current 94 - a demo song-in-progress, & some huge news. (strictly patron-only) (Patreon)

hallo loves.

thank you for all your beautiful comments on the weird al post. i gotta say the whole thing made me feel a little weepy. between that and the judy blume video i'm slowly working my way through all my unsung 80s heros. next up...? you tell me. maybe a john hughes appreciation project.

i'm back at home in bucolic woodstock, new york. neil is here too, working with some comic/TV friends in his writing cabin on lengthy discussions for a secret new project, and i'm in the next-door-amandaland-artcave while ash plays with his 4-year-old friend in the big house with his babysitter. life feels actually manageable, it's one of those rare moments.

here's the boy. he's gotten very into drawing, which of course makes my heart soar up to the moon and back. he woke me up at 7 am today banging on my head saying MAMA MAMA DRAWWWWWWW DRAWWWWWW and i had to take him, blrearily but happily, to a source of pens and paper.

so there's that.

i've been letting the email and the admin pile up for the better part of 11 days while i sucked every cell of marrow out of life with jason in new york, getting up early and staying out til late to take full advantage of my non-baby theater-making week. i am now facing the piles of the accumulated unanswered and un-done, as usual, and it feels just fine, because i actually (WHAT) built in time to deal with the fall-out. i'm trying to do this lately. just be realistic about what it takes to run this insane life with this many insane projects, and to actually build in TIME to attack the piles of admin and emails and decisions and phone calls that unfortunately cannot be handed off to a magical Someone Else. i am watching neil currently die under his own piles. we learn from each other. the kid makes it both easier and harder...on the one hand, it's easier to say "fuck it" to doing admin, because it's easy to prioritize a toddler when they are standing right in front of you, so easy to love and so easy to prioritize. but it's harder to change from an artist who has always-always-been-able-to-work-whenever-i-want to an artist who has to work on a schedule.

i'm trying to embrace working on a schedule.

"drowning in the sound", "small hands, small heart" and "the ride" all got born because i held a art-gun to my head and made myself write within a time-crunch so that i could Thing The Song and keep myself on track financially. i am so, so goddam proud of all those songs, and i don't regret at all that i wrote and produced them, as demos, very quickly. and as you know, i'm about to ease up that "oh shit" burden by Thinging each month.

i've also been having a come to jesus with myself since having the miscarriage over christmas, since i'd cleared my schedule for the summer and fall and beyond to have a baby, and now there's no baby. and it's difficult in the midst of a miscarriage to pick up a phone to your booking agent and just go back to plan A. it's too painful. i needed to grieve for a while, and it felt tasteless in my own head to think about the future and records and business and touring while i was still mourning the loss.

y'all know me. i run on the gas of momentum and action and forward motion and i cope by making, and now that i've had my few months to grieve, i'm sort of on fire and creation and connection calls to help cauterize the wounds.

anyway, i've come to the decision in the past few weeks (and also, reading your comments has helped...A LOT). 

i'm going to go into the studio in september and october and MAKE A NEW RECORD. a real one. a whole one. john congleton, who created "theatre is evil" with me, is going to produce it. 

it's time. 

i haven't made a real, new, solo record since 2012. everything else since then (the dad record, the edward record, the job songs with jason, piano is evil) has all felt really fulfilling, but not quite official.

this is gonna be a real real record.

i am going to pull a lot of the patreon material (like "the ride" and "bigger on the inside") for the album, but i won't be using everything i've put out. some songs might wait for later albums or just stay on the internet-only forever, since i really want this one to have a distinct flavor and tell one story. i have a vision for a whole. i'm also writing new material, and i want to make sure there is enough TOTALLY NEW stuff on the record that you guys aren't just getting a pile of songs you've already heard, although EVERYTHING is going to be re-recorded, more beautifully, more professionally, more cohesively. 

i also have a vision for a world tour to go along with this record.

it's funny, but the entire concept for the tour itself, which will be solo piano and ukulele, hit me like a ton of bricks while i was sitting and watching the weird al show. i was thinking about songwriting and storytelling and stages and venues and it all came together like one giant present-package in my head.

you may find it hard to believe (i know i do) but i have NEVER, in my LIFE, actually embarked on a world solo tour. i've bopped around and played solo shows here or there, but they are always somewhat haphazardly organized and by the seat of my pants...not that i don't love that, but....

the who killed amanda palmer tour in 2008/2009 was me and a piano and a ton of performers from the australian-based danger ensemble... and a cellist and a violinist...

 
the theatre is evil tour was me and rock band....and a lot of props.

....i've never actually built a whole tour that was just about me getting on stage alone. i think i've been sort of afraid. i like having my friends around, as you know.

but this one will be just me, and i have a lot to say, and a lot of songs to play, and a lot of stories to tell, and i want to do it with class, and with rehearsal, and with beautiful production, so that it feels like a show with a point. i am a theater person, as you know. i'm not sure the concept for this tour would have germinated quite this way if i hadn't been steeping myself in theater-world all week with jason, looking at so many kinds of shows and stages and thinking deeply about what it is that people like me and jason have to offer to the world which is somehow different from, say, broadway.

anyway.

that's my big announcement. i'm very fucking excited about it and right now, the plan is to put this album out in spring of 2019 and tour the better part of a year, on and off so that i can make sure i clock enough time as a mother that i am not leaving my child an orphan.

............

and with that, my dears....and with the unveiling of the new patreon tiers (I AM SO SO SO EXCITED) just around the corner....

i'm sending you a real-ass demo.

this is the first time i am sending you all a demo of a song that is probably going to change/grow, but, in a strange way, i'm in love enough with this demo that i'm happy to let it leak, find ears, be heard by you. i just sent this one to john congleton along with a pile of demos that you haven't heard that i recorded when i was in south africa.

the song itself was written while i was working on the "i can spin a rainbow" record with edward at imogen's house...i wrote it very late one night on imogen's rickety grand piano. i'm going to try to track down the actual phone demo from back then and send it to the $5 patrons.

i still think it needs another section. maybe a bridge. but it might not. and i might never find a way to finish it or put it on the record. who knows what fate holds

and you'll notice i'm doing this differently: there's no youtube track, there's no way for the public to access this song (so please please don't share the song link on social media, mkay?). this is just a raw file for you to listen to.

as i start work up to the record, i'm going to be getting more and more greedy about the demos and keeping them just with you and off the web. you'll notice that i never put "the ride" up on the internet. i'm hoarding it. it's too good. i want it's public debut to be on the record, when it comes out, fully arranged. 

i may even pull "drowning in the sound" and "small hands" (now that they've gathered money for charity off youtube and bandcamp (...and maybe even pull "thing about things" and "bigger on the inside"). or i may just re-title them as demos. happy to hear y'alls input about that, if you have thoughts. 

any more about this song....?

not really. 

it's personal, and wants no explanation.

you can stream directly via patreon at the top of this post (if you're reading this via email - click through to go to the post to stream the song.)

downloads are about to be emailed to the $3+ folks.

please enjoy it as much as i enjoyed recording it. happy to hear your thoughts as always. i'm readin' comments.
love

x
a

p.s. oh and and the credits:

recorded at: milestone studios, cape town, south africa.
engineer: murray anderson.
voice and piano: amanda palmer, that's me, yeah.

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

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