Starting up a brand new day

By Cindy Landrum  

JUNE 23, 2011 10:08 a.m. (1)

Last summer, Greenville musician Benton Blount was traveling the country on a radio tour to try to get radio stations to add his single to their play lists.

Most of the 50 stations he visited said they would make airtime for “Carolina,” Blount’s single about wanting to go back home again.

“There were so many people excited about it,” Blount said. “I thought it was the start of something.”

Then one week before the single was supposed to be released, the owner of the record label shut the label down.

This summer, Blount is trying to kick start his music career again by using the Web site Kickstarter to raise money to cut a new CD.

He’s among several Greenville and Spartanburg artists – from painters to filmmakers to an improv and comedy theatrical troupe based at Greenville’s Warehouse Theatre – using the Web site to try to fund artistic endeavors.

“If somebody is creating a new product, there’s venture capital,” said Greenville artist Darlene Fuhst, who is trying to fund Project 66, a project will pay homage to the stuff found on the iconic Route 66 through 66 oil paintings. “Kickstarter is the creative equivalent to that.”

Kickstarter.com launched in 2009 and allows artists and other creative types to post projects and ask friends, relatives and complete strangers for money to fund them in exchange for rewards.

It has raised $40 million for more than 7,000 projects.

It’s an all-or-nothing proposition for the artist. They set a deadline of between 30 days to 90 days to raise the money. If they meet their goal by the deadline, the project is funded. If they don’t meet the goal, they receive no money at all, even if they had pledges.

Projects can raise more than their goals.

About 43 percent of the projects, which have to be approved by Kickstarter.com to be posted, are funded.

So far, about $40 million has been raised for about 7,500 projects.

Greenville filmmaker Chris White, a former high school drama teacher, has used Kickstarter.com successfully more than once.

His latest Kickstarter.com project was “Taken In,” a feature film. The project raised $8,035, $285 more than his goal.

“Kickstarter is a tool for me,” White said. “Some think by putting a project on Kickstarter, the whole world is going to throw money at them. But these really are offers that allow friends to give you money.”

White said out of his 101 backers, he knew all but two of them. Four people gave him $500 or more and received a pre-release screening of the film in their home for their family and friends. White did those screenings a couple of weekends ago.

The film has been edited and all that’s left are a few tweaks, White said. He expects to begin a tour of the state with the film starting July 15.

White has also funded a short film, “Good Life,” a trip to Los Angeles to shop a screenplay and a trip to Australia for a showing of a film he had done.

“They (his backers) like the idea of me and me making a film. That’s cool,” he said. “It almost didn’t matter what the film was about.”

The Distracted Globe is trying to raise $2,000 to fund its summer of classic comedies, Robert Harling’s “Steel Magnolias” and Everett Quinton’s one-man adaptation of Charles Dickens’s “A Tale of Two Cities,” which will be performed on alternate nights between July 14 and July 30.

“That’s the kind of help that makes or breaks a season,” said the project page.

If Fuhst’s project is funded, she’ll drive the length of Route 66 from Chicago to Los Angeles taking pictures of old signs and roadside attractions. From those photos, she’ll produce 66 oil paintings.

“The canvas alone will cost over $1,000,” she said. “I could borrow photos and paint from those, but I like to take my own. That way I can remember the feeling you just can’t get by looking at somebody’s picture.”

Keeping with the theme, Fuhst’s project will up open for 66 days.

Fuhst has traveled parts of Route 66, a once popular route that was bypassed by the interstate highway system and was decommissioned in 1985, but has never traveled the entire 2,440 miles.

One reward Fuhst is offering for pledges of $26 or more is having the person’s name included on a graffiti tag she’ll leave on one of the cars at Cadillac Ranch.

Blount’s project has already exceeded its $20,000 goal and still has about a month to go. Some of his backers will get to help pick which songs he records for the album and the artwork that will be used.

“They’ll have a literal piece in what we’re doing,” said Blount, who appeared at this year’s Freedom Weekend Aloft. “It has been great. This could really change the way artists work.”