Rains Frontman Talks Fan Involvement in Upcoming Album

We recently caught up with Rains frontman Jeff Rains while he was in L.A. busy recording some demos, as the band prepares to record their second album, with a little help from fans.

In our previous interview with Jeff, he makes it clear that he is all about keeping his music independent. Now, the band has teamed up with Kickstarter.com, where fans can donate money toward the recording of the album and earn some cool prizes in return.

Hot off the ‘Share the Welt’ Tour in 2011, Rains is also gearing up to head back on the road in February, with Blackstone Cherry and Cavo. Check out our follow up interview with Jeff Rains below:

How is the second album progressing?

I’m doing mostly demos and pre-production right now but it’s going extremely well. It’s good to be home but it’s good to come out here and clear my mind a little bit and be able to focus on writing. I have most of it written and everything’s ready to go so we should be hitting the actual studio pretty soon.

When do you think fans can expect the new album?

You know we’re kind of leaving it up to them, we’re doing a new project with Kickstarter and we’re kind of leaving everything in the fans hands, trying to stay an independent band. Fans can make donations and they get really cool prizes and that kinda determines when the album gets recorded and released.

How did you decide to utilize Kickstarter to raise money for your next disc?

I had heard about it before and it seemed to work for a few other projects so we figured well we might as well try it and see what happens and to us it’s like if our fans want us to do another record and stay independent then they need to make it happen, we’re helping too. Like I said there’s a lot of really cool prizes, there’s even a prize where we’ll fly them up to the studio and make them sing on the record with us and just cool stuff like that.

What other awesome prizes are available to fans?

The donations go from $1 to $10,000, the $1 you get a free song download and a personal email from me, then the next donation you get the first album signed, and then it just keeps going on and on. There’s prizes where you can have dinner with the band, or your own private acoustic show, there’s a prize for designers where they can have a chance to design the new art work for the new record. All of the prizes include the smaller prizes too, so if you donate $50 then you get the prize for that and the $25 one and the $1 one. The biggest one is that you get to name the album, so it’s pretty interesting. It’s kind of fun coming up with those prizes because it’s all new to us and we’re like, “Well what would we thing is cool if a band was doing this. It’s been going really well so far.

Is it a little scary as an artist to leave that much creativity and power in the hands of the fans?

I think it’s more scary to leave it in a label’s hands, that’s how we’re approaching it. If you want us to put out the music we want to put out and you want to hear then you have to help us out and we have to work together on it. If you want us to sign to a label and hear the music that they want us to put out then that can happen too. Yeah it’s scary but I think it’s cool and the fans seem to really be into it.

Describe the direction you are taking with the second album that differs from the first disc?

Lyrically it could honestly be called ‘Stories 2’ but hopefully a fan names the record something better [laughs]. I’ve had a little while to write it which has been great so I think it’s a lot broader, we cover a lot more ground. It’s a lot more to the point of what we actually sound like and our style of music. I think it’ll be really cool. It’s not like we had six months to write it and put it out, I’ve just been writing for years so now it’s just going through and using my new tools. Everyday your voice gets better and your writing skills get better and it’s just fun to see all that happening.

Any tour plans for 2012 that don’t include opening up for Hatebreed this time around?

[Laughs] Feb. 1 we go out with Black Stone Cherry and Cavo and that goes on for a month. Then in March, I think we’re doing our own headlining stuff for the whole month, pretty much the whole year is planned out for us but you can only release so many tour names at once. [Laughs] We’re going to be very busy this year.

Check out Kickstarter.com To Donate and Help Fund Rains Second Album

Watch a Promo for Rains' Partnership with Kickstarter.com