Dear Windborne Backers, Will you be joining us tonight (SUNDAY Dec 8th) at 6pm ET for our Music of Midwinter Livestream? We are going to be singing a bunch of music from the album, plus some brand new songs, and tying it all together with story, verse, and great sweaters! And then afterwards we have a Zoom after-party where we will sing some more songs, talk about the book, answer questions, and hang out for a while! If you don't already have your tickets, we are offering a secret backers deal of $20 off the Concert+ Zoom and you can use the code THANKYOUBACKERS at https://tix.windbornesingers.com/events/windborne/1424440 Just make sure to click "Use ticket access code" and enter it in there!
it has simply the best to hear all of your reactions and delight at the new album and book, and to see your pictures, stories, and appreciation coming from folks all over the world! It feels so exciting to hear about choirs and families singing these songs, folks doing their holiday decorations while listening, and kids getting to explore the illustrations. If you feel moved, we'd love to hear your stories too!
The album has been getting a lot of great press, but our favorite so far is this review: https://klofmag.com/2024/12/windborne-to-warm-the-winter-hearth/ "Windborne have an almost supernatural grasp of harmony singing, their songs exudes bright warmth, wit and a sense of celebration delivered with, richness, delicacy and grit - incredible technical skill and a frighteningly accomplished intricacy of arrangement."
Thank you all for making this possible, for coming out to see the live show, and we hope to see many of you this evening!
In harmony and gratitude, Jeremy, Lauren, Lynn and Will
We spent all this week signing and packing and shipping out 11,000 preorder albums, and we can’t wait to hear what you think! Some of you have already received your copies and sent us photos or messages, and we love seeing them in your hands and homes! A Reminder: some of you opted not to receive a CD in your survey, just to get downloads. If you didn’t get a cd this is probably why, though feel feee to double check with us!
A huge thank you is due to our intrepid crew of volunteers who put in countless hours helping us stick labels and stuff envelopes. This was a project that truly took a village, and we are so grateful to our community for showing up and helping out!
🇨🇦A note to our Canadian backers:🇨🇦 We had been really hoping that Canada Post would have come to a contract agreement with the union by the time we were shipping things out week, but the strike continues so seems that we and our Canadian customers will need to wait a little longer. Shipping with another carrier is prohibitively expensive, but more importantly we stand in solidarity with fellow union workers and do not want to cross the picket line by using another service. Some orders have been shipped out as a bulk export and will ship within Canada once the strike resolves. Some are already in the mail as individual orders, and we’re holding the last batch until the strike resolves. If you feel called you can support CUPW with an automatic email!
Thank you for your patience and understanding! We know you are eagerly awaiting your albums, and we are hoping for a speedy resolution of this labor dispute.
Finally, our deep gratitude goes out to everyone who backed this project! We are so excited to share our love of unusual winter folklore and traditions, and to discover that there is such an appetite for this delightful music. Thank you for supporting independent music and art! ❄️🎶🎄❤️
PS we now have the album on our pre-order store for friends who want to get a copy (or extra gifts!
-MOST IMPORTANT: Please fill out your survey so we can send you your albums! This is the way for us to get your current shipping info! Survey deadline: November 17
-Shipping is still on track to begin Nov 30
-Come to a show! Our Music of Midwinter tour (northeast US) begins next weekend, and we have a livestream available WORLDWIDE on Dec 8!
-Join our Patreon for year-round access to new music and supporting our mission
-We got the test pressing of our vinyl album! You can add it to your order when you fill out your survey
Surveys: Thank you to the 5500 of you who have already filled out your surveys and given us your addresses for shipping! As you may or may not know, Windborne is entirely run by the four of us (we jokingly refer to Lynn and Will's basement as "Windborne's Shipping and Receiving Department") and since we are also preparing to go on tour right now, it is super helpful to have your info as soon as possible so we can get organized and ready to ship the album the minute we receive it! Your BackerKit survey is the way we can collect and process all that info, so please fill it out soon--the final deadline for surveys is Nov 17. Find your survey here: https://windborne.backerkit.com/ by entering the email address you used to make your pledge.
Downloads: Once you finish your survey, you get the downloads! If you are having trouble just let us (or Backerkit support) know! You can choose between wav and mp3 files for the music.
Shipping: As we said in our main campaign, we will begin shipping at the end of November and everything looks on track for that timeline! We know many of you are eagerly awaiting the album to give as gifts for the holidays, and rest assured that we are doing everything we can to get it to you on time.
