amandapalmer

The State of All Things - MAY 2018. {official thing} (Patreon)

Published:

2018-05-31 22:17:28

Imported:

2026-06

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State of All Things Thing

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Content

(patron-only post, official thing)

HELLO MY LOVES...

it's time for ALL THE THINGS again. if you missed the previous "Althings" posts for march and april, you can catch up and read 'em HERE. and thank christ it's thursday...you can save and read this puppy over the weekend, like y'all say you like to do. sunday new york times, move aside, amanda's epically endless monthly-patreon-posts are HERE.

you can also bookmark the link above to read future posts. all the "state of all things" will be marked with a tag on patreon. i'm still working on the new website (more on that below) and i'll try to have a place on my new site for this stuff, too.

for any of you catching up (or just joining the patreon) - WELCOME!

this is my monthly patron-only newsletter/round-up of ALL THE THINGS THAT ARE HAPPENING, it usually takes me a couple days to assemble it with the team.

not only having i started "thinging" each month, but one of the things patrons have been asking for is a giant round-up/summary-of-shit, since they aren't able to read every-every-every-EVERY post. i post a lot of shit. we aim to please. comment here if you gots any feedback for us, i'm reading.

it's also worth mentioning that i really like having to do this. i really do...it's been keeping me grounded in reality a little more i get a little grumpy at the end of the month thinking: ahhhhh, Must Do Writing And Spend Time That Is Not Art....and then i look at how much i've accomplished in every given month and i get kinda excited. i do a lot of shit. this patreon is here to help me DO all that shit. and it's WORKING.

and i still get really excited that it's working. and that, in a weird way (is it weird?) i'm actually getting paid to write. as i sit down and read through/edit this post, it occurs to me that it's taken me about 7 hours to write and edit it. that's a lot. but i fucking love it. i love writing to you, and i love reading your comments, and i love that this, along with all the other slog, is the gesamtkunstwerk of my life as AFP.

and that i have to run it by No Other (hayley isn't even helping me copyedit this one, she's off this week), and i have to send it into no publisher, and i don't have to wait any length of time to get My Thoughts To You. almost like you're subscribing to a monthly magazine of artist-stream-of-consciousness, and i get fucking paid. it's miraculously awesome and i still can't get over it.

so yeah....this is going to be a long read, so get comfy and grab a glass of wine or a cup of tea. also: this post is best when viewed in a web browser, rather than the patreon mobile apps.

.................

boom. greetings from where i am, which is a coffee shop in oakland, california, it's afternoon, i woke up at 5:30 am because of jetlag.

before you ask me if i'm going to do any ninja/patron-only shows here in the bay area...i wish. but i am fucking exhausted. give mama a break.

before i start with all the nitty-gritty of the month, i'd like to hit y'all with an opening philosophical ramble about The General Art of Asking, which occurred to me this morning after a little bit of internet bantering on twitter, and there's no better place to take these thoughts that right here, right now.

here's the story:

if you missed the news, "Rosanne" was canceled by ABC because she tweeted some indefensibly racist shit. the actress minnie driver then tweeted about it and plugged her own show:

and then a bunch of people gave her shit for using the news to "self-promote".

this made me mad.

i went on a minor rant on twitter about artists (and especially independent artists, but truly: all artists) and the way we need to "self-promote". which is really just a way of saying "promote" because honestly if you're an artist what the fuck is the difference between "promoting" yourself and your art and "self-promoting" yourself and your art.

tom steiger (one of my most beloved patrons, hi tom and i love you) said: "PROMOTING: Here is a song I wrote. I hope you enjoy it. The request for support is implied and complying feels altruistic. SELF-PROMOTING: Here is a song I wrote. If you enjoy it please pay me for it. The request is explicit and complying feels coerced."

i like this. but basically: ARTISTS HAVE TO PROMOTE. right! fuck! I WROTE A WHOLE BOOK ABOUT IT. and we all walk this painful tightrope every day - am i promoting too much? am i only talking about myself and not about other things? am i getting boring? am i not adding enough to the world conversation to buy the karma to say "hey i made a thing"?

i have never had good and easy answers to these questions...but i do know that neil and i are both un-shut-uppable chatterboxes on the internet and in real life, and that this blessing-and-curse that was bestowed upon us both has translated into pretty fucking awesome internet, music and book sales...because people like supporting the artists they know and like, and the internet made it a lot easier for people to know and like us (and, in a beautiful exchange, for us to know and like them).

but this also made me think about the patreon, and it brought up a kind of a sore subject that's been festering in my head, which is about promoting to YOU, and how i do it, and when, and what, and all that.

