Lauren Mann and the Fairly Odd Folk sign to Wanderer Records, announce re-release of Over Land and Sea

Here’s a recent news release from Lauren Mann and the Fairly Odd Folk:

As many of you hopefully saw, we got signed to Wanderer Records (wandererrecords.com) this past fall, and just recently announced it. Now we’ll let you all know something we haven’t posted anywhere as of yet, Wanderer Records was started by us. It was the culmination of over a year of hard work, a little luck, and some great connections.

Since fall 2011, we have been working on figuring out what would be the best way to get our music out into this lovely world. We tried to connect with labels, but had no interest, so started to pursue distribution, with the thought of releasing our music independently. Turns out distribution companies don’t really like to work with bands on an individual basis, and it’s very hard to impress them. After 8 months of emails, phone calls, and going to their office, a specific distribution company paid attention to us, and loved our album! This is when the thought of starting a record label really looked like it was going to be a possibility.

A few more meetings, introductions, etc, and we had ourselves distribution in both Canada, and the USA, as well as a Canadian booking agent (The Agency Group), and two highly skilled publicists (people who promote our band to media outlets) for each country. We’re very excited about how it all came together, and can’t wait to get back on the road now that we have a solid team behind us.

In setting all this up we had to decide what we were going to do for releasing music through the label, and what that would look like. Since Jay and Jessica joined the band in August 2012, we’ve all been very excited about the prospect of writing a new record, but knew Over Land and Sea had come out only a few months earlier, and people were JUST starting to find out about it.

Because of this we have decided to re-release Over Land and Sea through our label on April 9th, 2013. This time the album will be available in stores across North America, and if all goes will, hopefully it will be reviewed and talked about in some pretty notable magazines, blogs, radio shows, etc, all thanks to our publicity team.

Since we are doing a re-release, we know there is the potential for some people to be turned off. We all individually don’t really care for re-releases, because often they seem like a means for a band to release a couple new songs, and try and sell people the same thing they already bought. We do not expect this from you guys at all! The point of this re-release is to give the record the recognition we had all been hoping it would get to start with, as well to allow us more time to actually write a new record.

As I write this Lauren and Jay are hard at work on writing new material, and will be bringing that to the rest of the band as it develops. We have plans to finish writing by the end of the year, record next winter, and release a fully new record around the June 2014 mark. So hopefully this won’t be too long of a wait for all of you.

Right now we are asking for your support in this re-release, and your help to make this first release on Wanderer Records really count. The new release of Over Land and Sea will be the exact same as our indie release, however we did have to change the packaging because of cost reasons. The ‘old’ version of the album will now be released as the deluxe edition, and we will include a free download of a b-side from the album called A Traveller’s Anthem. The ‘new’ version of the album will only include a 12 page booklet, no map, and a smaller packaging overall. It was not something we really wanted to do, but those original versions of the CD just cost us so much to print, we couldn’t afford it.

I know people will ask about the b-side, and how they can get just that song. We haven’t quite figured out what the best method of delivery will be, but we will be offering the song for free to anyone who already purchased our album in 2012, that way you don’t have to re-buy anything to get it. We’ll obviously just be doing this on the honour system, so once our record releases again on April 9th, if you already bought a copy in 2012, and want the b-side, just email us and we’ll send it to you!

At the start of February an official press release will come out about the band, and the release, so we didn’t want you to be confused by it. At that time we’d love any support we can get from you in spreading the word about the band. We’ll be on the road again full time this year, and will be releasing a music video as well. We are still in a place where we do not make any money from music, so this is a labour of love for all of us! We are happy to share our hearts, music, and lives with you!

We’re looking forward to an amazing 2013, and can’t wait to see familiar faces again, and hopefully meet a bunch of wonderful new people too!

Cheers,
Lauren, Jay, Jessica, and Zoltan.