Help us get to the Boswell Sisters Tribute Festival in New Orleans

WE’VE REACHED OUR MINIMUM GOAL! : COVERING THE AIR-FARES TO NEW ORLEANS FOR THE 6 BAND MEMBERS.

Thank you to all our donors!!! We are ecstatic :)

**NOW WE ARE FOCUSING ON A NEW GOAL: COVERING OTHER TRAVEL EXPENSES AND EXTENDING OUR PERFORMANCES IN THE U.S.

WE’VE GOT TILL AUGUST 5TH TO ACHIEVE IT!!**

We’re O Sister! and Swing’s our thing. Towards the end of 2012 we tackled one of the most rewarding challenges of our career: Bringing to life an unfinished and unrecorded song by the legendary American band “The Boswell Sisters”, women musicians who pioneered a vocal jazz style in the 1920’s and 30’s.

Our link with the Boswell Sisters comes not only from our admiration for their music and their way of understanding it, but also from the bond we’ve developed with fans of the group on the other side of the Atlantic, initiated through Cynthia Lucas and the bozzies.org website.

Thanks to the discovery by the late singers’ family of a group in Spain which was bringing the Boswell Sisters’ songs to life, as well as to our own commitment to a repertory we love, we had the opportunity to harmonize and arrange their unfinished “Yoo-dle-ee-oo-de-oo” and finally record the finished song in Seville. It is difficult to explain the thrill it was for us to have the approval of the Boswell Sisters’ heirs and to be congratulated by people who knew them personally.

We’ve recently had the honour of receiving a personal invitation from Kyla Titus, granddaughter of Vet Boswell and a representative of the family, with whom we’ve been in contact all this time. She wants us to participate in a series of special events which are being held during 2014 to celebrate The Boswell Sisters and their legacy (“The year of the Boswell Sisters Revival”) in their hometown of New Orleans. Thus, to culminate an exhibition dedicated to them and in collaboration with The Historic New Orleans Collection, a music festival entitled "The Boswell Sisters: Their Music Goes Round and Round", will take place on October 9th, 10th and 11th, celebrating the Sisters’ huge artistic legacy and how it remains vibrant to this day. The schedule of activities includes lectures, conferences, guided tours and, of course, concerts, with at least five American bands participating, plus one all the way from Australia. In our case, we are the only European band invited to the event.

Following our initial euphoria, however, reality hit us. The organizers in New Orleans can’t cover the band’s travelling costs from Seville to New Orleans. Times are such that, similar to the days of the Great Depression, neither our concert activities nor our record sales are enough to self-finance an adventure abroad even in Europe, much less in the US.

In the short period of time since we received the invitation we’ve applied for grants, knocked at different doors and sought different ways to fund the trip, but with no success. At the most we could manage to cover the costs of daily expenses, accommodation and local transportation, but the air fare for a minimum of 6 band members, is well beyond our means.

Finally, because we don’t want to give up yet, we thought of you, our Fans, asking support through the Verkami platform from all of you who have followed O Sister! since its early days and from all you new friends who have discovered us more recently. If we reach our goal, we will be enormously grateful to you and would love to share this adventure with you.

What your donations will be used for

The minimum quantity we need would be the estimated quantity to cover the air fares for the 6 band members from Seville (Spain) to New Orleans (Luisiana, USA), plus all the costs derived from the campaign (rewards, service commissions, promotion…). From there on, all that we could add would still be of great help, and would be used to cover other travel expenses, as well as trying to extend our concert dates in the U.S. in order to complete this experience.

About the rewards

By way of thanking you for your invaluable help, we’ve prepared some incentives which we hope will be appealing. Among them are the chance to download the unpublished song that illustrates this story, not yet included in any of our albums, and the pre-release purchase of our next EP “Spooky Sessions”, recorded live in two special sessions held at Sputnik Studios in Seville, including the rarely performed “Cryin’ Blues”, a very personal and humorous rendering of one of the first songs recorded by the Boswell Sisters way back in 1925.

Among the rewards you can also find signed scores of some of our original arrangements, photographs by Juan Luis Morilla signed by the band members, or an exclusive t-shirt created for the occasion, with two different designs: one for adults (with the phrase “I sent O Sister! from Seville to New Orleans”), and another one for children with a cool illustration by Pedro Alpera. We also have special presents like a limited silkscreen print by illustrator Jose Luis Ágreda, and a vintage fashion pack with a bow tie and a hair ornament exclusively designed for O Sister! by LaVique & Marilene D’Sastre. We’ve also included 2 free tickets for a concert in our next tour, and a possibility to attend a live session and an encounter with the group at Sputnik Studios (Seville) before the year is over.

And not forgetting our romantic side, we’ve included gifts like a postcard sent by the band from New Orleans, or the recording of a video of our adventure to share it with you, with all your names in the credits :)

Planned Schedule

The trip to New Orleans will take place in the second week of October.

As some of the rewards will be created exclusively for this campaign, we won’t be able to start their production until the end of the campaign, on August 5th. Therefore, our idea is to start sending the rewards once the campaign finishes, but some of the more special prizes will have to be sent at our return from the trip. Regarding the attendance to a recording session and the encounter with the band, as well as the Festival DVD which the organisers will provide us with, we’ve set up the end of the year as our deadline to have all our donors content with their rewards.

Links

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