there are now layers and layers and LAYERS upon LAYERS when it comes to how i "talk to the world / talk on the internet". there's twitter, there's instragram, there's facebook, there's the facebook group, there's my blog (which i don't even use anymore, i just write posts here and cross-post them to the blog so they can live on my website) there's tumblr (i barely use it anymore), there's my email list, there's this patreon page.

if i have something to say, a photo to share, or something to flail around that i need to "promote" (which is to say, i've actually made a tasty Real Art Thing and i want people to eat it) i have SO MANY ways i can share that information.

the patreon, to me, is the place where i don't WANT to have to worry about sharing too much, i was actually hoping in the early days that it would more or less replace my social media feeds and i'd just be posting to patreon multiple times a day. but since these patreon posts come as emails...i don't want to do that. i don't want to bother and spam people. there may be a few hundred people supporting this patreon who wouldn't mind seeing my eevry last photo and reading my every last thought and dream, but (and my ego CAN TAKE THIS), i know it's not all 11,000 of you.

hell, my art ego had to take a serious bashing as soon as i saw the statistics come back for how many people actually clicked and used the download codes for the songs i sent out, and so forth. i know not everybody here is engaged with my shit 24/7, just sitting at their laptops waiting with bated breath to see what genius i am going to churn out on a month basis. i was sort of shocked when i saw projects (even GREAT projects, like the bowie album, the "mother's confession" footnotes, and the "behind the trees" animation video) receive feedback from only a minority portion of the patrons. at best, my blogs asking for direct feedback, or thoughts, or any kind of please-answer-me kinda stuff will get about 1-2k comments. if you ask "internet" people, it's "really successful engagement" when 10-20% of your subscirbers care, or click open, or comment. BUT NO, i want to scream, WHY WOULD THESE PEOPLE BE HERE, SUPPORTING MY PATREON, IF THEY DON'T CAAAARE????

well. i finally made peace with this, and it wasn't hard. i just used NPR (national public radion, for you non-americans) as my inspiration.

thousands, or possibly hundreds of thousands (?), of people give money to NPR every year because, unlike the BBC in england, NPR can't stay afloat purely with "underwriting" (their fancy-ass and less-sleazy name for corporate funding) and it's meager government funding. NPR, for as long as i've been listening (and a lot of the content is AWESOME), has existed because of "listeners like you" and it's very possible that the constant signal that i received growing up as an american being told that "if this fucking thing is going to exist we can't get money from everywhere else so we are all gonna have to collectivixe and pay for it, mofos" may possibly be one key ingredient, along with street performing, that made it so easy for me to look at crowdfunding (i.e. kickstarter and now patreon) as "normal".

so gazillions of private citizens give $5, $50, $500, $5,000 or even $50,000 a year for NPR to JUST EXIST. but NONE of these people could possibly listen to all the programming. it's just not possible. but there they are, paying NPR to just always be on, on, on, for whoever happens to be listening and needing it at the moment. a lot people i know hate "car talk", a call-in car-repair show put on by two brother-nerds who went to MIT and then started a garage that was nationally beloved and based out of boston (don't get me started on how much i love and worship car talk, DON'T FUCK WITH ME). but even people who hate "car talk", or the cooking shows, or the money-investment shows...they just want it all to exist.

and the fact that i'm "the sort of artist" ("person"?) who LIKES sitting in a fucking coffee shop for seven hours when she's jetlagged to write a ten-thousand-word blog is just, perhaps, what makes me ABLE to get away with the things that don't wear well on other artists. because when i "self-promote" (got i hate that word), it's as natural as asking your partner at dinner if they wanna share a thing of hummus as an appetizer. it just doesn't feel weird. you know?

so: i feel sort of like NPR. who's post-trump new motto, by the way, along with "stand with the facts" (nice one!) is "always on".

that's right, motherfuckers. i'm always on. i just don't stop making shit. that's my blessing, and my curse.

and you're here supporting me, and you may not even have read this far.

but i don't care....because someone probably has.

and i'll take it.

because if this collection of people funds me to make one song that changes one life on one night:

it's fucking worth it.

..........................

that being said...i missed y'all when i was in ireland. i was moving at a serious clip, and i was posting to twitter and instagram and facebook multiple times a day, sometimes multiple times an hour with breaking reflections from the referendum and stuff, and i felt like my patreon was disconnected from everything that was going on in realtime.

i'm planning to write a BIG, LONG blog about my experiences in ireland (i'm not going to do it here...this post is one that i'm trying to really keep dedicated to the patreon-related things and the broader strokes of my work and times).

and all THAT being said...i really do try to manage my so-called "internet properties" (gag) with aplomb.

and maybe this is a good time to remind you that if you want more AFP, all-the-time...go follow me on twitter. and/or instagram. and/or facebook (where you should make sure you click the "see first" option so the evil facebook algorithms don't eat my posts).

being on tour drove the reminder home, because i was posting to those spots 3, 4 sometimes 9, 10 times a day: tour happens in realtime.

and maybe someday patreon will create social tools that will make all this shit simpler. but for now: i love you, i love that you're here, or there, or everywhere, and let's make the best of these clonky things called "words" and "internet".

