Kate Lynne Logan on cancelling her Kickstarter and taking the ‘pre-sale’ approach on bandcamp.

Kate Lynne Logan is a wonderful songwriter that I’ve been blessed to cross paths with since my move to Seattle. She was introduced to me by a mutual songwriting, performing friend Jessica Lynne (who, unrelatedly, has also had great success with fundraising) and plays regularly at one of the same gigs as me, out at Seatac Airport.

About a month ago, I got a message from Kate Lynne, letting me know about her Kickstarter campaign, which I shared on my facebook page, because I really admire her work. I checked for it today and while she had raised over $ 1,400, she’d cancelled the project. So, digging deeper and looking through her facebook, I noticed she was promoting pre-sales through her bandcamp page with the same intention. Raise money, release music.

I asked her some questions about it…

Fleur: Kate Lynne, you’re throwing out the rule book and creating your own path by cancelling your kickstarter and taking your fans with you to bandcamp. I like it. I like that you retain control of your audience that way. What was the straw that broke the (kickstarter) camels back?
Kate Lynne: To be honest, I’ve never felt particularly keen on Kickstarter, because it’s “all or nothing,” You could come close to goal with contributions from those who really want the music and end up dismissing their pre-orders and requests. However, it does seem to be the typical way to fund an album as an independent, so I tried it, briefly. By my math calculations, it was already too far behind to make goal, and I was disheartened at losing what little support I had. Kickstarter also carries a negative stigma because it’s viewed as “charity” to a lot of people, which just isn’t true. It’s pre-ordering and receiving something you paid for. It’s hard to break away from the perception that this is just a pet hobby I have, and people should “give” to my side thing, instead of this being a legitimate business and livelihood. I also had many things related to the album fall apart behind the scenes that contributed to me pulling the campaign.

Fleur: What are the perks of Bandcamp over Kickstarter?
Kate Lynne: The perk of Bandcamp is that there aren’t any hoops to jump through. It’s straight-forward pre-ordering. I don’t have to do anything more than my life’s work, which is to create music and record it. With kickstarter, you have to come up with all sorts of packages that can really detract from the music itself in my opinion, and are overly stressful, as the price of fulfilling rewards isn’t included in the baseline goal for recording.

Fleur: Are there any downfalls of going the route you’ve chosen? Will you miss anything from Kickstarter?
Kate Lynne: The downfall is Kickstarter creates a sense of urgency that Bandcamp doesn’t. I may not get the same level of pre-orders through Bandcamp as I would through a Kickstarter. And a lot of people are familiar with Kickstarter. Bandcamp is more obscure and not as many people understand or use it.

Fleur: Tell me about the upcoming project. (Has it been recorded yet, mixed and mastered etc?). What stage are you at?
Kate Lynne: The sale of the acoustic album is going toward a full production album – that’s why I’m taking pre orders. For my new acoustic album, I’ve sent the scratch demos to my engineer, collected various parts from other musicians for the arrangements, and I go in this week to begin recording the “real” vocals and rhythm guitar parts I play. The album is projected to be finished, mastered, and mailed in May 2016.

Fleur: Tell me about the songs. Do the songs have a certain flavor that’s different to your earlier work? Is there a recurring theme, or are they all quite different? What about production?
Kate Lynne: This album will be very different from any of my other work. There will be less production and the songs will sound more like they do when I play live solo or duo. It’s all mostly acoustic instruments, no big drums or synths or anything, like previous releases. Nothing like my latest single, Beautiful Storm. I’ll be going back to my roots as a folk/americana artist with these songs. There will be 4 brand new, never-before-released songs, and 2 other “re-imagined” acoustically.

Fleur: Tell me about your new campaign specifically. I suppose if you call it that at all?
Kate Lynne: I just want to get the music straight to the people. No frills. You order it for $10 and I’ll ship it to you. Simple as that.

Fleur: How much money do you need to make the project work?
Kate Lynne: I’ve already put in $ 350 and it will be $ 1,500 more by the end of this week. It’s hard to say how much more time in the studio will be necessary – it depends on how my vocal and guitar sessions go. The longer it takes on my end, the more money it costs, as studio time is by the hour. But I’m aiming for a $ 4,000 cap.

Fleur: Time line? How far off are you?
Kate Lynne: May 2016. We’ll probably wrap up mastering at the beginning of April.

Fleur: What is your proudest (favourite) moment within your campaign?
Kate Lynne: Support and encouragement from people I’ve never even met, who wrote to tell me how my music has impacted them, and how much they believe in me. And also just the thrill and purpose in recording music. I live for the studio.

Fleur: Have you crowd funded before?
Kate Lynne: Yes, over the past 5 years I have run a couple of “unsuccessful” campaigns. “Unsuccessful” meaning they didn’t reach goal. But I was able to keep the preorders made, as I used an alternate fundraising platform, IndieGoGo, as opposed to Kickstarter. Which is “you get what they contribute,” but has it’s own downfalls and difficulties.

Fleur: Anything else you want to say?
Kate Lynne: I’m super proud of these new songs. And my softer acoustic side is what people have asked to hear for a few years now. I like the integrity and congruency of the recordings sounding exactly like they will live. Some of the songs I’ve held onto for a really long time, because they just didn’t fit anywhere on any other project, and it feels like a happy secret I finally get to share.

To Support Kate Lynne Logan with her upcoming CD, make sure to visit her bandcamp page. I hope you enjoy her music as much as I do.

Fleur Z. Wood
Lovewood Music & Entertainment,
Songwriter/ Performer/ Guitar & Voice Tutor

www.thewlovers.com

My music on Bandcamp – listen here: fleurjack.bandcamp.com