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Carousel Project- Kozelek, Molina, and Volcano Choir one offs-


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There's also this:


 

 

A statement from Chris Swanson, Secretly Canadian co-owner/co-founder:

 

I was approached by David Silva (one of the Shorebird principles) in late 2013 about a philanthropic project he was working on that was being referred to as the “Carousel Project”. It was a restoration campaign for an old carousel in Rhode Island, and the campaign would incorporate illustrations by an acclaimed children’s book illustrator and he was looking for musicians who might be sympathetic to the cause creatively and politically. I knew David from his days running Empyrean Records and he had noticed that I was doing music supervision for films and asked me if I wanted to get involved in this project. The project seemed to be coming from the right place creatively for me (he was interested in the sort of music that I know well) and it appeared to be well-organized and funded, so I agreed to act as music supervisor. I worked on it for about 6 months and three artists showed interest in being involved.

 

 

The artists & I were all surprised when the Indiegogo campaign ended up getting launched prematurely, before Silva met his contractual obligations to each of the artists. This was very disconcerting to all parties as — I’m only speculating here — it seemed from my vantage point that Silva was attempting to raise money from fans in order to fund the project which we had been assured was already well-funded. The $19,862 that was raised through the campaign was not even enough to manufacture the product that had been planned, let alone to pay the artists for their commissioned work (except for the Molina recordings, which were unreleased tracks from the archives of the Estate of Jason Molina). Silva had created a scenario which could of and should have been quickly addressed by refunding all the pledges fans had made for the goods that he would not be able to manufacture. The artists & I worked for months to try to get David to either demonstrate that he had the funds to continue with the project as planned or refund the fan pledges. In January 2015 we finally had to serve a breach of contract notice to Shorebird in order to force his hand to publicly tell fans that the project was off, and to refund all the pledges. At that point he assured us and the artists that all pledges would be refunded. A month later we were disheartened to learn of reports of fans who had not yet received their refunds (nor any word back from Shorebird) and have attempted to reach Silva to complete his refund process. At this juncture we have no clear understanding of how many of the pledges have been refunded.

 

Overall it was a hellish experience. I thought I could trust Silva and Shorebird and represented to these artists that they could be trusted to do good work and follow through with what they had agreed. Not only did they fail to do that, but it appears that they have taken advantage of fans by taking their money.

 

We do not have a list of who has been refunded so cannot tell how many fans have yet to see a refund. If you have not yet been refunded, please send an email to [email protected] along with a receipt of which package you purchased.

 

 

 

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I wonder when that statement was actually/originally written. The end of it seems like SC was going to refund people their full pledge amount, but that's not what I was offered today.

 

I'm wondering/hoping that the other music designated for the campaign will be released soon as well--and that we'll be put on a list for that. We shall see. Judging by the timeline of the most recent releases/re-releases, we'll be due another Molina release late this year.

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Hah, now a big long sad email from David Silva about how he's not the one to blame for all this. Strange he waits 6 months between contacting backers and then miraculously reaches out after Secretly Canadian finally sheds some light on the situation.

 

I think there's a chance he's a weirdo who gets off on stringing people along and the angry e-mails he gets after each missed deadline.

 

This now seems the most likely scenario. Dude just looks like a scammer and a sociopath. His new (3rd? 4th?) email address that he wants people to contact him at is [email protected]. Yeah, I'm sure he'll get everything sorted.

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  • 1 month later...
  • 5 years later...
1 minute ago, timsimmons said:

Remember this bullshit? 
 

was this dude ever beat down? 

This thread is a blast from the past!

 

I live in Rhode Island and looked up this guy's business address at the time, but by the time the project had gone to shit, he was no longer in that physical space. I was considering a strongly-worded letter from a local, not a beat down, but you never know.

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