This local folk trio turned to Kickstarter to make their first album a reality
For most musicians, the height of COVID-19 lockdown of a few years back was a frustrating and confusing period, trying to figure out what to do with their time with the club scene shut down.
Not so much with The Boom Chickens.
“Even before the pandemic, we were getting excited about the sound of our original songs and the response they were getting from audiences,” recalls fiddle player/vocalist Nora Revenaugh, “so we used that slow time to write and arrange lots of new material and focus on our vision for The Boom Chickens.”
The result is their soon-to-be-released first album, “Scratch Tracks," an all-original project that showcases the band’s diverse influences – Nora grew up in the Irish traditional music scene, guitarist Matt Klausner comes from a rock background, and mandolinist Abby Drumm is a classically trained pianist.
“We decided that we wanted to be a band that’s really dedicated to writing and performing our own stuff,” notes Revenaugh. “We wanted to write music that made people feel good and played to our strengths of three-part vocal harmonies and creative string arrangements.”
OK, so the band is tight. The tunes are ready. But how do you spread your art to a larger audience than can see you in a small intimate venue?
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When we released a vinyl album in the ‘80s we were forced to go door-to-door collecting donations in an empty coffee can. (OK, that didn’t happen; we hit our parents up for money.)
But artists nowadays don’t have to resort to such drastic measures. More and more artists are using crowd-sourcing to raise money to pay for a record release.
The Boom Chickens chose Kickstarter for their fundraising to host their campaign for one main reason: Kickstarter uses an all-or-nothing funding model, which means if a project doesn’t reach its goal, then funds don’t get collected, and no money changes hands. That high risk/high reward ratio appealed to the gamblers in the band.
“I've watched other musician friends run campaigns on various platforms, and they all have pros and cons, but Kickstarter has a much higher percentage of musicians meet their funding goal,” explains Revenaugh. “Of course, that's possibly because with a make-it-or-break-it model, we have no choice.”
While the main goal is to fund the project, one of the aims of this campaign is to reach out and test the waters beyond the circle of local fans who have been coming out to their shows and to see what kind of support it garners.
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“It's hard to ask people to invest in a band before there's much to listen to, but that's what we're hoping this first album will do,” says Nora. “I think it's very cool that we get to make homegrown, locally-sourced music that is completely rooted in our life here in the Utica area and the Adirondacks.
“And we hope there are enough people around who want more of that and are willing to be part of making that happen.”
Follow The Boom Chickens’ Facebook page to get notified when the Kickstarter campaign opens.
This article originally appeared on Binghamton Press & Sun-Bulletin: The Boom Chickens aim for first album release with 'Scratch Tracks'
