Dear Friends,

We’d like to share two news items:

1. The When Can I See You? Tour (+ Crowdfund)

As we mentioned previously, we’ve booked an 18-date tour of northern Europe and the UK in November with our sister band Loma. It’ll be the first time either band has performed live since 2018.  (The dates, venues, and ticket links can all be found on our website). 

But we need help to make it happen. We don’t have access to label tour support any more, and the costs of touring are insanely high these days; even if every show sold out, we’d still be under water at the end. 

So we’ve reluctantly launched a new crowdfund to make up the difference. (Please know that we’d rather not do this—it’s just the only way we can think of to make the tour possible.)

The details for the fundraiser and the link to donate are here. It’s been encouraging so far. As I write this, we’re about 1/3 of the way to our goal after 5 days. It’s brightened our days to trade emails with supporters we’ve never heard from before, or haven’t talked to in ages—and several shows on the tour are sold out, or nearly so. 

But 60% of our goal is still a fair amount of ground to cover in 9 days.  

So we’re rolling out a new set of rewards—from a guided meditation with Loma singer Emily Cross to a vanishingly rare solo show by me at your home (and possibly Emily Lee too, if there’s a real piano around.) 

(Note: if you’re interested in a solo show but can’t afford it, there are kind people on the unofficial Shearwater fan community Discord server pooling resources and plans to organize there. If you can’t find the invitation let us know and we’ll point you at them. If you don’t want to add yet another app to your life, reach out to us and we’ll connect you with an organizer.) 

The list goes on: there are signed copies of A Most Remarkable Creature, a live video talk and discussion about caracaras (what else?), original test pressings of The New World and The Great Awakening, and a set of filmed Shearwater shows from our archives, including the 2008 and 2010 shows captured on Live at St Malo and Rook Live at Florence Gould Hall, our A.V. Club performance of Bowie’s Lodger, and two filmed shows from the Jet Plane and Oxbow tour.  And more. But you get the idea.

Thanks to our new nonprofit partners at Fractured Atlas, all donations (minus the fair market value of incentives if applicable) are now tax-deductible in the US.

One final note: asking for support is the least fun part of keeping these bands going—but receiving your messages of support has felt like being hugged over and over.  We look forward to seeing you out there. 

2. If you supported The New World album crowdfund, and are waiting on signed LPs / CDs:  

These have now been shipped, and should reach you by mid-September—as well as the last physical incentives from the album crowdfund (older LPs, t-shirts, etc). 

Thank you for your long-suffering patience while we compiled and assembled these packages; as you may have gathered, we’re quite a lean operation (!).

Any questions are welcome, as always.

Thank you for supporting and believing in us. 

JM / Shearwater