The Osenga Project

Okay, you probably forgot this site was around [if you even knew about it the first time]. You’re probably wondering what we have up our sleeves this time. Last time, it was doing pre-release sales for The Morning to fund its delivery. This time, it’s a bit more dastardly. Let me approximate the conversation I had with Osenga last night at Big Willie Stroud’s manse in Huntsville, Alabama [motto: Our Rockets? Bigger Than Your Rockets.].

AO: So I’m trying to figure out how to give away 10,000 copies of the [Letters to the Editor] EP on the Caedmon’s tour.

GM: How would you go about that?

AO: Well, it would take about $4500 to print them up and put a one-page, front-and-back booklet in the case.

GM: Hmmmm …

AO: [some discussion about how dumb the idea that I wasn’t listening to because I was doing math in my head]

GM: We can do it.

AO: Huh?

GM: We can do it. I can raise you $4500, no sweat.

AO: What are you talking about?

GM: Simple, man. At $15 a pop, that’s 300 people. I can find 300 people to give you $15 for the CD. Or 450 people to give you $10 for it.

AO: Oh, whatever, dude.

GM: No, really. What would you put on this hypothetical CD?

AO: Well, the six tracks off the EP, maybe a couple songs off of Photographs or The Morning, and maybe one new song.

GM: So you’ve given this some thought.

AO: Yeah, but it just didn’t seem like a feasible idea. I’m a big idea guy … I just never have the money.

GM: Let me solve that problem for you.

So, I look at it like this:

Let’s find 300 people to give Andy $15. Or $15 + $2 S&H, so Andy can get you a copy of the CD you’re buying mailed out to you after he gets back from the CC tour—or before, if he can get them printed in time.

What do you get? You get the satisfaction of being a force multiplier—because of you, Andy would have 9,700 CDs to give away at Caedmon’s Call shows. These are people who, unlike us, have never heard the wonder of Andrew’s writing before. Put another way: buy a CD and get it mailed to you, and Andrew will give 32 copies of the CD to other people. How often do you get to buy one CD and get 32 free to give out to people? Not even BMG does that.

I’m willing to bet that Andy will be happy to autograph these for folks that do them, and if we can get the list of sponsors together in time, your name can be put on the back-page as a thank-you. Who doesn’t want thanks in the liner notes? Really. Those are details that Andy and I will work out.

I’m game if you’re game. And heck, if we get 30 people to sign up by December 15th, I’ll buy 30 myself and get us already 20% of the way to the goal.

How do you like them apples?! Leave us some love in the comments.

In case you missed it, Andrew has announced the release date for The Morning as May 2nd, 2006. Andrew will also re-release Photographs on that day.

Hey everybody -

Welcome to the Pre-order site. The song “House of Mirrors” will be up to stream shortly. Thanks for checking in and for supporting me and making this record possible. Hope you dig the tune!

Andrew

Just a reminder to folks: the account creation process takes anywhere from 1-3 days, because we’re doing this manually. Andrew’s people and I are working together this weekend to see if we can close this loop more efficiently and shrink that time as much as is possible.

Thanks for your patience and for pre-ordering the CD!

Some users have emailed me asking how to use a feed reader [Bloglines, NetNewsWire, FeedDemon, etc.] to aggregate posts made here on The Osenga Project and get the private posts. As you’d expect, the members-only stuff does require you to authenticate yourself.

All modern feed readers should support HTTP 401 authentication; please see the help files for your reader as appropriate. The URLs needed to grab entries and comments are in the footer of every page. Just use your user and password that you’d use to view members-only posts to authenticate.

If none of this means anything to you [i.e., you’re staring at the computer aimlessly], well, feel free to ignore my babblings as you normally would.

I’ve created everyone’s accounts for those that have pre-ordered the CD. If you want to register for an account here, feel free … but only when I get the word from Andy O or Andrew Shaw will I add the special sauce that allows you to see the Members Only posts.

I think there’ll be some stuff we share with a wider audience as well.

If you don’t have access, please email gfmorris AT gfmorris DOT net after checking your email, including any spam folders, to see if I’ve already emailed you. Thanks!

I‘m happy to announce The Osenga Project, a long-overdue collaboration between the man we all known and love, Andrew Osenga, and us crazy folks at [rocksmyfaceoff.net].

What’s The Osenga Project? Simple: Andy’s putting out a new CD—one all Osenga fans would agree is overdue!—and he’s chosen to experiment, allowing his fans to help him support the making of the CD by doing pre-sales to raise capital to make production a reality. We think this is really cool, and so we’re wanting to help Andy.

How will we be helping our man Poopsenga out? Simple: all the folks who’ve given Andy money to make the new CD a reality will be given special account status on this Weblog so they can get primo content from behind the scenes at The Velvet Eagle. Folks who haven’t paid may get whatever tiny glimpses Andy decides to pass on to see if we can drum up more CD sales.

So, strap in: we think you’re going to love what we’ve got in store here at The Osenga Project.