Music of Midwinter tour: Starting next weekend, we will be touring our Music of Midwinter show, which includes many of the songs on this album! If you are in the northeast of the US (Maine to Maryland!) we hope you will join us in person at a show this year! We will also do a livestream concert on Sunday, Dec 8, bringing these songs straight to you at home. You can add a livestream ticket to your order in your survey, which will also get you a pass to our post-concert Zoom hangout as a thank you for backing this album! Livestream tickets are also available here if you want to share the link with friends: https://tix.windbornesingers.com/events/windborne/1424440
Patreon: If you want to stay in touch with Windborne year round, see a peek behind the scenes, support our mission, and get exclusive tracks and videos that aren't released anywhere else, we would love to welcome you to our Patreon community! We just celebrated our five year Patreon anniversary, and we are excited to continue growing this vibrant community from all over the world!
Vinyl: We just got the test pressing of our vinyl, and it sounds great! You can add a copy of To Warm the Winter Hearth on vinyl to your order via your survey, but please note that it will NOT ship in time for the holidays. It wasn't originally part of this project, but due to popular demand we ended up adding it! We are so glad you all asked for it, but given its late addition, the production timeline is way further behind the book and CD.
We hope you are enjoying the digital downloads, and thank you so much for your support! If you do make it to a show in person, please do come say hello! We love making the face to face connection after all these months of digital communication. :)
Just dropping in with a few quick updates about surveys, book printing, shipping, and more music.
-The survey collecting your address and other important info will go out soon! The Backerkit platform is currently reviewing the backend of the survey and as soon as they approve it we will send it out. With the amazing 8000 backers we have for this project, that process is just taking a little longer than expected.
-The books are in progress and the CDs are being pressed! We got an update from the printer this week showing us some sample copies of the book, and it looks amazing! We added gold foil to the back cover as well, and can’t wait to show you.
-US backers have free shipping, and folks outside the US who selected international shipping will also not be charged. If you forgot to select that option, we have decided to extend our subsidized shipping to everyone at that same rate, so you will see that added to your cart.
When you complete your survey you will be directed to download To Warm the Winter Hearth. You can also order the To Warm the Winter HearthVinyl Edition You will also have the option of adding Windborne’s older albums to your order if you’d like more vocal harmony in your life, so we wanted to give you a quick overview of the options since they all have a distinct character!
Of Hard Times & Harmony (2022) and Song on the Times (2017): these two albums are songs of social struggle from movements of the past, sung for the struggles of today’s times. Like To Warm the Winter Hearth, they are also books as well as CDs! The books have lyrics, art, and essays about the songs giving historical and cultural context for the music.
Song on the Timesalso has the melodies of each song notated and features some of our favorite union labor anthems, the Pete Seeger classic Where Have All The Flowers Gone?, and protest songs as old as the 1640s like The Diggers Song.
Of Hard Times & Harmonyis a mini hardcover book and features audience favorites like When I’m Gone by Phil Ochs and our song about streaming music called .4 Cents a Play, as well as a modern protest song in the Occitan language called Nou Carbons.
Lay Around That Shack (2015) reflects Windborne’s roots in American and English folk traditions. The powerful four-part harmony is amplified by rollicking banjo, washboard, and jaw harp, and includes the much-requested song Grey Funnel Line by Cyril Tawney.
Midwinter Meeting (2013) is a piece of Windborne history! This album captures live recordings of our first tour as a quartet and includes the most diverse range of songs from different polyphonic traditions, like Corsica, Georgia, Bulgaria, and more.
We also have T-shirts in a beautiful maroon color that feature artwork from Song on the Times! These shirts are union made and union printed in our home state of Massachusetts, and come in unisex sizes Small - XXL
Thanks for your support for our work, and it seems our timeline is still on track to have digital go out this week, and physical ~November 30!
Thank you. Thank you. We are truly lost for words, but these past few days have been humbling and awe-inspiring beyond any way we can even hope to adequately express over a digital format. Mostly I hope that you will come to a show some time and we can be in the same room and sing for you and smile and rejoice in music and harmony and being together and celebrating our togetherness. Really-please come find our shows, and say hi, and that makes all the long hours of dealing with social media and the online slog so worth it. Just people, in person, sharing beauty and in the moment live experiences.
For those of you who don't know our story, we never set out to be full time musicians. We were (and are!) friends who love to sing together, and were pursuing such diverse careers as education, circus arts, choral conducting and ethnochoreology (anthropology of dance) when we had a video go viral, and people started reaching out to us from all over the country asking us to come and sing for them. We had a bunch of long and scary conversations with each other, and then leapt, not knowing if the community would catch us.
Our path has not been straightforward. Like many musicians, the highs of exciting new venues and festivals were often juxtaposed with the shows where 5 people showed up, and the moments of transcendence also came long weeks away from home and friends, wondering if the world really wanted to hear four singers who cared about traditional music, making the world a more just place, and singing in unusual harmony.
You all have given us such a gift in not only supporting our work, but in answering that question with a resounding YES! Singing is important, as are traditions, and harmony, and working towards a equitable and kind world!
