MOTHERTONGUES

Welcome, and thanks for visiting the Mothertongues campaign site!

Our goal is to raise the funds needed to pay for the professional production and recording of eight original songs by Keppie Coutts. These songs will be included on the audiobook of Mothertongues, a co-written, experimental work of fiction about motherhood to be published by Penguin Random House in May 2022 (as both a physical book + audiobook).

From the start of writing together, co-authors Ceridwen Dovey and Eliza Bell have been interested in blurring the boundaries between different modes of expression: theatre, text and song.

This is why they asked their talented Sydney singer-songwriter friend, Keppie Coutts, to work with them on creating eight original songs to be interspersed throughout the audiobook, in between the textual narrative. Keppie will be working alongside a local producer and group of musicians (and paying industry-approved rates) to produce and record these eight songs in a recording studio. Here is a snippet of the first song in formation:

Through music and song, we wanted to represent the bursts, range and depth of emotions felt by women in the years of mothering young children in a way we can’t through text alone. The songs will also be available for readers of the physical book to stream for free online, to create a mood and atmosphere to accompany the text.  

The best parts of motherhood are often the enriching collaborations with other women doing the same daily labours. We feel that motherhood as a theme naturally lends itself to collaborative writing and creating, as a way of pushing back against the entrenched assumption that art-making must be solitary to be taken seriously. 

We hope you see the value in what we’re trying to make together and feel inspired to support this genre-bending, innovative project at whatever level you can. 

Thank you for your time and support!

You can hear some of Keppie's other music here: keppiecouttsmusic.com

And read some of Ceridwen's other writing here: https://www.ceridwendovey.com

Please take a look at some of the wonderful incentives on offer, including:

• T-Shirt and Tote, designed exclusively for Mothertongues by artist and illustrator, Fionn McCabe!

• Songwriting review and feedback with Berklee College of Music Online faculty, Keppie Coutts:

• 1-on-1 mentoring and feedback on your writing with Ceridwen Dovey, fiction writer and essayist for newyorker.com, the Monthly, Wired, and more:

  
  

• A rare opportunity to get writing and publishing advice via Zoom from a top international literary agent based in London

• 1-on-1 actor mentoring with Harvard Drama School alumna Eliza Bell:

  
  

• Tickets to a special fundraising event: Anna Funder and Jemma Birrell in conversation! Hosted by Roaring Stories Bookshop via Zoom, join us to listen to Anna Funder (Miles Franklin-winning author of All That I Am and Stasiland) and Jemma Birrell (host of the podcast The Secret Life of Writers) discuss motherhood and creativity, with a live musical performance from the MOTHERTONGUES album by Keppie Coutts.

  
  

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Many thanks to John Nolan of Folk Physics for providing the perfect music for our campaign videos. John is the best. You can listen to more of his music here.

Mothertongues is supported by the Open Academy at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music, who have generously committed to a Patron level donation to the project. The Open Academy offers courses, workshops, and programs open to the whole community. You can find out more here. 

We are also thrilled to be sponsorted by NobleOak. We are so grateful for their generous support of the campaign, and thoroughly inspired by the willingness of local business to throw themselves behind the arts when we need it the most. 

NobleOak is an independent, multi-award winning Australian life insurer based in Sydney. As an APRA-regulated friendly society, NobleOak distributes life insurance products and has been protecting Australians for over 140 years. NobleOak was crowned Australia’s most awarded Direct Life Insurer in 2020 and continues it’s success in 2021 by winning Finder’s “Best Life Insurer” award for the third year in a row and Canstar’s “Outstanding Value Life Insurance” for the sixth consecutive year.

You can find out more here: https://www.nobleoak.com.au/

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More About the Creators

Keppie Coutts is an Australian singer songwriter, whose blend of jazz-infused folk melts the mellow tones of Norah Jones with the ethereal pixie spirit of Laura Marling into a Chagall painting of sound. Keppie's tunes are earthy, sophisticated, and direct- heart-squeezing, uplifting; sometimes hilarious, sometimes dark. 

