Go east, young jazzers.

(Copied and pasted from a recent IJG newsletter.)

Okay, so that might not be exactly what Horace Greely said (in fact it might not even be close), but we’ve been considering it as good advice for some time now. And lo and behold, events have finally conspired to make it possible. To wit: in June of this year, the Industrial Jazz Group will be traveling across this here zany United States in order to make our east coast debut. (And in case you didn’t already think we were nuts--well, surely now you must see that we’re certifiable.)

Here are the specifics of the tour as they exist now:

June 15: CBGB’s, New York City (yes, that CBGB’s--assuming their landlord doesn’t boot them out beforehand)

June 16: TBA (a lot of possibilities in the works here)

June 17: 12 Miles West Center for the Arts, Bloomfield, New Jersey (www.12mileswest.org)

June 18: Knappuccino’s, Wilmington, DE (www.knappuccinos.com)--the final night for our tourand this funky venue both!

This is a very large step for us, and promises to be a very exciting trip: it gives us an opportunity to radically expand our fan base, to make our debut in the city that most people (rightly or wrongly) consider “the” jazz city (New York), and to perform with a number of special guests, including Jill Knapp (of the Evelyn Situation) on vocals and Marcus Milius (of Marcus Milius) on harmonica.

Of course, I realize that I am sending this email to our international mailing list, and that those of you not on the east coast (those of you in Iceland, say) might not immediately see that it contains anything other than a semi-interesting (and perhaps even downright tedious) diversion from the millions of other emails you’re receiving today. Not so! The deeper purpose of this missive is to explain that we need your help in two very important ways.

First: In addition to the usual media stuff, we are trying to execute a grass roots promotional effort for this tour—particularly for the New Jersey and Delaware dates. We know there is an audience for what we do, and we need your help getting the word out, if you are qualified and inclined to do so! In other words: even if you do live in Iceland, if you also know people in New Jersey or Delaware (or NYC) who might be hip to our jive, then please, by all means, let them know—or even better, let us know, and we’ll approach them (humbly and respectfully, without any sort of hard sell) about the gigs, and even provide them with a gratis IJG sampler to (hopefully) whet their appetite.

Second: Ah, yes, money. How I hate it. We were expecting to be on the top of the pops by this point in the group’s history (five years and running), but alas, them there teenyboppers is a fickle lot. No matter, we’ll keep pushing for the goal of critical *and* material success, despite our small, independent budget (i.e., Andrew’s paycheck). For the time being, though, we have to resort to other measures. So… much as we hesitate to go down this road again (again, money: hate it), we need to raise some bread for our trip. Our basic headache of course is going to be paying for airfare, but we’ll also have to deal with ground transportation and any lodging we might need. To these ends, we will happily and most gratefully
accept any manner of donation.

Our overall goal is to raise $2500. As with our Star Chamber fundraiser, we again have several “perks” for those of you brave enough to contribute:

Anyone able to contribute between $5 and $99 will receive a CD-R of our performance at 12 Miles West, beautifully recorded by Mr. Leo McClusky. (Hopefully this show will be beautifully performed as well.)

Anyone able to contribute between $100 and $199 will receive that compilation, plus a copy of our new record, Industrial Jazz-a-Go-Go, when it comes out this fall. Go-Go, which is about 75% recorded at this point, will feature all of the material you west coast folks have been hearing live lately; i.e., our newfound wacky hybrid of classic jazz, doo wop, blues, r&b, rock ‘n roll, salsa, mariachi, reggae, and Zulu jive. (Note: we are going to shop this record around to various labels, but we will not be releasing it with Innova. So we don’t expect the same set of delays and screwups that characterized the release of The Star Chamber.)

Anyone able to contribute $200 or more will receive two copies of each of the above items, and (if you wish) a grateful mention in the program for the 12 Miles West concert (which we will also send you a copy of).

Donations can be made by contacting me directly via email (type this address in email language: industrialjazzgroup at yahoo dot com).

(And as was the case last time: please understand that we only want you to contribute if you are *completely comfortable* with the idea of doing so!)

So there you go! Many thanks for reading all the way to the end. As always, we appreciate your support (financial and otherwise) more than you know!

cheers
Andrew