In a world where art and music is devalued, and the mainstream expectation is that all music is free (or that we pay corporations like Spotify, and not the artists that make the art), you have said YES, artists should be able to thrive! We are so lucky to have you as a community that rejects extraction of art from artists, and celebrates the whole, and we hope to be able to celebrate with you in person this year, and for many years to come.
Eventually we will have more to say, more eloquently, but for now: Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
In harmony, Jeremy, Lauren, Lynn, and Will
Some Important Info! PLEASE READ!
Digital files: We just approved the final master for the album so we’ll be sending out those files in the next week to everyone in all pledge levels!
SURVEY: Also in the next week you will receive a survey to collect some important information, most importantly your shipping address. Also To reduce plastic waste: A CD is included by default in most pledges, but we know that many people don’t want them or have no way to play them. To reduce waste, if you opt to not receive the disc we will give you a $5 credit towards any other Windborne merch!
Add-ons: You will also have an opportunity in the survey to buy more albums at a highly discounted campaign rate. This will include our other books and albums, tshirts, sheet music for choirs, and more!
Shipping will begin late November, but if you don't fill out your survey we won't be able to ship. We have so many folks to get these out to, so please do this in a timely manner! ❤️
Thank you again for being part of this journey! We hope to see you at a show sometime You can find subscribe to our schedule and find our events at: windbornesingers.com/concerts
If you want to join us year-round, our Patreon communityis where we share our works in progress, behind the scenes stories, and other fun stuff.
Thank you again and again and again. It's time to sleep, but I feel utterly filled.
Short version: YOU ARE AMAZING, we set records, tell your friends, digital files in a few weeks, shipping late November, make sure to look out for a survey when the campaign closes, come see us live! Plus-Do you want VINYL?
The full version:
Wow, this has been quite the journey, and the four of us are all still a bit in shock at the warmth and enthusiasm with which the world has received To Warm the Winter Hearth! We’ve poured our love and work and creativity into this project for so long and to see thousands of people from all over the world talking about it and getting excited and preparing to listen to (or sing!) these songs are truly a dream come true.
In these last days of the campaign for To Warm the Winter Hearth, we wanted to take a moment to stop, catch our breath, and send you a warm and heartfelt thank you. Your incredible support has filled us with deep gratitude for how this community has come together, and feels like a reaffirmation of the power and place of traditional music and vocal harmony in the world today. Your belief in our music and mission is the best gift we will receive this year, and we are beyond thrilled to have the opportunity to share with you all the music, artwork, stories, and magic in this book
The project has also set new records in the crowdfunding world! Not only is it the #1 vocal album ever, but it is also the top Folk Album, and the top Seasonal Album! In fact, if we get 700 more backers, you will have made To Warm the Winter Hearth the 5th most-backed crowdfunded album on any platform. Incredible! Thank you.
As we work to cross the finish line, we ask that you help us. If you have friends or family that might resonate with our music and mission, please do share our campaign (this link can help!). The best way is often a direct email, but you can also share the page with them and encourage them to watch the video to hear the music! We really appreciate the word-of-mouth recommendation, it’s the highest compliment a musician can receive.
Some Important Info!
Digital files: We just approved the final master for the album so we’ll be sending out those files in the next few weeks to everyone in all pledge levels!
SURVEY: After the campaign ends on the 13th of october you will receive a survey to collect some important information, most importantly your shipping address.
Reduce plastic waste: A CD is included by default in most pledges, but we know that many people don’t want them or have no way to play them. To reduce waste, if you opt to not receive the disc we will give you a $5 credit towards any other Windborne merch!
Add-ons: You will also have an opportunity in the survey to buy more albums at a highly discounted campaign rate. This will include our other books and albums, tshirts, sheet music for choirs, and more!
Shipping will begin late November, to make sure you get your copies in time for the holidays!
Thank you again for being part of this journey! We hope to see you at a show sometime You can find subscribe to our schedule and find our events at: windbornesingers.com/concerts If you want to join us year-round, our Patreon community is where we share our works in progress, behind the scenes stories, and other fun stuff.
Thanks again for being such an integral part of the Windborne team. We can’t express how much your support means to us.
Hello you wonderful backers! Wow, the response to this campaign has really gone beyond our wildest dreams! We have poured our time and love and attention and heart into this project for the past several years, and to see all of you getting excited about our particular take on midwinter musical traditions and art has been honestly very moving. It is rare that independent musicians get to have such supportive communities of listeners, and we are incredibly touched by the support you have shown in getting the album for friends and family, choirs, students, and communities. The idea of so many people listening to these songs and enjoying the book this December is thrilling!
To show our gratitude for your support and to celebrate, we are going to be having a little livestream hangout/chat/concert on Sept 22 at 7:30 ET! We will be sharing a bit of the process of making this whole thing come together as well, and answering questions in the chat and giving some sneak previews of the songs!
