Mark Moldre

MY POZIBLE GOAL

My fourth album ‘Nambucca Fables’ is finally finished and ready to release in March 2023. I would be incredibly appreciative of your help to manufacture and publicise it's release on CD and vinyl. I am a completely self managed, self funded, independent artist.

I'm really happy to say that the recording, mixing and mastering of my new album is complete. So this is where I turn to you, dear listener, in the hope that I can get this over the finish line with your assistance. I've started my Pozible goal at $4500 - this will cover CD and vinyl manufacture. I'm hoping that I can also raise enough, with your help, to cover publicity, which means raising another $2000. Optimism!

THE BACK STORY

NB  :  Check out the mini doco on the making of the album in the link above.

Back in mid 2019 things were looking pretty bright musically. I’d recently returned from a series of incredible shows in France, I’d finished recording my new album Fever Dreams and I’d wrapped up a very successful Pozible campaign, raising over $8,000 to release our newly recorded racket on vinyl and CD.

Unfortunately things didn’t remain that way. Soon after I released Fever Dreams my Mother was diagnosed with a very aggressive cancer. I made the decision to cancel all my shows - losing my pre-booked interstate flights in the process. Sadly I lost my Mum, in six short weeks after the diagnosis. She passed away quietly in November 2019. Australia was on fire at the time. Bushfires were raging across the country, but I was mostly oblivious…a huge chunk of my existence had gone up in smoke. Floods followed and as we all know Covid came next. We had been invited to return to France to play the Binic FoIk Blues Festival in July 2020, the National Folk Festival (Canberra) and Coast Fest (NSW Central Coast) - but of course all these plans were cancelled due to the pandemic. I feel like I meandered and wandered through this whole period in a daze, lost in grief. Then I retreated. 

The lockdowns began. I spent more time with my wife, kids and my Dad. Went camping with my son. Dad got out his accordion and we played old Estonian folk songs (his birth place). I discovered 4 pieces of paper on which Mum had scrawled her childhood memories tucked away in a drawer. I read them over and over, tucking away snippets in my mind for song inspiration. I tracked my Mum’s history by digitising old photos and putting them into chronological order. I watched the mini-series Chernobyl and somehow, in my mind, it became a metaphor for my mothers passing. The unstoppable, destructive force of the nuclear reactor somehow reminded me of the definitive nature of my mothers cancer. There was no slowing it down. As the nuclear accident seeped its way into Chernobyl’s  forests, trees, the ground, the wildlife….so my mothers cancer was an insidious, unstoppable force that spread throughout her body without respite. 

I started painting, I found it to be incredibly therapeutic, more so than music at first. Canvases were spread across my music room…paint spattered across my desk and computer. Then, very slowly, I started to write songs. I picked up my guitar. I absolutely laboured over every word, chord and phrase. I likely drove my bandmates crazy by asking for their opinion on everything I wrote. Second guessing my every move. Rewriting song after song and line after line. My confidence was shot. But little by little ideas started to take shape. My history, Mum’s memories, Chernobyl, reconnecting with nature, love and grief all started to spill out on the pages of my notebooks.

Then something incredible happened…..but, to tell this part of the story I need to back track a little…

THE CATALYST

My grandad had passed away back in 1992. He had told my Mum, before he died, that he wanted me to have his old acoustic guitar - a yellow 1940’s Tex Morton signature model (affectionately called by many a "butter box" guitar). My grandad was a Tex fan and he used to yodel and sing to his 10 kids, including my Mum, on their small homestead at Nambucca Heads. But strangely, after we lost him, the guitar disappeared. We were told by members of my mothers family that it had likely been burned by his second wife who destroyed a lot of family history in a vengeful bonfire. Mum and I tried to track it down for a couple of years - calling my uncles and aunts, but we had no luck and gave up. I kept my eyes peeled over the years on eBay and Gumtree for something similar but to no avail.

