TODAY IS THE DAY! I Can Spin A Rainbow, my first original album in over four years is OUT NOW !!
i co-wrote this record with my songwriting hero edward ka-spel (from The Legendary Pink Dots) and we are beyond excited to share it with you….head over to the official project page for everything album, download, vinyl, stories, pictures, videos, tour dates and lyrics:
http://amandapalmer.net/icanspinarainbow
i just wrote an epic 5,700+ word blog about the entire project, including tons of pictures from the studio and feelings about the process. (there were lots of feelings). here’s an excerpt…..
the first exciting encounter i had with the web was getting an AOL account - but i had nobody to write to. the only other people i knew with email accounts were my goddamn parents. somehow - and i forget how - i found the pink dots bulletin board system, and coincidentally it was run by a guy from boston, alan ezust. there was a little community of people who loved the pink dots right in my home city: alan, jon whitney, who also ran the proto-band-loving website brainwashed.com, and sandy charron, a DJ at the freeform college radio station WZBC. they became my first friends-through-the-internet, and since we shared a love of the dots, our friendship deepened at shows and events, and soon we were all hanging out in real life. it was that posse that welcomed me over to alan’s house, where i actually got to “meet the band”. i wrote at length about that night in The Art of Asking (go read it), but suffice it to say, it was a life-changing one. edward listened to my first demo tape (at this point, less than twenty human beings had actually heard ANY of my songwriting - and the idea of ANYone, much less my hero, listening to my songs made me paralytic)….and he privately encouraged me to keep writing and recording. it was like getting permission from god to be a real artist. i floated on a cloud for a few weeks after that moment. i was real.
when i found out through the grapevine that the pink dots were coming through boston and needed a “place to crash” when i was about 19, i asked my parents if we could volunteer our house. they said yes (forever grateful, folks) and my first karmic contribution to the great rainbow-circle of couchsurfing was cast. jason stayed the night, we made the band eggs, my life was basically complete.
a few years later, i was studying in germany and went to see the band on tour in cologne. since i spoke fluent german, they asked if i wanted to hop in the van for a few shows and help sell CDs to the german fans. it was like being asked to run off with the circus. i ditched my university responsibilities and Got In The Van. experiencing lo-budget van touring (I LOVED IT) changed my life, and when i look back, it was the first time i really got a taste of what it meant to travel from town to town, doing the business of making music for people. i was also an epic drunk in those days…but i’ll save most of those harrowing stories for a later book. suffice it to say i humiliated myself by drunkenly shoplifting my own bands merch, a move that i carried like a shackle of extreme shame for years until i finally begged edward’s forgiveness about fifteen years after the fact. he forgave me. poor drunk amanda.
it was hamburg where we played the first night together, and can’t describe to you how fucking artistically explosive that night was for me, and for brian. i got made-up and ready early, i watched the band play their entire set, with those sparks in my heart just as strong as when i stood at edward’s feet when i was 15, and then we took stage ourselves, riding on the flame that they had lit. i still rank that show as one of the best the dresden dolls have ever played. we were on FIRE that night, lit by the fuse of history and inspiration.
and i think it was on that tour that edward and i had The First Conversation. could we make a Thing together someday? a recording of some kind, co-write music? he said yes, and i floated on a cloud for another few weeks…thinking that everything in my life really had come full circle.
some people probably fantasized about working with brian eno or bowie - i fantasized about working with my own heroes. this guy.
you can read the rest of the story on the project page. xx
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