..............

on with the ALTHING!!!!

HERE'S WHAT'S HAPPENED.

okay.

it was may.

it was a seriously busy-ass month that put my heart and my body through the good-work-wringer (there was lots of traveling; lots of trains, lots of cabs, lots of cars, and lots of flying) but to tell the truth, i'm feeling on top of the fucking world even with my flabby body feels, my broken-out skin, and my aching neck.

we just flew the 11 hours from dublin to san francisco where we are all attending my friend-and-doula-and-singer-and-merch-helper whitney's wedding to her long-time girlfriend luoi, and then we pack up and reverse and fly back to new york, where i will get a proper breather at home for about a month.

traveling with a two-year old is....hard. i won't say it's "hell", because it's not so much unenjoyable as just mentally and physically relentless. ash is doing fucking great, though, he's talking up a storm and reading a lot and SINGING. while i'm on topic, neil is good too but honestly he's fucking exhausted. his showrunner schedule for the good omens TV show has been eating away at his life and eating away at our ability to connect with one another...it's been an annoying era. i've been trying to be patient and then sometimes i just lose it. we work on it, we prevail, we chat with our marriage therapist, wayne. if anyone needs a fucking miracle therapist, hit me in the comments or message me privately here on the patreon (gimme a sec, i don't check the messages hourly) and i'll message you his email & number. he does skype calls, and he's pretty much an deity sent from planet survival. he's helped a few friends of mine in the throes of bad depressions. (i'm serious. ask me. i'll answer. he's GOOD.)

...........................

speaking of my beautiful husband, here's a cure picture of him from a few weeks ago wearing a fairy crown at joe hill's wedding (joe is stephen king's son, and a great writer). the wedding was held in the basement of the globe theater, and i got to play ukulele for the wedding party (and for stephen king, which was pretty groovy).

i kicked the month off with a post-birthday break in london....then i scrambled to get ready for the UK tour with andrew o'neill.

i wrote a blog from the road that covered most of the first leg of tour, with pictures.... https://www.patreon.com/posts/unicorn-onesies-18761555

i had a vague idea that i wanted to lay the groundwork for my 2019 solo tour, which is going to be long and vast, and i don't want it to feel "random". i've told you recently that i'm planning on recording a real-deal "album" this fall in LA - basically culling the best-of-the-best from the last 7 years of post "theatre is evil" songwriting and stringing it together into one cohesive whole and doing a big international solo-piano tour. and i want the show to be special, specific, beautiful. no more of this just showing up at a venue with a piano and sitting backstage scrambling and wondering what to play. so this tour was a lab, and i learned a lot.

the first thing i learned, when i played gateshead, is that people might get sad and leave. two people went up to alex at the merch table in the middle-end of the show and and bought shirts and were like: "we're sorry, there's too much death, we gotta go, we're too sad."

all i thought when i heard that is that they might have just had a death in their lives, or a miscarriage. and it was all too close to home.

i talked about this couple every night for the rest of the tour....because it gave me a starting point. i also joked that if the UK couldn't take my morose show filled with black humor and crying and death jokes, nobody could.

partly inspired by the upcoming abortion referendum in ireland (which was bigger news and a bigger deal in the UK), and partly inspired by the bravery and why-not-just-say-it progress of the #MeToo movement - i started talking very openly about abortion and miscarriage on stage for the first time in my career. and it felt...weird. like: fine. and safe. but also like people didn't necessarily know what to do with it, especially when i'm going from heartbreaking story to ridiculous joke in the next breath.

but that's what my past 7 years have felt like: from the tragic to the comic in under five seconds. and it's what the record is going to feel like.

and it's what i'm trying to figure out, as i do these shows...how to take the audience with me, and how to make it all feel ok.

having a hilarious heavy-metal transvestite comedian (andrew) opening up for me helped a lot, because the evening started with uproarious laughter every night. but i also found myself wishing i had a control group of shows, where i could see how it felt to just dive straight in without all the laughter. i mentioned to andrew a few times that it's really hard to follow a hilarious stand=up comedian when you're a slightly-silly songwriter who's used to getting a few laughs. you tend to come across as way less funny, in relative terms.

in norwich, andrew and i stumbled into an actual church service in the cathedral.

it was nice. and andrew and i sat there, silently, reminded that people out there were making shows that were totally different shows from ours. their show was good. the venue was BEAUTIFUL, the sound was pretty good, the costumes were AMAZING, and the organ they got was killer.

they even had a giant thing of water at the show, but they didn't use it.

