THE HIGHWAY MOVES THE WORLD, my fifth LP, might be the most personal album I've ever made. Will you help us finish it?
The title is about my mother's sacrifice, how she drove up and down the East Coast for years, taking care of business in New Hampshire, her parents in Florida, her kids and grandkids in between, how because of her love for me and my children, my whole family ended up in North Carolina, all five of us siblings, and then our partners, and our own kids.
Each song is inspired by these family relationships, sometimes quite literally, sometimes metaphorically and cinematically. The songs cover the range of human emotions, from agitated anger to nostalgic hope to hip-shaking celebration, opening space for you to feel what you need to feel.
The $16,500 target would pay for the basics of creating music -- recording, mixing, mastering, manufacturing and shipping the physical products to you. The additional $3,500 would allow us to create music videos to go with the remaining six songs on the album.
If we hit $20,000, we can keep working with talented animators and filmmakers such as Eleni Chandriotou, Alex Dar, Bernardo Tirelli, Ylenia Condello, Aldy Kusuma, Malcolm Goff and TJ Volgare. Most of our T-shirt designs came from the drawings in their animations or from Adam Neubauer's or Jeannine Erasmus' album covers!
Thus far, we've released six of the 12 songs as digital singles, including "Au Cheval," about my brother Steven's generosity and his love of blackjack, bone-marrow appetizers and the greatest cheeseburger in the land at the eponymous bistro in Chicago.
Creatively speaking, we have the energy and vision to keep creating art that sparks and flashes with life and light. Your investments give the electrical surges we need to move as fast as the muse can lead us. We don't want to slow down (I've already written most of album No. 6!), so thank you for catalyzing the creative process. -- Jesse