We're about a week and a half away from my trip down to Philly, and so far about 40% of the way to the fundraising goal. Factoring in a bit of gig money I've been saving as a cushion, I should have enough at least to get through the week - but again, there are still many other cost to factor in after the fact like additional recording, mixing, mastering, artwork etc. 

Chris and I met over zoom last month and decided to make some adjustments to our game plan - largely out of being realistic about what we think we can accomplish in a single week. Rather than get a whole band of session musicians together in the studio, we are working on getting drums and bass recorded remotely ahead of time so that we can make best use of our time in the studio. The guitarist will meet us for a couple days in Philly and we will collaborate on ideas, and then Chris and I can use the rest of the time on building out the sound with keys, acoustics, and vocals. Caleb Bronz and Kyle Saulnier, both of whom played on my last record, are doing the drums and bass, respectively. 

Also in the interest of being realistic with our time we have trimmed the initial goal of 14 songs down to 10. We'll work on the additional ones if we have time, but our goal is to prioritize the 10 we picked. My tentative plan with the remaining ones is to work on them remotely after the travel week - and just trying to capture whatever sound and vibe we got out of the other 10. 2 of the songs I planned on releasing later as bonus tracks anyway - and the other two maybe don't fit the album thematically with the rest of the tunes, so those may end up being separate singles.

Chris has been programming rough drum track ideas and bass ideas - I've been giving feedback - and when we're both satisfied we've been sending them off to Caleb to record the drums for real, with Kyle up next. Hopefully all 10 tunes will have the basic foundations ready to go by the time I leave for Philly. We head down on Sunday the 24th, with studio time starting the following day.