Fast forward to 2021, a little over a year after my Mum has passed away. A cousin of mine finds an old, battered guitar case in her basement. Inside was a small, yellow steel string with a cowboy on a horse painted on the face. It was a little worse for wear…it certainly needed some TLC but it was without a doubt my grandfathers Tex Morton. After a conversation with my sister, she arranged for it to be sent to my house, while I’m struggling to write songs about Mums history and deal with our loss. That guitar opened the floodgates. Songs and instrumentals came fast. I wrote a whole swathe of songs on it. Songs about Mum, written on the guitar that her Dad used to sit and strum whilst singing songs to her over 60 years earlier. The guitar we searched for together and thought was destroyed. The timing still takes my breath away. I even wrote a song about the guitar itself entitled “Ghost Guitar”.

NAMBUCCA FABLES

My new album is now mixed and mastered. It’s without  a doubt my most personal collection. It sounds more like me than anything that has come before it. On my last two albums I deliberately shyed away from writing personal stories. This time I’ve laboured over every lyric - there’s not a single line on this album isn’t filled with memories, my history, my grief or the difficulties of navigating the past 3 years. Every word counts. I’ve named it Nambucca Fables after my Mum's hometown on the Mid North Coast of NSW. 

It features my usual band - 

I played acoustic and electric guitars, banjo, melodica, percussion, xylophone, harmonica and sang.

Jamie Hutchings on guitar/percussion/backing vocals.
Scott Hutchings on drums.

Reuben Wills on bass. 

Adam Lang on banjo and slide guitar.

You’ll also hear special guests Jadey O’Regan and Tim Byron on keys, Michael Bridges on violin, Jeanne Poisson and Leanne Clarey on backing vocals and Tim Kevin on piano and melodica. 

All through the pandemic, lockdowns and weather chaos, Tim Kevin (The Apartments, Holly Throsby, Youth Group) did an incredible job of pulling all the musical threads together at Tempe River Studios with his engineering and mixing skills. A few “lockdown” tracks have also been mixed by Jamie Hutchings and myself. And, this is the first time that I have put on the producers hat for one of my own records. Although, I’ve got to admit, I’ve had a lot of assistance. I’m chuffed/blessed to be surrounded by great friends. 

Up to this stage I’ve funded every last red cent on this project. I also have a proven track record when it comes to getting album projects over the finish line. I've always paid for recording, mixing and mastering myself. And with many previous albums I have been lucky enough to have a record label to cover the rest. This release will be completely independent. 

But now I’m asking you for some help to get it over the line.  (see my Budget Overview at the bottom of this page) Your involvement will see this album released on vinyl and CD in 2023. I’ve prepared a bunch of special rewards in return for your hard earned dollars. I’m hoping I can make the limited edition vinyl release something special - perhaps a gatefold cover or coloured vinyl. I can’t tell you how much I appreciated your assistance through my last Pozible campaign. It’s been a few years since my last release and I assure you that it’ll be worth the wait!

Mark xx

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A Clip From FEVER DREAMS a couple of years back...

PRESS FOR PREVIOUS RELEASES

“Hot band, great songs, top-shelf performances …..This is music that breathes, that swings, that howls at the moon with a wild-eyed grin…..What is happening on Fever Dreams is a band at its hard-rocking peak, an outfit that has played together long enough to find their sonic groove, bringing the absolute maximum out of Moldre’s finest set of tunes.” LOUD MOUTH – Noel Mengel

“Ten originals crackle with spontaneity and raw energy….Fever Dreams is a shape shifting exploration of blues and jazz, rough around the edges and an entirely compelling listen” RHYTHMS – Trevor J. Leeden 

“HOT ALBUM : Hypnotic, rollicking and restless. Fans Of Tom Waits, Nick Cave and Bob Dylan should immediately investigate” Jeff Jenkins THE MUSIC

“An absolutely superb record…..Fever Dreams is a superlative album.” – Stuart Coupe RHYTHMS

“Surreal, wacky, thrilling and edgy. Moldre displays his capacity to mix country rockers, electric blues, jazzy folk and dreamy ballads and yet still end up with an album that hangs together coherently, from start to finish… Josephine and Fever Dreams II recall his fellow countryman Nick Cave….” LONESOME HIGHWAY (Declan Culliton -Ireland)

“It is arresting, compelling and brilliant. Lyrically, it is rich and rewarding. ….Fever Dreams can’t be easily explained, nor can it be easily ignored.” Jolene: The Country Music Blog

