Crowd Funding With A Difference

Local Gizzy band Lazy Fifty are running a crowd funding project in partnership with Sunshine Brewery to raise money to help them record their next album.

Covid has been hard on musicians, lockdowns around the country have meant that gigs for a large part of this year were cancelled, meaning greatly reduced appearance fees.

Kerry Taggart, Lazy Fifty’s manager, says “for most bands appearance fees are the only way to make money these days.”

“People don’t buy CDs anymore. The cost of producing merchandise is high and it’s risky in case you don’t sell it all, and even though bands can easily get their music on streaming sites such as Spotify, even if they are fortunate enough to have a large following, the royalties are insignificant.”

One local band she knows of has had over 200,000 streams on Spotify and only made about $300 in royalties, that’s .001 cents per song played.

Kerry added that “the music industry is a tough game, many musicians do it for the love of music, but it would still be nice to make a bit of money to help towards the costs of making great original kiwi music.”

Sunshine Brewery’s Jerram Morrison was the brainchild of the “Lazy Fundraiser” and the brewery donated a $400 Sunshine prize pack to help the band in their fundraising efforts.

Jerram says “we wanted to get behind our favourite local band. This year has been a challenging year for artists and opportunities to perform and earn were lost and we wanted to help Lazy Fifty out.”

Lazy Fifty’s singer/guitarist Adrian Athy says the band “appreciates the awesome support Martin and the team at Sunshine have given us with providing an epic prize and also selling the raffle tickets at the taproom.”

“I’m really humbled by the donations we’ve been given. It’s expensive to record music and so we appreciate anything our fans and friends in the community can contribute to help us.”

“A lot of our music is about Gisborne and the East Coast. We’re looking forward to releasing the music next year, which we hope a lot of local people will relate to as it is about us and the beautiful place we live in.”

Tickets for the raffle are $10 and are available from Sunshine Brewery’s taproom. Folks outside of Gisborne can donate through a Givealittle page, every $10 donated is an entry in the raffle.

Lazy Fifty are playing a free gig at Neighbourhood Pizzeria on Sunday 29 November from 5-7pm to say thank you to everyone that has supported them.

The raffle will be drawn at Sunshine Brewery on Wednesday, 2 December at 7pm.

www.givealittle.co.nz/cause/lazy-fundraiser

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Lazy Fifty's original music harks back to the blues rock of the 70s, enhanced with a healthy dose of funk, rocking rhythms and impressive guitar.

They have released three albums Petra et Volvo (2017), Fifty Shades of Lazy (2018) and The Broken Stone (2020) and are currently recording their next album at Round Head Studios in Auckland, with renowned producer Greg Haver (Manic Street Preachers, Opshop, The Feelers, Devil Skin).

The name Lazy Fifty comes from the saying of an old friend. When he asked you for a ‘lazy $20’, you knew you’d never see the money again. That was a long time ago and their friend is no longer around. In memory of him, and allowing for inflation, they are now ‘Lazy Fifty’.

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