By Kyle Duggan and Brett Throop
One Christmas, North Easton made a promise to his mother: he would write her a Christmas album of his own songs.
That was some years ago. And while Easton plugged away at the Christmas collection over the years, tragically, his mother died of lung cancer before the project could be completed.
Now, with the help of online fundraising, Easton is making good on his promise.
Easton and his three-piece acoustic band, My Favourite Tragedy, raised $6,414 on Kickstarter, a popular crowdfunding website, to produce the original Christmas album. The album has eight songs that tell intimate stories about family and the holidays. The band is doing a music video for the song Christmas Lights, which is about Easton’s father’s tradition of waking him up early to put up the Christmas lights—rain or shine.
Click on the photo below to view an audio slideshow about the making of their music video for Christmas Lights.
My Favourite Tragedy, left to right: North Easton, John-Marc Desmarais, Phil Desmarais. Photo by Kyle Duggan.
“Traditions of Christmas aren’t just waiting in a mall in a line up to buy something somebody doesn’t want. But more like sharing something inside of you that’s real,” he said.
The group’s Kickstarter page asked for $5,000 to produce the album and raised it with just three days to go before their deadline. They then pushed on to get another thousand to make the video for Christmas Lights.
Drummer Phil Desmarais said friends wanted to buy an original Christmas album but the band didn’t have the resources to make one.
But when Easton found Kickstarter, he saw an opportunity to launch their album. Kickstarter works by direct donations, where artists pitch their project to potential backers. If the backers like what they see, they can donate to the project in exchange for products or services.
“There was a musician on there who raised over $1.5 million and I thought this could very well be the next revolution in music,” Easton said. “Artists now have a chance to sell to their fans before they’ve created their product, as long as the trust value is there.”
Desmarais said crowdfunding is a “very democratic way of getting things produced because ultimately the public has the right to say what is good and what is not.”
Phil’s brother, John-Marc Desmarais, plays bass and cello for the group.
“It’s kind of a gamble on backers’ part given that the product they’re trying to purchase hasn’t yet been produced,” he said. “But thankfully they’re willing to gamble.”
He added the band will likely look to Kickstarter again for future projects based on their success.
The group raised funds from 92 people around the world, offering them different pledge levels that come with different perks.
For example, $5 gets backers a Christmas card and the album’s single, while $100 includes guitar lessons, $300 gets songwriting sessions over Skype and $500 gets an hour-long acoustic set in the project backer’s living room.
“It’s a little more intimate than just ‘buy our album’. Bring us into your world and we’ll bring you into ours,” Easton said.
But this doesn’t mean the band is laughing all the way to the bank. They make most of their money through playing shows and touring – the fundraiser just lets them produce the album. “Here’s the harsh reality: $6,400 just pays for what we’re doing. So there’s no money being made,” Easton said.
But Easton said that doesn’t matter to him because he knows that years from now, friends and family will still listen to this album. “Maybe not everybody in the world will love the album to death but there will be people who do and those are the ones we’re making it for.”
The song Coming Home for Christmas is about the last Christmas Easton spent with his mother before she died. At that point Easton lived halfway across the country but was determined to make the trip for what turned out to be her last Christmas.
Easton said if she were around to see him record the video and album, “she’d be tickled pink.”
Easton said his mom was a massive Christmas fan: “She would always target everybody’s Christmas gift and knew exactly what they wanted. And just getting that special precious gift that put a light on their face bigger than any Christmas light.
“She’d be very proud of what I’ve been doing because she was a huge fan of Christmas music.”
