mcclanahan
Lexington author Ed McClanahan wants to read to you. In your car. While you're cooking or cleaning. Before you go to bed at night.
Anywhere you have access to a CD player.
McClanahan, who has penned critically acclaimed works such as “The Natural Man,” launched a Kickstarter campaign (an online crowd-sourcing platform) to raise the money to complete audio recordings of two of his works – the short story “Fondelle or: The Whore with a Heart of Gold” and the three stories included in the volume “A Congress of Wonders.” The goal of the campaign, which ends July 17, is to raise $10,000.
Visitors to the site who donate a certain amount of money to the project will receive a number of tiered rewards, including a copy of the spoken-word recordings. The audio-recording project is being produced by Old Cove Press, co-founded by Nyoka Hawkins and Gurney Norman, a former poet laureate of Kentucky and long-time friend of McClanahan. The audio collections will only be available to those who donate through the Kickstarter page and will not be available for sale commercially.
As a popular local author, McClanahan gives numerous (and lively) public readings of his work, occasions, he said, where he always finds new fans and ways to interact with the audience.
“So many people have discovered my work by way of coming to one of my readings and getting interested,” he said. “I like the kind of connection you make with the audience that you don’t make in print.”
Recreating that sort of connection was the impetus behind the audio-recording project.
During the recording process, which has been conducted at KET and more recently at Video Editing Services with audio producer Jack Wright, McClanahan said after a short while in the studio he became very comfortable with the technical demands required to read his work to a microphone instead of a live audience.
“We got pretty good at it. We recorded all of the stories in “A Congress of Wonders” in about nine hours of studio time – that’s two long stories and one really long story,” McClanahan said. “They were calling me One Take Eddie.”
goldboots
Along with the audio recordings of “Fondelle” and “A Congress of Wonders,” other unique McClanahan memorabilia and opportunities are available to backers of the Kickstarter campaign, including current and rare editions of McClanahan’s books, signed and personalized on request; rare prints of the author’s artwork (as rendered by Lexington printmaker Joe Petro III); field trips and lunches with McClanahan; and a pair of sparkling gold cowboy boots custom made for country music star Hoyt Axton who bequeathed them to author Ken Kesey (with whom McClanahan had a close, and notorious, personal and literary friendship) – who in turn gave them to McClanahan.
As with all Kickstarter projects, if the intended goal isn’t met, the funding will not be distributed and the backers will not be billed. As of press time, $8,605 was pledged with seven days to go.
Along with Kickstarter, McClanahan used a number of social media platforms, such as Facebook, to help promote the audio-recording project – an effective vehicle for communication, McClanahan said, though a little confounding at times.
“This is a new thing for me. I got on Facebook just because of this project, and as soon as this project is over, I’m getting off of Facebook. I can tell you that,” he said.
For more information on the project, or to become a backer, please visit www.kickstarter.com/projects/mcclanamania/mcclanamania-ed-mcclanahan-reads-for-you.