Power from the people

Just a few years ago, singer-songwriter Mieka Pauley would play in Harvard Square for spare change. Her new album was also funded by fan generosity, but this time she got the money up front, via PayPal.

For "Elijah Drop Your Gun," her first full-length disc in seven years, the Harvard grad with the diamond-clear voice established a website (elijahdropyourgun.com) where fans could preorder the album. For $15, a signed CD. For $100, four pairs of CDs, a poster, and two tickets to a show. And so forth, all the way to a $1,000 "Guardian Angel" deal that included a Mieka Pauley concert at your house. She raised more than $16,000 - and found seven Guardian Angels.

Just relocated to New York, where her fiancé is a comedian, Pauley plays a CD-release show at Johnny D's tonight.

"The industry right now is tanking because, they say, the Internet is stealing their money, and what I've done is prove fans do want to pay for music. It's just the way you ask for it has to change," Pauley says.

Last month, Radiohead made news by putting out its new album as a download for fans who paid what they wanted. "So the hook of this article is that Radiohead ripped me off?" Pauley asks with a laugh.

Q: Tell me how all this came about.

A: I got the idea from other musician friends of mine. Edie Carey of Atlanta; Gregory Douglass of Burlington, Vt.; the band Sirsy from Albany, N.Y. They've been doing this for a while. A lot of albums they have come out, they have the fans sponsor. My producer friend Brian Cassagnol from the Boston band Harriet Street, he was working a lot, not charging me at all. I mean, I pawned off - I should say eBay-ed off - a couple of guitars to make sure he was able to make his rent. WERS let me record for free and stuff like that. But at the end, man, to actually print it up, that's when I started panicking. So I decided to try this. I thought we'd actually make a couple [of] thousand dollars, but it ended up being amazing. It completely paid for the album, and for getting the word out there.

Q: How many folks contributed?

A: I think it was almost 300 people pre-bought the album. I got (seven) people to give $1,000 and only three of them asked for house concerts. People would send me checks, but then I would get a note from PayPal saying I had a thousand dollars in my thing, and we would, like, party in the morning when we saw those!

Q: Do you keep in touch with those people?

A: I made a big point to keep in touch with everybody who preordered the album. It's very time-consuming, but these people helped me make the record; I couldn't send out some big form letter. Not only have I been in touch with all the $1,000 donations, I've been in touch with all the $15 ones, too.

Q: So you can write a check to the pressing plant, but the support must make you feel good.

A: The final artwork behind the CD actually lists all the sponsors. I think the quote was, "I'm doubly grateful to these people because they not only made it possible for me to make the album, but they also gave me someone to make the album for." You can't underestimate the power of that, because for the most part you're recording in a void.

Q: It's been seven years since your last full-length, but you had a couple of EPs.

A: I had an acoustic demo I did . . . and the second one was more, I have to think about how to phrase this, it was more of a pop approach, more of the correct approach, more the way you're supposed to do this in the music business. And it just didn't work.

Q: Let's talk a little about the record itself. Somebody had a bad time, huh?

A: I have some uplifting songs, don't I? Some of the songs were reactions, one in particular was a reaction, to what happened last year to the whole EP and the way the music business went for me, and that was the second track, "Be Like the Man." I won't get into specifics, but you can listen to it and just know I was mad at somebody.