Mieka Pauley s connection with fans goes beyond crowd participation.
Fans fronted $17,000 online to back the Boston-bred folkie s self-released sophomore disc, Elijah Drop Your Gun. They pledged enough to cover hiring a full band, paying for studio sessions, album printing, and marketing through donations between $25 and $1,000 on a Web site named for project.
On the low end, they received an autographed copy of the disc. On the high end, a package of discs, posters, concert tickets, and a house show.
That s a lot of trust, the 27-year-old told The Blade in a recent phone interview. But most of my career is live performances, so they know where to find me. I m traveling all the time. If I m playing Chicago, I can t hide from the Chicago people I screwed over.
Though the disc deserves to stand on its own legs, with the sort of earthy blues-inspired tunes Fiona Apple would envy, Pauley s crafty financing is what has drawn the music industry s attention. Music blogs and trade magazines have heralded her method as an antidote for an industry grappling with online piracy and declining album sales.
Pauley who performs here Friday as part of the Lourdes College Performing Artist Series is reluctant to accept such credit. She isn t the first independent artist to ask fans for help, she said.
A lot of the industry magazines might be used to working with people who have finances behind them, Pauley said. I don t have a big corporation behind me putting the money up.
Turning to fans felt natural for an artist whose final push to make music full time was funded with the dollars that filled her guitar case. After graduation from Harvard University, she spent the summer strumming for cash in Cambridge s Harvard Square and was surprised to collect enough for living expenses.
I always knew that I wanted to perform and stuff, but I didn t know there was this in-between of being in your bedroom and being Radiohead. But there is a big in-between, she said. It was just so romantic, just walking through and seeing people opening up their guitar cases and playing.
Always driven by her acoustic strings and full-throttle vocals, Pauley s brand of folk plays like a cross-country road trip. From the Creole-flavored B-side, Marked Man, to the east coast hippie anthem, Be Like the Man, Pauley draws from childhood that took her from Boston, where she was born, to South Florida, Colorado, and back.
Pauley keeps time by thumping her acoustic as she sings a cappella on Marked Man, a tune that feels like an old deep-southern lament. You re a marked man, brother, you re a marked man, she sings, a curse that would make the late Johnny Cash proud.
The most representative of her introspective, soulful style is the self-deprecating ballad, All The Same Mistakes. I need nothing else but to be burned clean Don t wanna fall under; And make all of the same mistakes.
Though Pauley won t write off the possibility of signing onto a label in the future, she was grateful to create the album on her own terms.
Maybe what I do is not quite marketable for what I m looking for. Labels are businesses, not simply art appreciators, which I wish they where, she said. Nothing would kill my desire to make an album faster, to have my heart shut down, because they didn t like what I put out.
Of course, fans can be intrusive, too. Having earned her undergraduate degree in biological anthropology, the study of human evolution, she recently was sent the text Atlas of Creation. The book is an anti-evolution manifesto from a Muslim perspective.
I thought, this is getting personal, this has nothing to do with music, she said. Oh man, it s frustrating.
With moments like that, touring can be a mixed bag. Being on the road means being apart from her husband, political comedian and Onion editor Baratunde Thurston, who she married in July. But traveling has her floating near her scattered family her parents in Colorado and cousins in Columbus and sharing the stage with her musical idols.
Since earning the first-ever Starbucks emerging artist award in 2005, she s shared the stage with Eric Clapton, Shawn Mullins, and Blues Traveler. Her musical moment of Zen meant opening for Martin Sexton, a folk legend that shares her Boston roots and anti-corporate mindset.
Not that she s complaining, but would acknowledge that dreams don t often come wrapped in a pretty box.
The first words out of his mouth were, Sorry I didn t catch your set, she said of Sexton. And I said, Well, nothing s perfect. But it was an honor to share the stage with him.
Mieka Pauley s concert, part of the Lourdes College Performing Artist Series, will be held in the Ebeid Student Center in Delp Hall tomorrow at 8:30 p.m. Lourdes College students, faculty, staff, and alumni can receive two free tickets with a valid Lourdes College ID card. Tickets for the general public are $10. For tickets, contact the Franciscan Center box office at 419-824-3999.
Contact Bridget Tharp at: btharp@theblade.com or 419-724-6061.
First Published September 24, 2008, 7:49 p.m.
