You did it!

You took your belief in the band and put it into action. We reached our goal of 30,000.00 for the new Guardian record. Half of that came in in the last week. With a LARGE part of that coming in the last 3 days! I confess, I quietly had given up a few weeks ago. The 2 weeks ago, I got a call from John Elefante who sensed my discouragement and gave me a kick in the pants to start believing it can happen. This coincided with a band conference call where everyone began to rally… a bit late in the game..but just in time. I can tell you that using Kickstarter was tough for us. It feels weird to ask people to donate. But the math of our fanbase led me to believe that everyone could chip in a small amount and we could be off and rocking. In the end, 446 of our fans turned the key to unlock this new record. I cannot tell you how much I (we) appreciate those people! We found out that most of our Latin American audience, who have inspired us so much, don’t typically have credit cards. they use bank/debit cards. Which is great, but Amazon Payments didn’t accomodate those folks. If there was one thing I learned, Kickstarter really needs to integrate paypal. Also, if you are a band/artist wanting to use Kickstarter, I say go for it. But I’d also advise you to check out similar platforms like http://www.indiegogo.com/ I think if we could use the way back machine, we would have used them instead.

Now comes the really fun part: Getting the songs fine tuned and start recording! I am as eager to get this thing rocking as you are!

I have to give some major props to a few friends who helped spread the word:

Michael Sweet – stryper.com – My hero growing up, he gave us a major boost when he tweeted and posted on facebook. No one asked him to do it, he just did. We got a lot of “I didn’t know you were doing this til Michael posted” comments. Michael Sweet is the real deal folks. I appreciate him.

John DiBiase – Jesusfreakhideout.com – A great friend to the band since the 90′s. He gave us press right out of the box and we thank him.

Andrew McNeice – melodicrock.com – Andrew has created the “go to” site for 80′s and 90′s flavored hard rock. He gave us front page coverage of the note we sent out. He is appreciated.

John Elefante – For what I mentioned in the first half of this.

Phil Madiera – Phil was a major cheerleader to us behind the scenes. The man just got his own Kickstarter funded and was pushing us all the time to stop jacking around and get those updates going.

Shane “Kickstand” Boyd – Guardian road crew and now a successful radio promoter. He was shouting out all the time to his connections.

Edited to add this: I blew it! I had intended to include our Latin American Agent Eugenia Rivas Laise in this list! She is VERY important to us. She was driving our facebook efforts and was in my mind to thank here. I must have forgot when I actually wrote it. It’s important that I clear this up. Eugenia Rivas Laise was/is a MAJOR help to Guardian and all of us appreciate her greatly! I’m sorry I missed it. We thank you Eugenia and we love you lots!

And again,again, again! – Thanks to all 446 of you who made this happen.

To God be the glory!

jamie