“Anyone who is a fan of Tom Waits should investigate this guy” David Castle (ABC)

(Leave Me Where You Found Me) is the kind of tune I wanna lock arms and rotate on the dance floor to” Henry Wagons (Tower Of Song, Double J)

“A broad spectrum of cracked Americana…excellent work… I highly, highly recommend it” Paul Gough (2serFM/ABC/Pimpod)

“One of my favourite Australian artists and his best record yet” Vinny Ramone (THE OUTPOST 2serFM)

“True Detective Soundtrack via Lera Lynn meets Twin Peaks”
“A really good listen, categorised as Americana but it’s more than that, it’s genre-hopping.”
 LONESOME HIGHWAY RADIO IRELAND (Declan Culliton, Stephen Rapid and Paul McGee)

SYDNEY MORNING HERALD: CD OF THE WEEK  “Imagine a less garrulous and noisy Tom Waits (for example the New orleans brass and clarinet in Everything I Need Is Here) a late-night Ryan Adams (the droopy eyed Dreamtime Blues) and a kind of Sydney Willie Nelson (I Don’t Know What’s Become Of Her) and you’ll have a sense of the relaxed but never actually soft atmosphere here.” Bernard Zuel

STACK MAGAZINE:  “Opening with a rumbling tuba, Mark Moldre’s second album has you thinking he could be an Aussie version of Tom Waits. But he’s a sweeter singer. An Ear To The Earth is filled with delightful detours, switching from blues to roots to jazz. Very tasty indeed.” ★ ★ ★ ★ Jeff Jenkins

POST TO WIRE:   “An Ear To The Earth is exactly what you want from an artist – a record that shows they’re stretching themselves, expanding their art and reverentially experimenting with the great art of songwriting.” 8/10 Chris Familton

MESS AND NOISE:   “Quixotic and genre defying”

NO DEPRESSION: “Mark Moldre has slowly but surely carved out a wonderful body of work…Moldre has now gone one step further and both refined and expanded his stylistic palette on his new 2013 album An Ear To The Earth, exploring his interests in jazz, blues and folk with a unique and honest take on those most traditional of musical forms”

ALT MEDIA:   “Moldre, a gifted lyricist and melody-maker, manages to piece together different styles, both coherently and beautifully.” ★ ★ ★ ★ Katie Davern

DRUM MEDIA: “Stepping way out of his comfort zone, singer-songwriter Mark Moldre delivers an album Nick Cave would be proud of” Michael Smith

INPRESS: “An Ear To The Earth is one of 2013’s tastiest trips, taking the listener on a rollicking, rootsy journey. One minute, it rumbles; the next, it’s gentle and poignant.”

TIME OFF:   “His 2010 solo debut The Waiting Room earned serious plaudits, and after a lengthy gestation period his new follow-up, An Ear To The Earth, has already proved a more-than-worthy successor.” Steve Bell

americanaUK “his songs are peppered with junkyard percussion while he inhabits the demimonde that Waits stalks so well…..recalls another antipodean , CW Stoneking with its mixture of exuberance and old time charm.” Paul Kerr

X-PRESS MAGAZINE:  “ An Ear To The Earth is a loose yet stylish romp through the lives of the lonesome as Moldre comes across as a younger and less wearied Tom Waits (with an Australian accent).” Chris Havercroft

TIMBER AND STEEL   “”If Tom Waits, Elvis Costello and Jeff Tweedy were pushed out to sea in a rickety old boat they’d come up with something like this.” Jessica Cassar

EAR TO THE GROUND (US) “Not since I first heard Pokey Lafarge have I been so impressed with an artist’s ability to capture a bygone era.”

MOS EISLEY MUSIC (GERMANY): “Easily among the best releases of its kind….one of the best folk releases this year”

GOAL 1
$4500

To cover vinyl and CD manufacture. 

Vinyl Pressing - $3, 300

CD Pressing    -  $1, 200

Total $4500

GOAL 2

If we make it this far...wow.....thank you!

An extra $2,600 to cover Publicity (and to go towards Digital T Shirt printing)

Publicist          -   $2, 000

T-Shirts           -   $600

Pozible Fees   -   $500

PayPal Fees    -   $200

Total                -  $7, 800