.............

speaking of holy water, i experimented with how much wine to drink before/during a show before it's just two much. there's such a lovely balance to be found between relaxed and forgetful. two glasses. that's truly the limit.

...........

amazing photos from liverpool by Andrew AB Photography...

where's amanda?

...............

the tour finally wrapped up in dublin, where my life got changed, and where i also did a talk with laurie penny at the lit festival the day after the repeal, and again, and that's a different blog....too many thoughts and photos for this wrap-up.... and that's also one i'll put out to the public.

but to tide y'over, here is one slamming picture from dublin...

(care of beatvyne.com)

the highlight of my month aside from dublin? the two secret patron-only parties in london. SO AMAZING. tickets for night #1 sold out quickly so i added another night. i streamed one of the shows here on patreon as my gift to you. you can watch the archive here: https://www.patreon.com/posts/almost-ready-18881867 (the show starts at 5:30 minutes in) ....

and FUCK IT WAS AWESOME. the space was magical, the people were magical, i love doing small shows, and i loved having just the patrons (and friends) in the room. MORE MORE MORE of that, please.

as i tour, i'm gonna try to put little patron-only shows like this together in every city i can (where i have at least a few hundred patrons).

some awesome photos:

(by emma donnelly)

note the difference in speakeasy ambience from the fancy fucking shows with the fancy stages and the fancy chandeliers. i gotta say. i love both. but too much fancy and i start to gag. my ideal: 25% chandelier to 75% speakeasy.

this was one of my favorite accidents:

"count addiction" came up to me on night one, looking like a perfectly normal dude in a dress shirt and a nice pair of pants, after being secreted away by me to the back rooms, where we were surprise-entertaining people with various secret rooms and performers and asked if he could come the secone night and do fake-fortune telling.

i said yes. i'm so glad i said yes....

me and meth, who a lot of you from london already knew from our little patron-shows at Her Upstairs....

me & sadie sinner, another transport from Her Upstairs, who killed it once again on stage:

andrew, cracking me the fuck up:

(photo by kenny mathieson)

and i LOVE this photo (also by kenny) of me & ruby wednesday singing astronaut together.

look at us. we are LEGION.

dudes.

i was so happy.

we turned the lights off and listened to the final mix of "mr weinstein will see you now". (more on that below)

thank you to everyone in london who showed up at these tiny gigs.

they really healed my soul.
.......

diversion:

this is me and adrew after swimming in 6 degree (that's 40 degrees farenheit) water. bow DOWN.

..........

i spent a whole day writing this article for mozilla NET NEUTRALITY. i know you're already in the middle of reading this epic blog of mine but if you want a deep-dive....it's a great read.

https://blog.mozilla.org/internetcitizen/2018/05/11/amanda-palmer-net-neutrality/

there's also a spotify playlist i made of "net neutrality" inspired songs...a lot of them culled from suggestions on twitter.

i talk about the patreon and how awesome it is.

.......

IN THE MIDDLE OF ALL THIS.....

i released "Mr. Weinstein Will See You Now". the post about it is HERE if you missed it.

i said what i needed to say when the song came out, and i kept writing about it in the posts to follow.

to date, the song looks like it's on track to earn about $2,000 worth of digitial sales via bandcamp and itunes, etc.

think about that for a second, please.

okay?

i just want to remind you how amazing the patreon is. though i'm sure many of you would have bought the digitial single if we didn't have the patreon and the downloads-system, i know from experience and statistics (i'm smart!) that this song probably wouldn't have paid for itself, much less made a profit enabling me to pay the rent, the staff and so forth.

i was able to pay jasmine (the co-singer) and matt (the arranger and pianist) a really decent chunk of change for their two days' work, i was able to pay for the recording studio without blinking, i was able to green-light the string arrangement, and the hiring of those string players, and the mixing engineer, and the mastering person...all without stressing.

I CANNOT TELL YOU HOW HUGE THIS IS.

the fact that i have the patreon to fund these "i have a an idea and some collaborators" moments simply means that i will do them instead of NOT doing them.

if i had tried to pull off a project like this in 2014 (and believe me, i did things like this all the time), i would have just gritted my teeth and said: "it's worth it for me to lose money or, at best, break even, to make the art i wanna make". it is what drove all of my managers crazy. because while they respected my decision to "follow the art", they were forever despairing that the profits would never arrive.

and now i can tell everybody to shut the fuck up and leave me alone while i make the art i wanna make.

you have made that possible, and i don't want to sound like a broken record, but GODDAMIT it's liberating.

i am still coping with the weird balance of having the Safety of You Patrons and the How Do I Put My Work in the World dilemma. but i would rather have this problem than any other problem, frankly.

i'd rather have an audience that loves and supports me and a wider world that is confused by me than almost anything else i can think of.

we did it.

