Crowdfunding for Deathfolk’s Debut Album

Deathfolk’s Jess Holland and Nick Hoover. Photo by Ty Helbach Photography.

After spending the better part of a decade playing gigs at bars and festivals across the peninsula, old-timey folk duo Deathfolk has launched a crowdfunding campaign and entered the recording studio with plans to release their debut album in June.

The acoustic/electric duo of Jess Holland and Nick Hoover has been playing music together since discovering their mutual love of dark folk songs in 2008. Since then, they have traveled the county delivering a mix of original songs and covers in their signature pure, old-fashioned harmonies. While they have enjoyed a comfortable pace of booking gigs and evolving their sound through live performances, the duo agreed they are ready to share their music with a broader audience.

Last month, they entered Sturgeon Bay musician and producer Marcus Trana’s studio, Painted Recordings, to begin the process.

“We talked about recording a couple of times but recently I’ve had a big group of songs I’ve wanted to record because it felt like I wasn’t able to write anymore because they really need to be documented,” Holland said. “And I couldn’t do it sufficiently on my own so I had approached Marcus about recording it for us, sort of like I need to get these out, I don’t even care if we make a real CD, I just want it recorded and archived so I have them for when I die and people find all this music somewhere and he was like yes, I will help you but everyone should celebrate this music and also be compensated for all the hard work that goes in. I think he was really the catalyst for us to get the Kickstarter going.”

That Kickstarter campaign, which launched March 31, gives the band 30 days to raise $5,850 to finance the production of their as-yet-untitled album. While the band has a repertoire of more than 15 original songs – and some in progress – the album will include just a dozen songs. Although Door County audiences will be familiar with many of them, there will be a few new surprises.

“It’s really cool to be playing all these songs that I’ve written and then brought to Nick and they’ve really evolved into something else,” Holland said. “I feel like I’ve come to a new place writing songs where I’m not afraid of sounding stupid for saying exactly what I’m feeling or seeing or whatever’s going on around me so I’m hoping that it’s very relatable and that as I’m growing older, I don’t feel like I need to sound smarter than my age or who I am and that I can just say what I want to say because that’s easier for people to understand so I’m hoping we make something that people can listen to and relate to and feel good listening to, that they’re not the only people that think the things that we are saying.”

Time in the recording studio has contributed to the band’s musical growth. Although Hoover describes the album as in “varying degrees of completeness” with a fluid track list and Holland continually writing new material, they are comfortable letting the recording process gradually unfold and inspire the next steps.

“The songs are kind of writing themselves and playing themselves and they’re going in a direction we really didn’t know, we didn’t expect to go. I’m really curious to see what the album turns out to be,” Hoover said. “We’re definitely sticking with some straight up acoustic music but we’ve explored over the past few months electrifying things and adding drums, and songs have kind of taken on a life of their own. That’s exciting. I think, if anything, what we want our fans to get out of this is we’re more than just a folk band and we’re constantly going to be evolving and they can expect that from us but we’ll always have our roots in what we started doing regardless of where we end up.”

Through the Kickstarter campaign, Deathfolk supporters can earn perks depending on the amount they pledge. While the minimum pledge of $17 earns a supporter a signed CD and digital download, larger pledges earn supporters a variety of interesting perks, from limited edition album artwork created by Holland’s artist husband Jared Nellis to a one-hour professional massage at the hands of Hoover, who is also a licensed massage therapist.

“It’s pretty funny coming up with that list because you’re like, obviously we’re going to offer a CD to start and then I think the next things that came to mind were a house concert,” Hoover said. “Well, the house concert is hundreds of dollars and the CD is $17 so we had to come up with stuff in between.”

The top tier perks are designed specifically for backers to enjoy some of the best Door County has to offer, from a professionally catered dinner prepared by Trana, of Nistebox fame, and a romantic island getaway on the bay side.

“If anyone’s looking to get engaged, I highly suggest the private concert for two on Horseshoe Island,” Holland said. “My husband just built an 18-foot wooden skiff last summer and he just passed his captain’s license testing. He offered to bring a couple over to Horseshoe Island so they can have a little concert, which is really cool.”

With the band currently in the studio and less than three weeks to go in their crowdfunding campaign, they hope to have the album out in early June.

“Ideally we would really like to be ready with this thing in hand the first weekend of June,” Hoover said. “Steel Bridge Songfest is the second weekend…and if we’re ready and we know that we can hit the goal of being ready the first weekend in June, we’d like to book a CD release party of some kind whether it’s small or big for that weekend and then having CDs in hand for Steel Bridge Songfest would be good…and then we’ll springboard into the Door County season of playing gigs.”

More information on the Kickstarter campaign and perks can be found on Kickstarter.com or at Deathfolk.com.