Michael Savage

Hey everyone, I'm Michael, from Fremantle, Western Australia. Those are some of my songs playing in that video you just watched, and this fundraiser is about the album containing those songs. 

I've been a prolific bedroom-songwriter-recordist since I was a teenager, and for the last 5 or so years I've been playing, co-writing, recording and touring in a somewhat more professional capacity in the bands Louis and the Honkytonk and The Morning Night. 

(The Morning Night, 2014)

Apart from the odd solo gig, and a couple of early abortive attempts at getting a band together, my solo stuff (kinda lyrical, kinda psych, mostly powerpop songs) has rarely progressed beyond the bedroom - and even more rarely progressed beyond the hallway, or through the front door into the outside world. 

(Knee, Les Paul and Milo tin, 2006)

So it wasn't until we were well into post-production for the Morning Night's second album Amberola (2013) that I had the guts to show our producer Ricky Maymi (of The Brian Jonestown Massacre) one of my demos. When he responded positively, I showed him about 20 more, and we whittled a list down to 10 stylistically similar songs, and set about recording an album.

(recording acoustic guitars in Fremantle, 2013)

I sing, and play most of the guitars and bass on the record, and Ricky plays some guitar in addition to his Production work, but we also enlisted the talents of some of the city's finest, including Richard Lane (seminal local bands The Stems, The Rosebuds) and Greg Hitchcock (The Bamboos, You Am I).

Here's one of my favourites from the album - both Richard and Greg play a bit of lead guitar on it.


So why am I telling you this story? Because we've finished recording and mixing the album, and now I need to raise money to get it
a.) Mastered (the final stage of audio processing) and
b.) Manufactured on CD
.... and also c.) I need to pay my wonderful artist friend who is designing some brilliant artwork.

With your help, by pre-ordering your copy of the album (and/or donating on top of that, to get some super fun rewards) I'll be able to get this album out.

And just for reading this far, here's another song - a slow one, and the album closer.

Approximately $1000 will go to our Mastering Engineer to prepare the album for pressing. If you're curious about what mastering is, check out an article like this one. 
$400 will be used to pay a graphic artist who has generously agreed to work for this tiny fee to make some stunning album art.
The remainder will go to a manufacturing company to produce a short run of 100-300 CDs (price pending) in good looking four-panel cardboard digipacks, featuring aforementioned stunning album art. Based on quotes, manufacturing will probably cost me a little bit more than this, but $2000 is a nice round target and an incredible help - I wouldn't be able to get this album made otherwise.

If I raise a little more than $2000, I will cover any manufacturing shortfall, and spend any extra on high quality packaging for a run of 300 CDs. The rest will go to the 'saving up for vinyl pressing' fund. If I'm able to raise $4000 instead of $2000 I will have enough money to set about pressing 300 high quality 180gm vinyl records, with packaging featuring said stunning album art in its full-size glory. We made this album with vinyl in mind and it's something that I can't wait to do (and will do). It's just most likely something I'll get happening later this year though, short of a mighty amount of Pozible generosity.

As far as I'm concerned, the main challenge is over- I've written and recorded a pretty swell album. This really is just the final hurdle- getting it mastered and made. If we fail to reach this Pozible goal, it'll just have to be an MP3-only album for now (which is also okay! - I don't feel entitled to use your money to put out my album!).