...........

on a dorky patreon note:

i got to finally send a really sizable chunk of "extra content" to my "bonus content"/$5 patrons, and that was nice...i'm finally baking it into my brain and my process to set aside fun pieces of process-flotsam for this tier. i sent a bunch of unused photos from the hotel photoshoot, and the iphone piano demo from our songwriting jam, and an email of mix notes i sent to the engineers...and people seemed to really dig seeing how the song-sausage gets made.

here's one of the unused photos, fer kix:

(photo by matt nicholson)

and also…for the future? i want to make a movie-video of this song. with an amazing female-powerhouse filmmaker. if you've got any ideas, hit me.

it feels like it could use something non-literal. choreography. thousands of women. i don't know. something epic.
from now until june 30th all digital proceeds of the track on bandcamp will go to Time's Up legal defense fund.

and to remind you.....

this one was done with no publicist, just "rogue media".

i don't know if that was the smartest decision....but it's what we did.

here's some great pull-quotes from the press that came out:

“It’s a song about choices. Or, rather, it’s a song about the illusion of choice...Palmer’s song is a cathartic, gripping listen, but it’s just the beginning.” - The Pool UK

“This is the most important song of 2018...music like this is vital...I’ll add my voice to the chorus of other women when I say with 100% sincerity: HOLY FUCK.” - Aimsel on the Record (a patron!)

“This isn't a sweeping indictment of men in power; this is just a portrait of a woman in turmoil.” - Refinery29

honestly, more important that all that press were the internet comments (and in some case, personal emails and texts) that i got from both men and women alike who said that the song unlocked something in them and healed a wound.

that's the idea, folks.

and i'm not saying my timing of this release had anything to go with the arrest of harvey weinstein any more than i'm saying my landing in iceland set off that fucking volcano, but YEAH. cosmic timing.

also, i love this photo that hayley campbell took of me at john and judith clute's house in camden (where neil and i have been couch, well bed, surfing for YEARS), the day before the release. we are listeneing to the track on their FINE stereo...

...............

i went to see BEN FOLDS and had to rethink my life and my strange solo-piano stage show. i blogged about it here.

and here's another photo of me backstage at ben's show because i was bored before he went on and took a lot of silly photos.

and it's upside down. that's fun.

......................

another nature diversion...i also went swimming at the LADIES POND (yes it is really called that, and men are not allowed) in hamstead heath in london.

i'm not all chandeliers and speakeasies. sometimes i see flowers.

IN INCREDIBLY AWESOME DOLLS NEWS...

the dresden dolls announced two halloween shows in london. the last time we played london was in 2006. WHAT. yes. twelve years ago.

we had about half the venue tickets up for pre-sale each night, and you all blew them away, selling the pre-sale out in 15 minutes, so we asked the venue if we could add more tickets to the pre-sale and started a second wave.

public tickets are on sale now, and are literally almost gone....there's just a handful. get em. get em. get em.
http://www.eventim.co.uk/tickets.html?fun=erdetail&doc=erdetaila&erid=2187612&affiliate=TXA

and LONDON/EUROPE: in the "MARK YOUR DOLLS CALENDARS" dept - i urge you to save october 27th. we are almost def going to do a warm-up show somewhere in london for the hardcore of the hardcore and tickets will be scarce, because we will do it somewhere TINY where we can play-play and fuck up and test out brand-new material to see if it feels ready enough.

..................

and that, my friends, that was may.

HERE'S WHAT'S COMING UP...

neil (and ash) and i are going to be THE ROYAL FMAILY AT THE CONEY ISLAND MERMAID PARADE!!!

look at this beautiful poster art by (my friend!) sarah beetson....i'm gonna be slamming it out on the internet tomorrow. the parade is FREE!!!!!!!! come come come!!!!

..........

aiming for "thinging" next month: the cover i did of joni mitchell's "big yellow taxi" with zoe keating, sean ono lennon, and john cameron mitchell is ALMOST ready to go out. we are finishing up mixes and artwork. it sounds beautiful. i've been stealing away from various moments to slap on headphones and give mix notes. it'll get thing'd in no time and i'll give all the digital sales to the national resources defense council.

.......

the "pulp fiction"/david mack video.....IS ALMOST OUT!!! this video has taken OVER A YEAR, and it got help up yet again because i decided to be crazy and add a SURPRISE LITERARY ELEMENT TO IT. yes, you read me right. it's gonna be the weirdest THING yet. hopefully it will come out next month or the month after....

.........

the brighton show got a 5 star review, which made me really happy: http://www.theargus.co.uk/leisure/arts_and_entertainments/16223924.amp/ "Palmer’s performance entered the realms of greatness." wheeeeee.

i filmed & recorded it....and the recording came out BEAUTIFULLY. i also spent the money, as insurance, to film and record bath, but the show wasn't nearly as good. we're going over the video footage and mixing the sound now, and if all goes as planned, i'll release it as a Thing to patrons only, because i don't want to blow my load to the world and ruin any of the surprises for the 2019 tour next year by flopping then onto the internet.

this above photo is of ash feeding me an apple 5 minutes before the doors opened, by andrew o'neill :)

..........

