DOWNLOAD "For A Lifetime" (Right-Click Link to Download)

DONATE (to one of our 12 non-profit partners)

Hey Everyone,

It is with great pleasure that we get to share our “Perennials” project with you. Starting today, we’ll be releasing a brand new song every week for the next year. Here’s a bit more information about what we’re doing, how we’re doing it, and why:

What
1 Band. 1 Year. 52 Songs. 12 Charities. It’s pretty simple really, we’re going to release a song a week for the next year for free on our site. If you feel compelled to support the project beyond listening/enjoying/sharing, we’ve partnered up with 12 amazing causes we believe in (they’re featured on our DONATE page.) Think of it as our version of a marathon.

How
Ok, let’s get nerdy. First off, not all of us are living in Brooklyn anymore. The band is more of a collective now, with studios across the country from Boston to Chicago to Brooklyn to LA and beyond. Fortunately for us, we’re huge nerds and collaborative software has evolved to a point where a project like this possible. It's really hard to imagine how we would coordinate composition, arrangement, tracking, editing, and mixing between 4+ studios without Dropbox, Evernote, Google Hangouts, and Logic (so thank you to the engineers who worked on these services. We love you - a lot.)

Why
We know the project might sound a little crazy, but it actually wasn't something we had to deliberate over or convince each other to sign up for. There were two choices: stop making music together, or adapt. There was no real consideration of the first option, so the project was born of necessity. We're excited and also a little terrified about what lies ahead. But we think we can pull it off, and we hope some good songs come out of it.

Song Stories
Every week, we’ll post a blog with a little story about the song - here’s the first one:

“For A Lifetime”

There are lots of reasons why we chose to launch Perennials with “For a Lifetime.” First and foremost, we think it's a great song. By kicking things off with a winner we hope to set everyone's expectations high - both for us and for you. We want this tune to hook you on the project so that you keep coming back every week for another new song. Second, Walt's lyrics and arrangement in For a Lifetime really resonate with what we've been living with lately: leaving homes, making new ones, starting families, missing friends, starting new careers, and working like madmen. The song also embodies our new creative reality, one that involves video-chatting about musical arrangements, simultaneously performing and recording ourselves, and settling on the right mix for a song over email. We developed a process for these things while working on “For A Lifetime.” We think it came out beautifully.

Lastly, but certainly not least, we chose this song because it gives us the opportunity to introduce a new member of the JSS family, Paul Apelgren. Paul was a college roommate of Walt's and close friend of Jonny's (Danny likes him too.) He is a supremely gifted pianist who works as a music editor in Los Angeles. In addition to writing and performing, Paul is doing the heavy lifting on post-production for Perennials - which means he's cleaning up all the messes we make.

Charity Spotlight
We thought about just throwing the songs up on our site or releasing them on iTunes but this direction seems like so much more fun. Plus, adding 12 charities gave the project a natural organization - 1 each month, 12 mini-albums. So, these causes helped give the project form while also increasing its potential for doing some good. We feel great about this facet of Perennials and every month we’ll feature one of our twelve non-profit partners and share their story.

First up = Charity Water

Charity Water rules. Jonny saw their founder speak a couple years ago and has been a big fan of their organization since. Their site is also awesome because it allows you to create custom campaigns for fundraising events (most common use-case is birthdays) and they're completely transparent about where your donation goes. Here’s a blurb about what they do:

charity: water is a non-profit organization bringing clean, safe drinking water to people in developing nations. We use 100% of public donations to directly fund sustainable water solutions in areas of greatest need. Right now, 800 million people on the planet don't have access clean and safe drinking water. That's one in nine of us. Unsafe water and lack of basic sanitation cause 80% of diseases and kill more people every year than all forms of violence, including war. Children are especially vulnerable, as their bodies aren't strong enough to fight diarrhea, dysentery and other illnesses. Just $20 can give one person access to clean water.

Other charity partners include: New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Foundation, Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America (IAVA), Musicians on Call, Cause Effective, Rosie’s Place, Camp Interactive, Old Town School of Folk Music, Housing Works, The Trevor Project, Para Los Ninos, and Evacuteer.org.

So here we go. Here's to creativity, to friendship, to thinking big, to all of the great charities we've partnered with, and most of all, to 51 more weeks of music.

Thanks for listening. We hope you enjoy this as much as we do...

Love,

Jones Street Station

PS - always feel free to tell us what you think of all this - we’re listening too :)

jonesstreetstation@gmail.com

@jonesststation
facebook.com/jonesststation
www.jonesstreetstation.net