Culture

Angela Perley of Angela Perley and the Howlin’ Moons, who have recently launched a Kickstarter campaign to fund the release of their next full-length album. (Photo by Kate Sweeney)

Hang Out With Angela Perley at a Cat Café AND Fund Her Next Album

By:
Posted on:

< < Back to

Angela Perley is funding the release of her next full-length album with a Kickstarter campaign that has already managed to raise $11,628 of its $13,000 goal with three weeks left to go in the campaign. Kickstarter is a crowd-funding platform that depends on campaigns to meet their goals before they will fund any part of a project, so raising that last little portion is crucial to the production of the forthcoming album.

The rewards that are being offered for contributions to the campaign are quite impressive — from advance downloads of the album to birthday video messages recorded by Angela Perley and her band to a trip to the Eat, Purr, Love Cat Café in Columbus with Angela Perley herself that this article’s headline alludes to.

The Columbus rocker has been performing as Angela Perley and the Howlin’ Moons since 2009; playing 100+ shows a year for the past half decade. Over the course of Perley’s career, she’s released numerous EPs, two full-length albums (2014’s Hey Kid! and 2016’s Homemade Vision,) and through all that she’s developed a deeply dedicated fan base, something that is evident if one attends any of her regional shows.

Then album was conceived last winter when Perley took 17 new songs to Chris Connor, her long-running musical partner.

“If you don’t know him, Chris has been playing lead guitar in my band since the beginning and has been hugely instrumental in the arrangements of my music the last couple of albums,” wrote Perley on the project’s Kickstarter. “He’s my rock and is the person I trust most with my songs in their raw stages.”

Angela Perley (Photo by Kate Sweeney)

After that, the two hashed out demo versions of the songs, bringing electronic drums to fill them out. From there, Connor and Perley headed into the studio to record the songs with session players from Nashville and Ohio. Initial tracking sessions for the forthcoming LP took place last April at Earthwork Recording Studio in Newark, OH. Afterwards, Perley and Connor worked on the tracks some more in their Columbus studio, before deciding to fill out the songs with Robbie Crowell (Deertick) on Wurlitzer, Hammond B-3, and piano at Nashville’s historic Creative Workshop. Once that portion of the recording was wrapped up, Perley decided that a number of the songs needed strings added to them, which the band looked to Andy Carlson (R.E.M., Billy Bragg, Nanci Griffith,) at Earthwork Recording studio to contribute.

Brandon Bankes, the engineer at Earthwork Recording Studio, also contributed some pedal steel guitar to the new album — it’s worth noting that he played pedal steel guitar parts to two songs off of the band’s full-length debut, Key Kid!.

One of the rewards for contributing $100 or more to Angela Perley and the Howlin’ Moons’ Kickstarter campaign for their forthcoming album is a signed copy of the out-of-print “Homemade Vision.” (kickstarter.com)

Although Angela Perley and the Howlin’ Moons have done quite a bit of work to make this new album a reality, the work still needs to be mixed and mastered; the artwork for the CD and vinyl record has yet to be produced; the album will need some basic PR work to get the word out about it; and there is a five percent Kickstarter fee that needs to be taken care of.

Perley expressed gratitude that the campaign has been so supported so far — and although she certainly received a share of support from fans in the region, she said that she was also pleased to see that international fans of the group have been throwing in funds for the forthcoming album as well.

For a pledge of $1,500 or more, fans can get their hands on Angela Perley’s own gold sparkle Fender telecaster, which she is pictured here with. (kickstarter.com)

“Once you launch a Kickstarter, you are pretty locked into whatever you set for rewards and shipping costs. I was really debating on whether or not to have the ‘ship to anywhere in the world’ option because that was a tough one to estimate shipping for,” she said. “At first I had it set to only the U.S. and I am really happy I ended up doing the extra homework on shipping costs and making it available to ship anywhere because we have had a good amount of CD and vinyl orders from the U.K and France which is pretty wild!”

Perley expressed that she is satisfied with her experience with the crowd-funding platform.

Angela Perley’s general tour poster, designed by Electric Sister Scorpio. A signed copy of the poster is available as a perk for six people who contribute $25 or more to the Kickstarter campaign. (kickstarter.com)

“The Kickstarter platform itself has helped us out a lot. Kickstarter marked us as a ‘Project We Love,’ and because of that people that weren’t even aware of the band before somehow got turned on to us through Kickstarter — which is really cool!” she said. “Definitely wasn’t expecting that, so lots of surprises along the way here with this!”

WOUB’s Emily Votaw interviewed Perley about the making of the new album; how she selected such interesting rewards for her fans who decide to contribute to the campaign; and what fans can look forward to from the forthcoming full-length, in the audio feature embedded above.