SPEKAING OF AWESOME ANDREW...AND UKULELES....

he and i have been working on a duet ukulele/guitar song called "ANTI-UKULELE ANTHEM". if we can get it together, we'll record it and thing it, it's pretty fucking funny (we played it at the secret london shows).

which reminds me, you should read this story i posted online about selling a girl who had no idea who i was a ukulele in a guitar center yesterday in oakland, it's pretty funny.

............

the pro recording that jason webley and i did of "electric blanket" at ani difranco's house looks like it's going to turn into a HUGE ANIMATED VIDEO PROJECT. more on that soon. it'll take months and months but hopefully be amazing. i'll hang onto the song before the song comes out unless i get itchy, in which case i'll just release it to you guys and wait a few months to put it out to the public. this things are always weird when it comes to thinging. i know you've given me permission to thing songs apart from their follow-up videos, but it always feels a little weird. whatever. i'll let you know.

.............

i met up with this amazing animation team called creativeconnection/co.uk in london and in bath... they caught my attention with THIS heartbreaking animation about female genital mutilation ... warning, it's intense, but so beautifully and heartfully rendered, which is why these guys stuck out to me.

i cannot tell you how powerful it was to take a meeting with two women: one with a toddler my age and one 8 months pregnant, to talk about slamming out some amazing animation-collaboration.

these ladies are going to create some animations based on the AUDIOBOOK of "the art of asking" and i can't WAIT TO SEE WHAT THEY DO.

............

ALSO, the ART OF ASKING AUDIOBOOK is still chugging along beautifully and selling lots of copies, and they are going to be pressing it into VINYL! more on that as news filters in,

.............

i have a heavy-duty project coming up in about 9 days in boston...but i'm going to wait to tell you about that one. it's too big and important to wrap into this post.

..............

THATS it for easily-explainable upcoming things.

HOW THE PATREON HAS GROWN:

as of this writing there are 11,526 patrons pledging $44,602.

WE SIGNED UP A TON OF PEOPLE ON THE UK TOUR! which was awesome.

you may have noticed that patreon charges you retroactively, meaning that you get billed on the 1st of the month for Things released the month prior (for example, you'll get charged for the Things released in may on june 1st). so i don't have figures for may just yet, but here's an update for april...

because people have their pledges capped, the first Thing raises the most money, and anything released thereafter raises less and less.

the numbers below are gross and not net, meaning it's the money raised before fees were deducted by patreon and is not the total deposited to me. patreon takes a 5% fee (which they use to build and sustain the platform) and then there's a payment processing fee, which varies on a ton of factors and is usually between 5-9% of the total collected.

in april, i Thinged two Things:

BRIDE-TRIPPING was the first Thing and it earned about $49,647 from 11,221 patrons

The State of All The Things - APRIL 2018 was the second and final Thing of the month and it earned about $25,102 from 7,504 patrons. we say "about" because patreon may be still trying to process some pledges that have yet to go through...we never know.

this is also before taxes, before my manager takes his 15%, before the staff and office get paid, etc etc. it's the gross.

but it's nice to look at, isn't it?

someday i'll break down the finances of an entire project for you. it can be quite mind-boggling sometimes to see all the money that goes into just recording a single song, once you take into account every expense. it adds up like a mofo.

ART-IN-THE-MAIL PATRONS!

we are working on our first project (based on the artwork that neil, ash and i did) and it's looking GRAND!!! stay tuned.

A FEW WORDS FROM TEAM AFP...

from hayley @ afp central in brooklyn:

May has been an especially busy month for Team AFP behind the scenes. It's always wild to reflect how stressful a month can be internally for us, juggling so many projects and so many details but it's not externally obvious. We work across so many time zones and with Amanda on tour in the UK/Ireland we’ve been working quite literally around the clock to make this ship go. The Dresden Dolls show announcements were a big project for us, along with working on all the Things that are in the pipeline to come out soon and with projects that are much more long term.

(just call me Hayley "always be sharpie-correcting my name placards" Rosenblum)

The biggest update I have to share is to report back that I met with Patreon this month at a Creator Roundtable event held in New York. A bunch of Patreon creators were invited together to meet some folks from the Patreon team, learn about what’s to come and to share feedback. It was exceptional for me to be in a room with other creators and members of creative teams each making something unique. I generally enjoy sharing the insights that I’ve learned in my years working with Amanda and this community to help other artists connect with their audiences, and I appreciate learning from how other creators approach their communities and the way they use platforms like Patreon.

