Fraser Montgomery at The Aviary Recording Studio and Creative Hub, has a wonderful project in mind to celebrate Melbourne’s growing appreciation of, and participation in, the Americana scene. He is assembling a gang of Melbourne’s finest Americana songwriters, teaming them up with an incredible house band, and recording an album, straight to 2" tape, where each act covers another act’s song. Each artist will arrange and interpret the song in their own way, bring it in to the house band on the day and record it. The album will be mixed at The Aviary in Abbotsford, and then it will be mastered by Melbourne's own Adam Dempsey at Deluxe Mastering in Brunswick. From there, it will travel just down the road to be pressed to vinyl at Melbourne's only pressing plant, Zenith. Then it will be ready, with art work from Ben Mastwyk, to send out into the world with a publicity campaign and revue style show. It’s a bit great, ain’t it!

Well this is where you come in! By choosing one of the fabulous rewards, or by simply pre-ordering the record, you will help us fund this project and get it moving. Making a record like this takes a fair bit of cash, even with reduced rates.... Musicians need to eat... ocassionally. Producers and mastering engineers need clothes on their back to wear to work... occasionally. Wax is also not cheap, but it sure is worth it. Right? Every part of this record is entrenched in the Melbourne Americana scene. We also have a number of local businesses willing to chip in food, coffees, guitar strings and drum skins to help out. They see the benefit of bringing this together.

Melbourne is a big fish in a small pond, and the respect the music community holds for each others songs and musicianship can finally be displayed in a record of mutual appreciation, showcasing the quality of performers and writers we have here in our little corner of the world. The intention of this record is not to emulate what has gone before, but to show that we can do it our own way, with our own studio sound.

What is Americana? Good question! Some would argue Dylan started it. I'm sure there were other who went before, unnoticed perhaps... Well, you can find many definitions, but we see it as music that is inspired by traditional American music (folk, country, bluegrass, blues etc.), yet cannot be purely categorised as either one. This leaves a lot of room for interpretation, however, the fundamentals of these traditional styles are: quality songwriting, musical proficiency, and the willingness to borrow and share ideas from one to another. These are the fundamentals we are bringing together by selecting an amazing house band, 10 of Melbourne's best songwriters, and getting them to cover each others songs.

Without you, this cannot happen the way we want it to happen, and feel it needs to happen. Hopefully it will be something that Melbourne and the music community can be proud of. Let's take it to Nashville and show them what we can do!

“He who is not busy being born is busy dying.”

 THE ARTISTS

Luke Sinclair (Raised By Eagles) 
Joshua Seymour 
James Kenyon 
Suzannah Espie 
Dan Waters 
Tobias Hengeveld
Emilee South 
Chris Pickering
Brooke Russell 
Dan Parsons 

THE BAND

Josh Barber (Archie Roach, Brooke Russell and The Mean Reds, Goyte)
Ben Franz (The Waifs, Brooke Russell and The Mean Reds, The Stillsons)
Tim Keegan (Mia Dyson, Liz Stringer)
Shane Reily (Lost Ragas, Tex Perkins)
Ryan Brewer (Silver Springs, Chris Pickering, WILSN)

Here's a breakdown of where your contribution will go! 

6 days recording at The Aviary Recording Studio - $1980
5 session players for 4 days to create the Aviary House Band - $5000 
6 days for Engineer, Producer, Assistants - $3150
5 days mixing - $1650
Vinyl and digital mastering - $1650 
3 reels of 2" tape - $1200 

500 copies of the album pressed to vinyl - $4500 

Filming and Photography - $840 
Administration - $750 
Artist Fees - 10 x $200 - $2000 
Artwork and album design - $500 
Publicity and promotion - $2000 
Legal Fees - $500 
Pozible Fee - $1286 

GRAND TOTAL - $27, 006 

We don't foresee any major obstacles with this project but we will ensure the project is executed on a tight schedule and budget. Our admin team of Brooke Russell, Fraser Montgomery and Nick Edin have created schedules and drawn contracts to ensure the project stays on task.