Comments (0)Jill Sobule
Do It Yourself
March 27, 2009
Singer-songwriter Jill Sobule is pretty much through with record companies, and she wants your money and help.
Ms. Sobule, 44, best known for her 1995 moderate hit “I Kissed A Girl” (which became a mega-hit by Katy Perry in 2008) has been on four record labels over the years, with only modest success.
Nowadays, she’s a free agent. So she called on her fans to help her raise $75,000 to fund her next record, with a campaign on her Web site, jillsnextrecord.com. To encourage generosity, Ms. Sobule offered “gifts.”
For $10,000, a contributor was allowed to sing a duet with Jill on the record. Five K’s snagged a private living room concert. And one-hundred bucks guaranteed a T-shirt from the singer with “Junior Executive Producer” sprawled across.
The result is her new album “California Years.” And believe it or not, raising all of that money only took six weeks.
“I was totally surprised and shocked,” Ms. Sobule, a Denver native, told CNN. “Some of my favorite [responses] were, `I really don’t like your music, but I like what you’re doing, so here’s five bucks.’”
Among those who chipped in were “Dancing With The Stars’ host Tom Bergeron, with a grand, and Fred Savage of “The Wonder Years, who “coughed up a hundred bucks.”
“For $1,000, Tom gets his own theme song that he can put on his answering machine,” said Ms. Sobule. “There are actually going to be two different versions. There is a spy version, that is kind of 007-like with horns, and then there is `That Girl,’ this Mary Tyler Moore ‘60s-type theme song. I am making myself do a lot of work, but it has been really fun.”
Ms. Sobule said she hopes other recording artists will follow her example.
“I could have done it for less than $75,000—and I probably will for my next one—but I wanted to do it the old-fashioned way one last time, and do everything that the label does—publicity, promotion, marketing, distribution, printing the old CDs,” she said. “I guess that’s what an indie budget would be at a label.
“Other artists—I think this is completely a model for them to do. I think that it’s very hard to be an artist more than ever, but it is also a very exciting time. It feels like the Wild West in a way.”
Giddyup, Jilly!