It is truly amazing that Amanda has a platform to easily reach out and connect with all of you, and it’s a privilege that she has insisted that I connect with you here, right in this Dispatch from Team AFP section of the Althings. When you stop and realize just how massive this patron community is, yet how tight knit it feels, it's mindblowing. I want to let each and every one of you know – I take my role on Amanda’s team very seriously. Not only do I enjoy the background work of making things happen, sharing ideas and problem solving to contribute to the work Amanda releases into the world, but I view my role as an advocate not just for Amanda, but for you: her patrons, her fans, her community. I don’t take it lightly that I am often communicating to others on our team and to Patreon themselves on behalf of all of you, and I appreciate that our mission is quite pure: to help Amanda make art and share it into the world so that more people can be touched and moved by it, and connect with others who appreciate it just the same. I started my journey with Amanda as a fan myself, and I am personally a patron of hers, and so I feel and appreciate the responsibility that I have representing this community to others.

So I’m going to wrap this up by saying:
Thank you to each of you for believing in Amanda, for trusting us to help her connect with you, and for being so open when she asks for your feedback. As always, you can share questions and input in the comments below, or email us: patreonhelp@amandapalmer.net

{speaking of feedback: do any of you use Discord? it's a community tool that has mobile and desktop applications that Patreon offers integration for so it can be a patron-only community space. Many of the Patreon creators I talked to highly recommended it as a tool for them to engage with their patrons and to have their patrons connect with each other. This is something we're looking into, in Amanda's quest to find an alternative to relying on Facebook and we would LOVE your thoughts if you have experience using Discord. Please comment below or better yet, shoot us an email to let us know your thoughts, what you love or dislike about it.)

Love,

Hayley

(hayley@amandapalmer.net)

.........

from michael @ afp central in brooklyn:

Hello Patrons!

Another Month gone by already! It always happens so quickly doesn't it? First of all I want so say thank you for all the comments on April's All The Things post, and thanks to all of you who went out and shared things and talked about the Patreon! Please continue to go out and tell people about our community. Share the stories, the art, the songs! We Are The Media!

May was another jam packed month for all of us here at Team AFP. UK & Ireland Tour, Patron Only Secret Shows, Dresden Dolls Tickets on sale, Podcasts, Art in the Mail, Interviews, Scheduling, Mr. Weinstein Will See You Now Release. . . Oh MY! Plus we are furiously working on so many more projects coming to you soon, we're all very excited!

While I didn't have any major traveling adventures this month, I've been busy working on a few fun projects like helping Neil and Amanda source their outfits for the Mermaid Parade! One of the many joys I have working in this role is seeing first hand how committed our team is to supporting other artists. Could I have gone to a big box store and gotten some generic costume pieces from Amazon, or Target, or Walmart? Sure. But we took to Etsy to find artists connecting directly with their community to share their art (sound familiar?). It's just one of the many ways the money from Amanda's Art goes to support other artists and I love that. You all are just the best and we literally wouldn't be here without you. I can't say thank you enough.

I feel so fortunate to be part of such a great team with such a great community behind us, supporting us and keeping all this going. It is a ton of work, but y'all make it worth it. I'm going to keep it brief this month so I can get back to work (I'm writing this in between emails on a plane down to FL), and keep all the plates spinning so they say.

And in case you're worried that it's all work and no play, here's a gorgeous picture of a swamp (that's goth, right?) that I visited while picking wild ramps at my brother's (who is a chef) super secret location. He would kill me if I told you where, but it was a gorgeous day and they were delicious!

Until next time! Hugs to All!

Love,

Michael

(michael@amandapalmer.net)

.......
from alex in LONDON, who has been KILLING IT ON THE ROAD!!! and my gratitude is endless....

hi hi hi patron people!

i work in uk merchland for amanda, which usually just consists of spending a lot of time at the post office with boxes full of packages, but then when tour happens i get to actually see the outside world!! it's all very exciting.

so for about 2 weeks this month, i hooked in my boyfriend connor (because he is a proper adult with a car), we packed up said car with a literal shit ton of merch, and we drove around the country. i kid you not, within his little car we managed to fit 700 CDs, 150 12" vinyl, 150 7" vinyl, 100 books, 50 tote bags, 450 tshirts, and 400 posters. it was a pretty impressive feat of merch tetris, with me ending up sat in the passenger seat with my knees up against the dashboard.

here we is:

we got to visit gateshead, birmingham, liverpool, carmarthen, bath, and brighton on our little tour of the country (special shout out to lisa in newcastle for offering us a bed to sleep in after the gateshead show, the one city of the tour where we had no friends or airbnb to house us!!) and then a little later were shows in norwich, the two secret patron shows in london, and dublin.

