The Bookshop Band - writing songs inspired by books discussion

Important news in the life of The Bookshop Band.
- Please read -

THE STORY SO FAR
Ben Please, Beth Porter and Poppy Pitt have been writing songs inspired by books as The Bookshop Band, for just over four years. What began as a collaboration with their local independent bookshop Mr B’s Emporium of Reading Delights in Bath to inject music into author events, has led to four recorded albums, tours of bookshops across the UK and beyond, festival appearances, praise and airplay from Bob Harris and other BBC Radio presenters and even a commission from the V&A Museum. Now the band have a one-off opportunity to record the wealth of material that they’ve created in this first chapter of the band’s history.

THE NEW CHALLENGE AND THE FUTURE
All of us are sad to announce that Poppy has decided to move onto challenges new away from the live music scene, as she relocates to London and pursues further studies. Ben and Beth are going to miss having Poppy alongside them on stage, and Poppy is going to miss being involved in this incredible project, but we are all excited at the new challenges ahead for each of us and at the opportunity that this line-up change presents. Before Poppy leaves the band fully the three of us have set ourselves the huge enormous challenge of using our remaining few months as a trio to record all of the remarkable book-inspired songs that we’ve created so far, so that we can then release them steadily in the months and year to come. Before we go on to talk about grand plans for professionally recording the results of the last four years of collaboration, a word about The Bookshop Band going forward. When not recording Ben and Beth will be continuing to perform and write as The Bookshop Band, playing at book events at Mr B’s in Bath and elsewhere. Whilst of course Poppy can’t be replaced, we’re also very excited at the prospect of collaborating with many of our other incredibly talented musician friends (and even some musician-authors) as guest members of The Bookshop Band on future tracks and live performances. We’re as excited about the band’s new and dynamic future as we are about getting into the studio to record the legacy of our work so far.

THE ASK
We’ve put three recording sessions into our diaries between now and the summer, with enough time get all the songs recorded and now we need to work out how best to go about the recording process. We don’t have budget for studio time, engineers, producers, mixing or mastering, and so we will do the best we can at home. However, before we embark on that option, we wanted to ask you our loyal fans, bookshops and lit tests we’ve played at, authors and the publishing industry, to to see if there was a way to raise funds so that we can upgrade and transform our recording sessions into a studio operation so that the resulting recordings are as strong a representation of our “Poppy” years as they possibly can be. Once the session dates have passed, we may never again get the chance again to record them with the original Bookshop Band line-up.

HOW YOU CAN HELP
There are three ways you can help us to raise this money for this process a) by pre-ordering our next album, b) subscribing to receive all 8 forthcoming albums as they are released on digital pre-order, or c) by going all out and sponsoring a song. Which ever way you choose you will be supporting the recording sessions of the tracks and helping us to invest in the process. Every little counts and ALL money raised will go into making these the best recordings of these book-inspired songs that we can possibly do.

Please visit http://www.thebookshopband.co.uk for all links and full details.

Thank you again for all the support and encouragement you have given us already. And our hugest and warmest thank you to Poppy for being part of The Bookshop Band for so long. What was only meant to be a couple of songs played in our local bookshop turned into four years of intense, unique and rewarding songwriting for us all. Sad to see you go.

Ben, Beth, and (for just a little longer till we get things recorded) Poppy
The Bookshop Band

The Bookshop Band write and perform songs inspired by books. Now they need to record them and are looking for fans of the books to help sponsor a song's recording.
Here's a list of all the authors and books that have inspired songs that we're looking to record. Please visit http://www.thebookshopband.co.uk for full details and links, and to hear all the songs (when we performed them live, mostly in front of the authors).

Rachel Joyce The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry
Perfect

Patrick Gale A Perfectly Good Man Notes from an Exhibition Rough Music

Sam Leith The Coincidence Engine

Stanley Donwood Slowly Downward Household Worms

Jason Goodwin An Evil Eye

Mark Hodder The Strange Affair of Spring Heeled Jack

Lewis Carroll Alice in Wonderland

Diego Marani New Finnish Grammar

Ben Fountain Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk Brief Encounters with Che Guevara: Stories

James Meek The Heart Broke In

Ned Beauman The Teleportation Accident Glow

Jack Wolf The Tale of Raw Head and Bloody Bones

John Suchet My Bonnie: How Dementia Stole the Love of My Life

Thomas Penn Winter King: Henry VII and the Dawn of Tudor England

Mark Forsyth The Horologicon: A Day's Jaunt Through the Lost Words of the English Language

Neil Bradford Sons of Thunder: Writing from the Fast Lane: A Motorcycling Anthology

Jennie Rooney Red Joan

Kevin Maher The Fields: A Novel

Roisin Meaney Something in Common

Patrick Ness The Crane Wife

Elif Shafak Honour

Tan Twan Eng THE GARDEN OF EVENING MISTS

Robert Wilson Capital Punishment:

Dawn O'Porter Paper Aeroplanes

Ruth Ozeki A Tale for the Time Being

Michelle de Kretser Questions of Travel

Hilary Mantel Bring Up the Bodies

Damian Barr Maggie & Me: Coming Out and Coming of Age in 1980s Scotland

Ian Rankin Standing in Another Man's Grave

Juan Pablo Villalobos Quesadillas

Salman Rushdie Midnight's Children

Kate Mosse The Mistletoe Bride & Other Haunting Tales

Catherine O'Flynn Mr Lynch's Holiday

Pietro Grossi Enchantment

Armistead Maupin Tales of the City The Days of Anna Madrigal

John Green The Fault in Our Stars

Joanne Harris The Gospel of Loki

Wilfred Owen

Eleanor Catton The Luminaries

William Shakespeare A Midsummer Night's Dream As You Like It Richard II Much Ado About Nothing The Merchant of Venice

Tim Winton Breath Eyrie

Margaret Drabble The Pure Gold Baby A Day in the Life of a Smiling Woman: Complete Short Stories

Sarah Waters The Paying Guests

David Mitchell The Bone Clocks

Dave Shelton Thirteen Chairs

Jane Smiley Some Luck

Ben Okri The Age of Magic

Emma Hooper Etta and Otto and Russell and James