Multi-Grammy award-winning artist John Mayer heard a new tune of Keppie’s (‘Waiting for the Avalanche’) and within a week, had taken it into the studio in Boston to record. Keppie had scored a private audience with Mayer as one of 12 young songwriters hand-selected to spend the week with Mayer in 2008. 

A sojourn to the US saw Coutts catapult from student to faculty at the Berklee College of Music in Boston in 5 short years, teaching in the Songwriting Department in 2010. Since then, Keppie’s music has appeared on international radio and prime time television, and Coutts has taught songwriting at the Songwriting School of Los Angeles, Berklee Online, and for the Conservatorium Open Academy in her native Sydney. 

Coutts’ talents as a lyric writer have more recently been sought after by others in the music industry, with songs co-written by Coutts released by pop act, Sayah, and Australian heavy metal mash-up band, Twelve Foot Ninja. 

Keppie's music can be found here: https://open.spotify.com/artist/6beHgApuAOrYQYyTGeBBjI?si=I6rd1vx5QGaVcLkk3Rr8Cw&dl_branch=1

Ceridwen Dovey writes fiction, creative non-fiction, essays and profiles. She likes to work between and across genres and art forms, and loves to collaborate creatively with other women artists (for a fun article about group writing, have a read of this essay she wrote for newyorker.com a little while ago.)

Her debut novel, BLOOD KIN, was selected for the U.S. National Book Foundation’s honours list. Her second book, ONLY THE ANIMALS, won the inaugural 2014 Readings New Australian Writing Award. Her memoir-biography, ON JM COETZEE: WRITERS ON WRITERS, was published in 2018 as part of Black Inc.’s acclaimed Writers on Writers series. She’s also the author of the novel LIFE AFTER TRUTH and the bestselling Audible Original novel ONCE MORE WITH FEELING. She has published essays with newyorker.com, WIRED, the Smithsonian Magazine, the Monthly, and Alexander. In 2020, she was awarded a Eureka Award by the Australian Museum. 

Ceridwen is one of the collaborators who co-created the Declaration of the Rights of the Moon, and earlier this year, she and film director Rowena Potts released a short experimental film, Moonrise.

Eliza Bell is a teacher, writer, and theatre actor. She has lived and worked in Washington, New York, Berkeley, Cambridge, Moscow, and Paris. Favourite performances include: The Memory of Water; A Midsummer Night’s Dream; New Jerusalem; The Interrogation of Baruch de Spinoza; The Accident; Charles Mee’s Snow in June; Donnie Darko; The Most Massive Woman Wins; Three Sisters; and that weird match.com date when the priest took her to dinner at Prune and then a dirty puppet show that she tried to find amusing because she was just that lonely and plus she knew it would be a good story someday. Eliza trained at Studio Magenia Ecole de Mime in Paris and the Moscow Art Theater, U.C. Berkeley and American Repertory Theatre Institute at Harvard University. She lives in Sydney with her husband and two children.

Recording, arranging, mixing, and mastering of 4 tracks = $8,500

How does this break down?

Paying musicians the Musician's Union of Australia rates:

Piano - day rate (4 songs) = $600

Guitar - day rate (4 songs)  = $600

Vocals - day rate (4 songs) = $800

Subtotal: $2,000

Arranging and recording = $2,400

Mixing = $2,000

Mastering = $1,600

Subtotal: $6,000

FIRST GOAL: 4 SONGS $8,500*

*The extra $500 here includes the fee that Pozible takes in addition to the goal amount.

Stretch Goals:

Stretch #1: 8 SONGS $15,000

• Piano - day rate (4 songs) = $600
• Guitar - day rate (4 songs)  = $600
• Vocals - day rate (4 songs) = $800
• Cello (8 songs) - $1,250 
• Percussion (8 songs) - $1,250 
• Woodwinds: $1,000
• Bass: $1,000

Stretch #2: $20,000

• Video production of the tracks to create high-quality music videos that can be used to promote the songs and audiobook over the vast visual lands of the internet.