every show throws up its own unique blend of enjoyment and stress and fucking weirdness.

in gateshead, after the show, the venue staff tell us there's no rush to get going, so we start packing up. and then 20 minutes later, just as we're packing up the last box... all the lights in the entire venue are shut off. and we get to finish packing and find our way back to the elevator only using the light of our phones. awesome.

in liverpool there was a delightful drunk guy who, after bribing amanda with wine on stage, then proceeded to run past security and leg it backstage. and once they told him no, he did not have a special relationship with amanda that entitled him to go backstage, he proceeded to the merch table to come and tell us how beautiful we are and how much he wants to kiss us and asking us why we weren't going to go away with him and make out. sigh.

far and away though, carmarthen was the most eventful of all the shows. during the intermission, somebody ran up to the merch table to inform us that the building was on fire. fabulous. turns out that outside, there was a hole in the corner of a building. apparently there had been a fire inside, but someone had put it out, but there was still smoke, so they were concerned we were all going to be slowly barbecued. so while trying to deal with that in the second half of the show, connor announces to me that he has a stomach ache. and is not feeling well. he tried to leg it to the bathroom. dear patrons, i will spare you the details, but suffice to say he did not make it to the bathroom. and me and the venue staff spent a lot of the second half cleaning.

yet somehow, we were not immediately fired from carmarthen. so that was good.

after that, things became decidedly less hectic (probably because for brighton, norwich, and london we could come home in between the shows)

as well as selling merch, i spent a lot of time after shows walking the signing lines, meeting patrons, talking to people about the concept of patreon and what we are doing here, and signing some newcomers up. if you are a newcomer that i convinced to sign up: hi! hello!!

i also had some fancy badges made up to give out to patrons at shows

(photo by lovely max kyro)

i have a handful of these left, so if any patrons here would like one, shoot me a message at alex@amandapalmer.net and we'll work it out.

a lot of you probably know that i've been super involved in this community for several years now - first as an obsessive fan just on tumblr and twitter, and then working for amanda, modding the facebook group, sending out merch parcels. but AFP shows are far and away my absolute favourite part of it all, because it's so lovely to see people in person, to hear the accent that never comes through in text, and to be able to have real life hugs. so if you are one of these people that came and said hello: thank you all for making this wonderful community.

for me, this came to a perfect culmination during the second secret patreon show on tuesday, after amanda had reached curfew limit, and so gathered everybody in the bar. all of the people crammed into one small space, huddling round, whispering lyrics quietly, was exactly the kind of beautiful community spirit that amanda's art creates, and exactly the reason why i love doing all of this.

if you want to read more (a lot more) about my adventures, i wrote a whole blog about it here:

http://alexampersand.blogspot.co.uk/2018/05/diaries-of-touring-merch-queen.html

and if you want to keep up with my general day to day life and ramblings, you can find me over at @aaalex555 on twitter

and if anyone is at amanda's shows in edinburgh, or the dolls shows at halloween, come say hi to me!!! (and also maybe give me money in exchange for merch :) )

-love merch queen alex xox

(alex@amandapalmer.net)

........

ARTISTS TO SUPPORT....

every month i try to turn y'all on to some other indie artists out there doing amazing things.

first up: Erika Moen!!!

"Drawn to Sex is 160 pages of sex education comics collected from the Planned Parenthood-sponsored series, Oh Joy Sex Toy! It explores the practical side of sex, from defining just what it IS, to protection, masturbation, and the ins-and-outs of doin' it. http://www.DrawnToSex.com

erika is an old friend, she was my interview on the art of asking book tour when i was in the northwest, and she's a real truth-teller and crowdfunder. i LOVE her work. check it out.

..........

for my GOTHS.....BLACK TAPE FOR A BLUE GIRL has a new kickstarter, and it ends june 5th:
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/samrosenthal/black-tape-for-a-blue-girl-to-touch-the-milky-way?ref=ean1fa

……………

UPCOMING TOUR DATES...

all the tour dates are below:
http://amandapalmer.net/shows

I ADDED TWO MORE SHOWS IN EDINBURGH!!!!!

*newly added*
AUGUST 9TH - QUEENS HALL / EDINBURGH, UK - TICKETS

*newly added*
AUGUST 10TH - QUEENS HALL / EDINBURGH, UK - TICKETS

AUGUST 17TH - QUEENS HALL / EDINBURGH, UK - TICKETS

AUGUST 18TH - QUEENS HALL / EDINBURGH, UK - TICKETS

THE DRESDEN DOLLS:

OCTOBER 30th - TROXY / LONDON, UK - TICKETS

OCTOBER 31st - TROXY / LONDON, UK - TICKETS

……………..

that's it my loves.

as usual....my gratitude to all of you is deep and wide.

thank you, thank you, thank you for being my patrons.

it's everything.

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