Q: When can I order?:
A: The Online Store Opens March 1st - March 31st, 2021. Only during this timeframe will exclusive Crowdfunding Rewards and Merchandise be available.
Q: When will orders ship?:
A: Orders will be gathered during the month of March, 2021. Starting in April, product will be ordered. At that point, I am at the whim of the manufacturing machines. My goal is to fulfill all orders in Fall of 2021 (6-8 months from time of order). If the Vinyl Sets come in earlier than expected, I will begin order fulfillment immediately.
Q: Why is everything so expensive?:
A: The vinyl is expensive because the nearly 100 minute album spanning 3 vinyl discs was professionally recorded, mastered, pressed, and packaged to rival any major label release. All the other merchandise is on par with what you would pay for any major label artist. Additionally, these are fundraiser items. We all know the Girl Scouts are making a killing on those Thin Mints® selling them at $5.00 per box. Similar concept applies to this Crowdfunding Campaign: you're not just purchasing a product, you're supporting a brand and/or organization.
Q: What exactly is The Fireside Wake?
A: The Fireside Wake is the brainchild of multi-instrumentalist songwriter Andrew Dalton. It is both a concept rock & roll band, and a visual concept that comprises the album cover.
Q: What is the Crowdfunding and Pre-Sale all about?
A: The main goal of the Crowdfunding / Pre-Sale is to raise capital for the Vinyl and CD manufacturing of the debut eponymous album. I simply do not have the up-front costs needed to initiate that process, so I am running a Crowdfunding Campaign on www.thefiresidewake.com/crowdfunding from March 1st to March 31st,, 2021. During that time, you can donate, preorder the album on Vinyl or CD (or both), and purchase other merchandise like T-shirts, Hoodies, Aprons, a Two-Sided Puzzle featuring the front and back album art, and Experiential Packages. The plan is to raise money in March, submit orders in April, and begin order fulfillment by Fall of 2021. With COVID-19 throwing a wrench into a lot of manufacturing gears, my timeline to fulfill orders has to be flexible, and vinyl production right now takes about 6 months from the time you order.
Q: How much capital do you need to raise?
A: I am aiming to raise $15,000. Given the length of the album, it requires 5 sides of vinyl (3 records total), or 2 compact discs. The vinyl will be housed in a triple-gatefold jacket and the CDs will be housed in a triple-gatefold wallet-style jacket, both with lyric & artwork booklet, all professionally pressed, replicated, and printed. The vinyl will be pressed at Jack White’s Third Man Pressing in Detroit, MI and limited to 100 3xLP colored vinyl sets. Aside from the jackets and CDs being manufactured in California, this is largely a Michigan Made product.
Q: How much have you put in yourself up to this point?
A: Between 2013 and 2020, I have invested about $18,000 of my own money into the recording and mastering process, in addition to the website and the commissioning of the oil paintings. This has been a labor of love and I do not have the support of a record label that would typically front the costs for all these types of things in an album cycle. I’ve been fortunate enough to have to label support in the past, so I decided I wanted to really appreciate what I had by doing all of that legwork myself. Suffice it to say, I have underestimated how much effort goes into making and promoting an album.
Q: How can your family, friends, and fans help you with this endeavor?
A: Listen, Share, Support. The album is free to listen to in its entirety at www.thefiresidewake.com. It is also available on all the major streaming platforms including Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon, Tidal, Bandcamp, etc. Sharing links to my music, website, and crowdfunding video with friends and family doesn’t cost anyone anything but their time. Word-of-mouth is my main avenue for promotion as all funding is tied up in saving for manufacturing. And then the most meaningful way you can help is by preordering a copy of The Fireside Wake and/or purchasing any number of the items on www.thefiresidewake.com/crowdfunding. The webstore will only be open between March 1st and March 31st 2021, so don’t delay! With friends and family saying “save me a copy of the vinyl,” I’m about 65% of the way to selling out of those. A vinyl pre-order sellout would put me in a very good position, so that’s the best way to directly support the vinyl aspect of this project. I also have an option on my website where you can simply donate to the cause without wanting anything in return.
Q: Why should people support this project?
