That’s Entertainment
www.newcastlepost.com.au
The crowd turns to
James Stephen Bisset
S
till riding high on the success of her debut single, ‘Overdrive’, Newcastle country singer songwriter Kristy James is gearing up to release her first EP and is joining the ever increasing ranks of Newcastle artists turning to crowdfunding to finance their recording dreams. James has launched a campaign on pozible.com with the aim of attracting as many pledges as possible in 70 days to cover or exceed her goal of $5,000 to cover the costs of recording. At the time of printing, James had reached around 60 per cent of her target and she said she couldn’t be happier. “It’s going really well,” she said. “I’m really lucky because I’d say
there would be around four per cent of pledgers that are actually close friends and family – it’s really encouraging to see people you don’t know helping you with your career.” James said the decision to use pozible to fund the EP was borne out of less-than-auspicious circumstances. “I’ve had to do this campaign to raise funds to the EP because I was unlucky enough after the Tamworth Country Music Festival to have both of my acoustic guitars, a video camera with all my live footage, and jewelry stolen – a total of around $12,000,” she said. “While Tamworth was a great time, that was a difficult experience and we have missed a few shows because of it but we’re back on track now and looking forward to getting the EP out there.” James said much of the writing had been completed for the release (including a track co-written by ARIA-
winner Mike Carr) but she planned to wait until the result of the pozible campaign before committing to studio time. “I don’t want to start recording until I know that all of the funds are in place and that I will be able to honour all the pledges.” James said that she planned to work with producer Simon Johnson (Amber Lawrence, Adam Harvey) for the EP, who also produced ‘Overdrive’, and she said that sense of familiarity would make things much easier once production got underway. “Yeah, it will make it easier given that I’ve worked with Simon before, but I spent about 2 years searching for producers so I know all about Simon’s style and I think he’s the perfect fit for the EP.” Since first getting the performance bug at age 11, fostered by both her
musical mother and the Steel City Country Music club where she would cut her teeth every Tuesday night, James hasn’t looked back. Once she turned 18, she started gigging pretty much every weekend and has been doing so in various cover bands, duos and trios for the better part of ten years. She said that while it had taken some time to emerge from the relative safety of a combo to fly solo, she felt no pressure as performing on her own was always the endgame. “It wasn’t really a difficult transition at all because playing solo has always been my goal,” she said. “I always looked at the duo and band thing as more of a profession – something that allowed me to make a living without really working.” To pledge to Kristy James’ Pozible campaign, visit pozible.com/ project/19384.
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