2013 » Sassafrass - folk fantasy a cappella

An exciting day: Sassafrass is launching a Kickstarter to support Sundown: Whispers of Ragnarok! We have some really exciting plans for Balticon and for the CD (period-accurate costumes, eco-friendly packaging, filming the play to make a DVD), and we need your help to make them happen. This is our first time trying out something like this and we have high hopes that with our fans backing us up through Kickstarter, our most ambitious project yet can get off the ground. Check out our project page and preorder your CD and DVD now!

You can support The Sundown Project at any level! We have exciting ways to say thank you:

For just $1 or more we will thank you personally on the Contributors page of our website, and at higher levels we will also thank you in the CD and DVD.
For just $10, you can pre-order a digital download of the finished album, while for $25 you can pre-order the CD itself, or for $50 the CD and DVD.
For those who pledge more, we have such exciting items as a poster with a beautiful illustration of the Norse Cosmos produced by comics artist friend Rob Snyder, another poster with images from the International Space Station celebrating our space exploration song “Somebody Will“, a libretto, and bound collections of our sheet music.
Exclusive thank-you items include a certificate with your name in Runes, and, at high levels, advanced digital access to the tracks as we finish them, before the CD is released.
We also have exciting stretch goals planned!

"Your name in Runes." One of our ways of saying thank-you to our generous backers.

“Your name in Runes.” One of our ways of saying thank-you to our Kickstarter backers.

We have uploaded a lot of new music samples to go with the Kickstarter, as well as lots of new info about the Sundown Project. Both on the Kickstarter page and on our new main page you can hear streaming samples of the new recording of My Brother My Enemy, which demonstrates our new recording tech, plus the new Futhark Song and a sample of the finale of the cycle, Longer in Stories than Stone. Our info page about the Play also has new recordings of the Character Themes, and you can hear all the new samples on the Sundown Preview digital album.

For more information, check out our Kickstarter page, and thank you for helping us bring Ragnarok to life!

But there’s even more news: Three New Digital Releases!

To replace our retired albums, Sassafrass has three new online albums available through Bandcamp.

These are the results of our efforts to clean up our old sound, and reorganize our music, new and old, to give people the best taste of the new improved sound quality our new recording and editing techniques can produce. We have reorganized our old tracks, taken down a lot of the old and rough ones, and consolidated the cleaner ones into three new collections:

Sundown: Whispers of Ragnarok – Preview is our way of sharing what we have of the still-in-progress Sundown Norse Myth Song Cycle. It contains the final recordings of “My Brother, My Enemy” and both versions of “The Futhark Song” (the sweet one and a new eerie modal arrangement), just as they will appear on the final CD. It also contains recordings of the seven Character Themes which recur throughout the song cycle, letting you spot the influence of each character in the larger pieces. As a final bonus, it contains a sample of the six-part finale piece “Longer in Stories than Stone” which is still in production, plus it comes with downloadable PDFs including a lyrics sheet for “My Brother, My Enemy,” one for “The Futhark Song” featuring the original runic characters, and the sheet music for the Character Themes.
Make Them All Real collects the best tracks from our past albums, digitally remastered by our new sound editors. They have been re-balanced for volume, filtered for improved microphone quality, and have enhanced clarity of sound and lyrics. In addition to such favorites as “Somebody Will” and “Fall”, this collection contains a new recording of one of our Norse pieces, the solo version of “A New World (Frigg’s Song), which will appear as a trio on the finished Sundown CD. As a bonus, the complete album purchase comes with downloadable PDFs of the lyrics sheets with guitar parts for “Somebody Will” and “Threadbare Dragon,” formatted to help you learn and perform them.
Remnants and Alternates collects favorite rougher takes from all our old collections, trying to gather the best take of each of the pieces we have not yet had a chance to rerecord, plus favorite old versions, gathering selections from six different albums into one. It also contains two live concert recordings never before released online!

All three are available for $5 each through our bandcamp site, and sales help pay for the production of Sundown.

A fourth collection is coming soon! We often receive requests from friends and fans who still want access to retired rough tracks, which may not be our cleanest, but are still fun. We are gathering a selection of the best retired tracks and will soon make them available on our website, both streaming and for free download. Stay posted!

