The Crooked Fiddle Band

Hi lovers of strange music!

We’re The Crooked Fiddle Band - Jess, Mark, Gordon and Joe - and we’re releasing The Free Wild Wind And The Songs Of Birds (our fourth album) on 7th June 2024. We’re nearly ready to go, but need your help to get it across the finish line! 

By pre-ordering the album, you will:

• Help pay for album artwork, photos and finalising the mixing & mastering

• Help our tunes debut on the Australian music charts

By supporting this campaign, you’ll be helping independent artists realise their project and making sure we can get it heard by as many ears as possible. The way charts work in Australia means that all pre-orders of the album get treated as sales on the day the album is released, allowing it to appear in a dramatic puff of smoke. This even counts for digital downloads, so every pre-sale will give the album a better chance of being visible on charts and playlists to people who might love it, but might never stumble across it otherwise.

If you don’t know us, we’re Australia’s premier (and most likely only) Chainsaw-Folk band. We’ve been together for 18 years, touring the world, building festival audiences, recording overseas and at home. It’s been a wild ride - especially the last few. Our third album, Another Subtle Atom Bomb, was released in late 2019, and we got 90% of our launch tour done when the pandemic stopped us in our tracks. Amongst the lockdowns, that album was nominated for an ARIA Award for Best World Music album, a bit of lovely news amongst it all.

We’re really proud of what we’ve achieved so far on The Free Wild Wind And The Songs Of Birds - it both builds on our existing work and goes somewhere different. The different bits are partly new, and partly a return to our folk roots. Here's the cover art, designed by Sam Harwood:

There have been two tunes floating around our writing sessions for years, which have been in contention for every album but never quite fit. We knew we wanted to approach this album differently, so Gordon (frets) came up with the concept of an album built specifically around these orphan songs. The result is even better than we’d hoped - lush, spacious and cohesive. 

Here's first single Deadly Nightsnakes, our first single from the album: 

This album feels like a summation of all the layers that make up The Crooked Fiddle Band. We’ve involved people from across our entire career - long time friends Richie Cuthbert and Fanny Lumsden are guest vocalists on the album, whilst we recorded with our ARIA-nom dream team Clay Segelov and Angie at The Brain Studios in Sydney. Any stroll down tCFB lane couldn’t ignore the two albums we recorded with Steve Albini in Chicago - so we enlisted his Electrical Audio studios there to record our cellist from those albums, Russell Rolen.  

It’s alllliiiiiiiivvvvvveeee! 

We can't wait to show you!

Album artwork and photos: $3100

Mixing and Mastering: $3600
Manufacturing: $3700

Release promo: $900

Total: $11,300

As you can see, even once you've recorded the whole album, the costs mount up! 

However, we're not relying solely on crowdfunding to make this album happen. 

60% of the above costs will be covered by our gigs, so we're hoping to cover the remainder via this campaign.

We're also aware that not everyone is in a situation to financially support this campaign - we understand! If you could help by spreading the word, that's also appreciated! As we mention above, some of the value for us in presales is that the album makes a bigger splash when it's released.