Join Windborne in celebrating our newest project: a book & album of music for midwinter called To Warm the Winter Hearth. Filled with lush vocal harmony and packaged inside a full-color book, it’s our most exciting project yet!
As a thank you to everyone who has supported us so far (3600+ and counting!) we will sing songs, tell stories, and give you a sneak peek behind the scenes of the new project. Admission is free for backers, and we encourage you to share with friends so they can preorder their copy (at a discount and free shipping!)
We are 75% of the way to our initial goal - Thanks to everyone who has been sharing the project with friends! We are just wrapping up the book this week, and wanted to give you a little peek at how the art progressed from initial idea to the front spread!
One thing we are most excited about with our new album, To Warm the Winter Hearth, is the artwork! We've spent months collaborating with the incredible illustrator Matt Spencer, who truly brought our vision to life in ways that far exceeded our expectations!
The songs on this album come from a variety of midwinter traditions and celebrations that are rich with characters and symbols, and from the beginning we knew we wanted the art to depict as many of them as possible, all mashed up together in a giant party! We think of the artwork as a bit of a Where's Waldo or scavenger hunt for all the hidden gems and special meaning, and we wanted to share some of those secrets with early backers.
In the cover spread above, you can clearly see us leading the procession of revelers towards the house on the hill. Just behind us, the four men in colorful costumes are the four members of Nowell Sing We Clear, a group that was an integral part of our holiday celebrations as we grew up and inspired so much of our album (and include Lauren's dad Fred, playing fiddle)!
Many of the images come directly from the lyrics of our songs: the red fox is featured in our first track Here We Come A-Wassailing, and Derby Ram in the righthand corner has a whole family of songs dedicated to his legend. By the ram's feet, you can see a timid hare like the one mentioned in Time to Remember the Poor. There are people beating on pots and pans and dancing around a bonfire from Welcome In Another Year, and just above the ram's head you can see Satan falling on his nose as he does in Satan Es Ben Estonat!
There are also some images that are more of an inside joke among us. Do you see the camel with a rider playing an instrument? This is also a reference to Satan Es Ben Estonat, but not because a camel is actually mentioned in the song. One verse of the song has the line, "Enflatz la calamèla," and when we were first learning the song, we joked that it must mean "inflate the camel!" The verse is actually about playing the cymbals and the chalumeau (a clarinet-like instrument) to celebrate Satan's downfall, but when it came time to brainstorm imagery for the book, it seemed fitting to include our imaginary friend the camel in this scene as well.
This is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to "easter eggs" hidden in the art. What other references can you spot here? Do you have questions about details you notice? We're happy to tell all the stories!
In harmony and celebration,
Lauren, Jeremy, Lynn, and Will
Please do keep sharing and thanks for your support <3
Hello, the final show of the tour is coming up fast and I just want to make sure that you get your free ticket to the live stream this Friday if you want one.
SO please check out https://www.maestro.tv/shaodowmusic and if you'd like your free ticket, send an email to [email protected] before the end of today so that we're able to send you your free entry code with enough time before the show.
Make sure to use the email address that you used to supported the Genki Dama with.
Thanks again for helping make this all possible. I'm so incredibly happy with how this tour has turned out.
Hopefully you can be there to celebrate with us on Friday.
I'm currently in the tour car, we're driving from Tokyo to Hamamatsu for the first show of the tour.
It's been pretty crazy so far, I landed in from the flight on Wednesday and went straight into rehearsals with the band.
We all gelled extremely well over our love for Japanese culture and anime, the Bass player Bubby Lewis has played on tour with Snoop Dogg, Stevie Wonder and Jhene Aiko. The drummer Yuna is from a super popular band called Chai and is on the same label as Creepy Nuts PLUS played drums for one of the Jujutsu Kaisen ending songs and the guitarist Karas is THE guy to know in the Japanese music scene and is an INCREDIBLE guitar player.
So overall, I'm amongst some absolute legends.
But now, onto business!
We promised you a live streamed show and now we're able to officially announce and deliver.
We will be livestreaming the final date of the Genki Dama Tour on Friday 14th June live from Tokyo.
There'll be some special guest performers and the official Anime and Chill Afterparty, so it's going to be a VERY special event.
The livestream will begin from 6:15pm (Japan Standard Time) at https://www.maestro.tv/ShaoDowMusic
You will of course be given a FREE ticket to this event as a thank you for helping to make this tour possible.
Please check what time it'll be in your country in order to ensure you can attend and if you would like to claim your free ticket, respond to this post or email [email protected] and we will get a free entry code over to you.
Please make sure to respond by Wednesday 12th June in order to ensure that we have enough time to sort everything out in advance.
So that's it. I look forward to seeing you in the chat, celebrating this event with us and enjoying some fantastic music live from Tokyo.
A totally independent tour in Japan.
wow.
Thank you again. I couldn't have done this without you.