It’s a big day, and this is going to be the most exciting month Sassafrass has had, with the Kickstarter, three digital releases, and the long-awaited debut of the stage version of Sundown at Balticon. None of this would be possible without the support and encouragement of our many friends, so thank you for being part of this project, and we hope you enjoy!

Hello, friends. Sassafrass is about to revamp our website and online albums, getting ready to focus more on the upcoming release of Sundown. In preparation, we’re about to retire all our old albums from Bandcamp, and have already taken them off CDBaby. We are going to collect the best of the old recordings and re-release them, digitally remastered, in a new collection, but we are also permanently retiring more than half of our current music, particularly rougher live takes and alternate takes of things we have several versions of, plus the older, rougher versions of our Norse music. We hope you’ll all enjoy the new stuff, but if you want the old stuff, get it now, since it won’t be around much longer.

Sassafrass Boston and Ada were delighted to perform at Vericon, the Harvard/Radcliffe Science Fiction Convention! Our concert was almost entirely Norse, including the first performance of the final two songs in the Sundown cycle. These were “Here’s To Valhalla,” a drinking song for the warriors of Asgard, and a rough demonstration of “If I Could Ask You,” a quartet for Odin, Loki, Baldur and Hella. The latter shows the children pleading with their fathers to give up their vengeance and the stubborn pride that will destroy the world through Ragnarok, and in rehearsal, Emily (Baldur) and Kara (Hella) sang the opening lines so beautifully that Ada (Loki) cried. Which means that Loki has now wept for Baldur, so he’ll be released from Hell, and the world is saved! Hurrah! (Though that does mean there may need to be some slight revisions to the song cycle before we perform it at Balticon in May. We’ll get right on that…)

Ada & Tili as Odin and Loki, performing “If I Could Ask You”

We also sang “Gift of Life” and “the Futhark Song,” and ended with a group performance of “Somebody Will,” joined by the Harvard fan community and such Vericon guests as Greer Gilman and Jo Walton. As always, it was great singing with and for you all, and we look forward to singing at Vericon again!

Also, we collected emails for our mailing list of people who want to be notified about our Kickstarter when we start it. If you’d like us to add you to that list, please do let us know!

Sassafrass also helped once again with the Vericon charity auction. This year Ada as Loki helped lead a Team Competition, between “Team Good” and “Team Evil.” In the end we raised more than $12,000 for Doctors Without Borders, four times what we did last year, and far beyond what anyone expected. You can see the records of the competition on the chalkboard behind us. Many thanks to all who helped make the auction a staggering success!

Greetings, loyal and new friends and followers!

Sassafrass will be giving a concert at Vericon, at Harvard University on Sunday, March 24th at 1 PM. This concert will feature many of our pieces from Sundown, our upcoming Norse album. We are SO excited to once again be performing at Vericon, especially with so many incredible guests this year!

Register here! You can also see information about our awesome speakers this year here. This exciting lineup includes Greer Gilman, N.K. Jemisin, Seanan McGuire, Jennifer Pelland, Jo Walton, and Guest of Honor Tamora Pierce! Make sure to check out the Schedule page as Vericon approaches, too, so you can stay appraised of all the exciting events we’re planning for you this year.

Hope to see you all at Vericon!

Hey all!

Balticon is quickly approaching and preparations are picking up! Costumes are being ordrered, rooms are being booked, and transportation is being arranged. And, of course, we are working on all of our songs, recording, and Balticon souvenirs for our table in the Dealers’ Room!

To that end, we received a request from Kate Nepveu, asking if we could signal boost this amazing project:

“Balticon has donated two memberships to Con or Bust, the fund I run that helps fans of color/non-white fans attend SFF cons and that is administered by the Carl Brandon Society, a 501(c)(3) organization whose mission is to increase racial and ethnic diversity in the production of and audience for speculative fiction. I would really like these to be used (Balticon donated memberships last year and no-one took them up on it, and I hate when that happens). The donations are good for a new registration or a refund on an existing one–can you spread the word that they’ll be available?

I’ll be taking requests for assistance to attend Balticon (and other cons in April, May, and June 2013) from February 15-25, 2013; the info page is here.”

We really hope that everyone can join us at Balticon, May 25-27! See you there!