May 6 – Birmingham, Town Hall

May 7 – Liverpool, St George’s Hall

May 10 – Carmarthen, Lyric Theatre

May 11 – Bath, The Forum (Bath Festival!!)

May 28 - Dublin, National Concert Hall

...more shows to be announced soon....(ahem, brighton! and more. no london this time round since i just played union chapel...)

patreon presale will start at 10am GMT on wednesday,  february 14th

public onsale starts at 10am GMT, friday, february 16th

more info on the presale will be shared here soon, and all ticketing details for the public sale, always: http://amandapalmer.net/shows/ 

LOVE

LOVE

LOVE

xxx

AFP

p.s. oh almost forgot. the "judy blume" cover/artwork credits: sarrah danzinger took the photo and the team at fame house did the layout.

---------THE NEVER-ENDING AS ALWAYS---------

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