Ellis Paul – HuffPost 8.20.10

[Note: These quotes are taken from my interview with Ellis Paul in 2010 and contain some interesting information for new artists.]

Mike Ragogna: With more and more artists taking responsibility for the marketing and distribution of their projects, fan funding has become a more obvious route. For The Day After Everything Changed, you raised over $100,000, right?

Ellis Paul: Yes.

MR: How did you do it?

EP: Well, we set up a tier system on the website where people can go get goods and services that they bought into. The top end is for $10,000 and in exchange, you get a guitar and a house concert, and I write a song for you with handwritten lyrics to whatever song you like. On the lower end, a $15 dollar scale would get you a pre-ordered CD that is signed and numbered and on like that.

MR: Yeah, I also think The Day After Everything Changed is your best as well as your most “commercial” album to date.

EP: Yeah and I think that has to do with the immediate impact of the songs. It only takes a listen or two to get pulled into what the songs are about. It’s partially the writing and partially making the right choices production-wise to hook people. “Commercial” production can be very hokey.

MR: Yes. Also, the packaging is beautiful with some real attention to detail.

EP: I don’t want people to think that this was done on a shoestring or that I was begging people for money on the Internet. It’s really more money than anyone has ever spent on me, we didn’t cut any corners. I spent more on the recording, spent more on the artwork, and spent more on the marketing than I have ever spent on any other project. So, it’s not a shoestring thing at all. It’s a move up in a lot of ways.

MR: And due to your taking your career into your own hands — not becoming behoovin’ to a label but going the fan funding route — you have the mandate to express yourself any way you need to artistically.

EP: Yeah. They are always trying to think of the bottom line and not actually what the actual product looks like. They give you deadlines that you have to be done by, you have to spend this much money, you can’t go over budget. All of those things are bypassed. We spent as much as we needed to make a record right, and we hired the right people for the design who could express who I am and what I want rather than what the record label wants. It feels more real, more me, more artful, more creative.