Tales of the Treadmill
Tales of the Treadmill
How the Hell to Raise Funds? Part One
Tuesday, January 1, 2008
Angie is totally down with the promoting thing and has come up with some great ideas. I love her.
So, here’s the deal on the record. We think that we can make a shitty one for about 6 grand and we’ve all agreed that somehow we’ll come up with 2 grand each to make that happen- worst case scenario. But to make a really good record- like- a for real record, we need about 30 grand. That’s a lot of cash and no matter how many broken Crock Pots I sell on ebay, we’re not going to find that much.
So, I told Angie that we wanted to try to raise 30 grand and could she please figure out how to make that happen. I didn’t really expect for her to think of a way, of course. I was kind of kidding. Well, low and behold- she did figure out how to almost make it happen. Whether it will work or not is a completely different story, but what the hell do we have to lose? Here’s her plan...
We do a special VIP show (we later decided this would be an acoustic / storyteller type show) at a small location where bands don’t usually play. We were hoping for Nickolodian, but they say their stage is just too small. Now we’re looking into doing it at Trustus on a Sunday evening. That would be perfect. Anyway, I think Trustus seats 75 or so. Now here’s the crazy part- we charge $100 per ticket for this show... I know, I know. That will never work. But the idea is that anyone who buys a ticket gets their name in the liner notes of the CD, gets an advance copy, and gets a bunch of other shit. Then- we do another regular rock show at a place like 5 Pts Pub or Headliners and charge a bit higher ticket price than we normally would for that- like $20, and same thing- anyone who buys a ticket gets a thanks on the CD. It’s like- this is our record company- all the people who contribute to the project. We’re trying to figure out how this all would work, but let’s just pretend that we sell every ticket to these shows- that would potentially raise $23,500. Now obviously that’s never going to happen, but we can dream. And we could make a damn fine record for $24K.
Anyway, it didn’t take me long to come to the realization that there’s not 75 people in the entire universe who would pay $100 to be a part of this. There’s some, but not that many. Not sure where we’ll end up on all this, but we’ll see. Anyway, I love Angie- she thinks large. Unrealistic maybe, but large. And fuck it- Treadmill has always done things in screwed up ways that sometimes actually worked, and again, we just have nothing whatsoever to lose.
But now- this puts the focus on preparing two incredibly face blistering shows.
email from my brother in law- i have not idea who where he got this, but it was on the bottom of some dudes best of 2007 list... kind of funny- I think we should call the record “Poor Man’s Pumpkin”:
Best Way To End: I went to see Treadmill Trackstar at the Rockfella's Reunion, and I joked that I wanted to see if they still sucked. I think I was wrong about them. They sounded great. Not the poor man's Pumpkins that I used to think that they were.
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