A: This project has been a dream of mine for almost 2 decades. Supporting this project is directly supporting me as an individual and allowing me to release physical copies in 2021 as opposed to scrimping and saving for the next 3-5 years to make it happen. Having not been able to perform live much over the last 12 months has eliminated one of the only revenue streams I have for this project. If you choose to support by purchasing the album, you will be receiving a high-quality professional product that rivals any major label release. You will also receive my infinite gratitude and appreciation.
Q: What makes it a “concept rock & roll band?”
A: I write and produce all the music myself: the lyrics, the arrangements, and the individual parts for each instrument. From an early age, I taught myself how to play guitar, bass, drums, piano, harmonica, etc. so that I would never be held back by not being able to play the drum part, for example, that I heard in my head for any given song I was writing. Inspired in large part by other multi-instrumentalist songwriters like Elliott Smith, Dave Grohl of The Foo Fighters, and Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails, The Fireside Wake became my conduit for creating music intended to be presented in the context of a live 5-piece rock band. Now I just need to find a band…
Q: What is the visual concept?
A: This is a painting idea that I’ve had in my head since circa 1999 (as anyone who was friends with me on AOL Instant Messenger at the time can confirm). Essentially, the scenario is a man proposing to a woman in front of a fireplace in an old Victorian era mansion. The universe deems this to be an unholy union and the fire becomes alive and enraged in protest. The fire leaps from the fireplace in a tidal wave of flame, sending the 2 characters into a frenzy of terror and panic. The Fireside Wake is the freeze-framed moment in which you see the man and woman running for their life, while the engagement ring floats in midair, with an impending wall of fire behind them. This image represents that no matter how much we as humans may try to control our environments, we are still at the whim of nature and other cosmic forces that we don’t fully understand, appreciate, or perhaps even acknowledge.
Q: Did you paint the album art?
A: No. I have tried several times to translate the images in my head onto paper/canvas but simply do not have the fine art skills to pull it off to my standards. I enlisted the help of Steve Hargash of Hargash Artist Studio to oil-paint the cover image, back cover image, and 3 additional pieces intended for the artwork / lyric booklet included with the album. Each image is an original concept of mine based on lyrics from songs on the album.
Q: When was the album written / recorded?
A: Songs date back to as early as 2004 when I began writing and touring the United States as the drummer in the grind-metal band See You Next Tuesday. On long drives between cities, I would write lyrics and conceptualize songs. You have lots of downtime on tour once you get to the venue/city of the night, so I’d hang out in the parking lot by our trailer and work out the guitar parts on a little practice amp. I would sometimes work out my drum parts during sound checks. Long story short, the band decided to take an extended hiatus in 2009, so I returned home, got a day job, enrolled in college, opened a rehearsal studio, and organized an annual summer music festival. During this time, I played in other bands, and got to perform on some of my friends’ albums. That inspired me to start taking my own music more seriously. So, in 2013 I booked a weekend of studio time at my brother’s facility. I spent three 15-hour days recording the drums, guitars, bass, piano, and vocals for 5 songs. I was soon introduced to Reed Recording Company in Bay City and I ended tracking there for 3 or 4 years. Andy and I really hit it off, so I kept just booking studio time and recording more and more songs. I didn’t really have a plan. I just wanted to get these songs out of my head, and on to tape (and eventually into a computer). We did about 10 songs to analog tape, and another handful direct-to-digital with me playing every single instrument one-at-a-time. By the end of 2017, I had finally finished writing and recording what ended up being a 19 song, 97-minute behemoth. Mastering took place in 2018 at Knack Mastering, by Kim Rosen. The album art process began in early 2018, and finished in late 2019. The album was released digitally on December 20th, 2019, with a release party held the next day at Fischer Hall in Frankenmuth. It was an invite-only event to which I treated all patrons to free admission, free homemade taco bar & desserts, free beer provided by Wildly Handsome Brewery, free cocktails, a makeshift living-room-listening-station by the stage with couches and 4 headphone mixes to preview the album that was being played over the PA, an art gallery courtesy of Hargash Artist Studio featuring the 5 album art oil paintings, and two sets worth of The Fireside Wake material that I performed acoustically using a method called “looping” and electrically by using a custom mix of the actual album tracks tailored for use as backing tracks in a live setting while I played electric guitar and sang. The event was very well received and proved to be one of the last great parties for me and my circle of friends before the pandemic shut everything down.
Q: What is the airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow?
A: What do you mean? An African or European Swallow?
