Here's the back story to this album project:

Many years ago, I met Lorna McKinnon in Glasgow, Scotland (the middle one in the picture).  Given both the leftwing and musical circles she and I both travel in, we probably would have met eventually regardless, but at the time we met, one of the several choirs she directs was singing one of my songs, which she had done a brilliant job of arranging.

Lorna and I did a tour together, and at one of the last gigs on the tour, in Ireland, Tommy Sands helped me get the show recorded, and it became my 2016 album, Live in Rostrevor.

Three years later, Lorna once again joined me in Ireland.  There we spent a wonderful week with Pol Mac Adaim, along with Lorna's vocal student and my old friend from Australia, Kamala Emanuel (standing on the right in the picture), in Pol's home studio in the countryside, recording the album, Strangers & Friends.

Pol is a brilliant producer, audio engineer, and multi-instrumentalist from Ireland, and the sound of the album is mainly a product of his ideas for instrumentation and his playing of various instruments, along with Lorna's vocal arrangements, executed by her and Kamala, in many layers.  

Now, Chet Gardiner is another one of these multi-talented geezers who plays most anything with strings and is a brilliant producer, arranger, and engineer.  Here's a recording he made by himself of my song, At the End of World War 3.  Like Pol, he has a home studio on an island, where he does all those things.  But in Chet's case the island is in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, in Hawaii.

Chet's extremely generous offer is to host Lorna, Kamala, and I at his place for 2 weeks, spending all day every day with the bunch of us applying our various skills to make a record together, mainly consisting of original songs from recent times.

The big obstacle here, aside from Lorna and Kamala both taking two weeks off from work back at home, is getting all of us to Hawaii (aside from Chet, who's already there).  We're going to make this happen regardless, I'm pretty sure.  But if we're able to get most of the way towards reaching our $5,000 goal here in the fairly near future, that would make it all immensely easier.

Donations of frequent flier miles are also welcome.  (I have a friend who's an expert on that sort of thing who can help us with that, if desired.)  Crypto also welcome, I can give you numbers upon request.

To all of you who are supporters on Patreon or otherwise members of my Community-Supported Art program, your support is also essential here and profoundly appreciated.  But even with that support, I still can't afford to buy a bunch of plane tickets for other musicians to make a record with me in Hawaii, thus this one-off crowdfunder...

Thanks for your support!