Shane Hines

Alternative (2008-09-23)
Shane Hines And The Trance Raise $13,000 In One Week To Record New Album

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NASHVILLE, TN. (Top40 Charts/ Shane Hines & The Trance Official Website) - Shane Hines and The Trance, a DC based rock band, are a band on a mission to raise money to record their new album.
In order to record their album in Nashville with established producer, Chris Grainger, they need money; $40,000 to be exact.

Without a label to pay the bill for them, Shane Hines are doing it themselves. They have reached out to their fans and are asking for donations. The band set up www.TeamTrance.com, where people can go to make a donation; they raised $13,000 in the first week alone!

Shane Hines and The Trance recently returned from XM Radio's invitation only, Global Broadcast Sessions at Abbey Road Live from London. They won a 'Wammie', which is the equivalent of a Grammy in the DC area, for best rock band. Their songs have been played on MTV's 'The Hills', 'Road Rules Challenge' and 'The Real World'. They are the only unsigned band played regularly on DC's rock station, 94.7 The Globe.

- Top 40 Charts.com

MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 29, 2008
"Fan-funded" recording: The next wave?
We've had the file sharing wars, the Radiohead experiment, and just lately the Mudvayne twist, where buying an album gets you the full fan-club-exclusives package as well. Another growing trend in the ever-evolving music industry business model is so-called "fan-funded" recording -- projects whose recording budget is funded not by a label, but by donations from a group's fans.

The model has proven viable enough that there are actually several Web sites devoted to it now -- think Sellaband and SliceThePie and ArtistShare and CASH Music -- but equally as intriguing are acts who choose to go directly to their fans. The Brian Travis Band of LA is $5,500 into a $7,000 fundraising effort to finish off the mastering and duplication of their latest record. And D.C.-based rock band Shane Hines and the Trance have raised $30,000 of a projected $40,000 recording budget for their new album via their TeamTrance site, including raising $13,000 in the first week of their fundraising drive.

Drummer/author Jake Slichter of Semisonic famously characterized the band as "rock and roll sharecroppers," making music as debt-burdened indentured servants to their label. In the future will we call them rock and roll panhandlers? Or is the better comparison to the PBS "viewer supported" model? Finally, is this progress, or just another odd twist along the road to a destination that isn't yet in sight? - dailyvault.com

february 2009
written by
Robert Fulton
Shane Hines and the Trance
The Glory Journal

www.teamtrance.com
Local artist Shane Hines hits all the right notes on this recent release, demonstrating sharp songwriting skills and pop/rock sensibilities. The songs are deeply personal, introspective and blatantly honest. On the catchy first track “Way Up,” he tackles what on paper reads like the struggles of a manic depressive (“My head doctors say/Take your meds twice a day/ . . . But still man nothing’s changed/I go higher than high and then I come crashing down”.) “I Promise Me,” is the writing of a person who is selfish for all the right reasons, focusing on personal needs first (“I’m going out and I’m taking what’s mine/So no more waiting around for a rescue/And thinking what I can’t do”). “The Broken Breaking Down” addresses self loathing, and “Boy” lashes out (“You think too much/But you’re not all that wise”), but one wonders who Hines is criticizing. Sure, there are only seven tracks here, but they are a substantive, touching, well-crafted set of tracks. A must listen.

- On Tap Magazine

EDGE: Fans play new musical role
Washington Times
Donations back cost of rock band's CD production
Scott Galupo (Contact)
Friday, January 30, 2009

President Obama's unprecedented online campaign fundraising effort proved there was a massive pent-up supply of cash waiting in the proliferating network of online communities.

Rock bands are catching on, too.

"People will pay for music if they want to - it's just that simple," says Shane Hines, a Northern Virginia-based singer-songwriter who fronts a band called the Trance.

Last summer, Mr. Hines, 30, threw himself on the mercy of his fans. He launched the Web site TeamTrance.com and solicited contributions via the electronic service PayPal toward the recording of his latest CD, "The Glory Journal." (Rather than attempting to land in the icy Hudson River of genre identification, I'll note that the band describes its sound as "aggressive melodic rock.")

An entry-level $15 got you an advance copy of the disc, which is now available to the general public at CDBaby.com as well as iTunes. More generous contributions earned an ascending scale of goodies: For $500, Mr. Hines and bassist "Mr. Thumbs" would cook dinner at your house; for $1,500, they'd put on an acoustic gig in your living room.

The top-tier $10,000 donation - already spoken for - came with a Gibson electric guitar played by Mr. Hines.

The Team Trance campaign so far has racked up $34,000. With recording costs essentially front-loaded, Mr. Hines was able to record with the producer of his choice, Nashville-based Chris Grainger.

He's now in the enviable position of 1) not having to make good on a record company's advance, as once was the norm for up-and-coming bands, and 2) not having maxed-out credit cards.

"I keep using the word 'humbling,'" Mr. Hines says of his fans' generosity. "You try not to have expectations. I was thinking, 'If we just get enough money to record.' I wouldn't feel good about asking people for money unless I felt what we had was good."

The Team Trance campaign was hatched and spearheaded by Mr. Hines' manager, Michele Samuel. At a band meeting in a Panera Bread restaurant, she and the band members scratched their heads. "How are we going to record this CD?" was the collective query. "We've got the tunes, and we really want to record with this guy in Nashville."
Ms. Samuel had heard of bands raising money online to help defray the costs of concert tours - so why not a down payment, of sorts, on a professional recording project?

"Here's a band that's been working really hard," Ms. Samuel recalls. "It needs a little bit of money to make a big difference."

Ms. Samuel and the band tapped every Web-based resource at their disposal, from Facebook and MySpace pages to a direct e-mail listserv.

"We were counting on the community that Shane had built," she says.

Once the Team Trance site went live, money began arriving in ever-more-generous increments. To keep contributors plugged into the project's progress, the band maintained a blog and uploaded pictures and video footage of the recording sessions.

Fan-based fundraising is just one example of how bands might adjust to a music industry that's morphing into a Darwinian struggle that rewards technological cleverness as well as raw talent.

With album sales withering - and copyright royalties along with them - labels increasingly have less money and patience to spend on developing fresh talent. More often than not, it's television, not labels, that breaks new artists.

This reality is both demanding and empowering. "You need to be fully realized as a band and an organization," Mr. Hines says. "You need to be ready to move forward whether there's a label there or not."

Yet the absence of a multinational intermediary between artists and their fans also means there's a real opportunity to develop relationships that are more meaningful than the distant and impersonal axis of adored idols and awestruck fans that ruled in the last century.

For example, an unusually ardent fan-band connection is the only way to explain the seeming puzzle of Radiohead's most recent album, "In Rainbows." After initially offering fans the choice of paying whatever they wanted for an independently released digital download, the band revealed in October that it still had managed to sell, the old-fashioned way, 1.75 million copies of the album.

The hybrid rollout of "In Rainbows" offered a glimmer of hope to an ailing industry that all was not lost. Some bands, at least, could thrive in the post-label age.

The trick, it seems, is to give music fans the sense that they're doing more than just purchasing and consuming - that they're participating, with virtual intimacy, in an unfolding organic process.
"At the end of the day," Ms. Samuel says, "people just wanted to give money - to be included."

- Washington Times

Shane Hines & The Trance ‘The Glory Journal’
February 11th, 2009 • Related • Filed Under
An established songwriter, Hines is stepping out into the limelight with his album full of timeless Rock music that sidesteps all fashions. Fans of straight, no-frills Rock will love this.
As a singer, Shane Hines sounds like he’s equally at home in an intimate club setting or on a stadium stage. His voice can certainly deal with both. Curiously, when he sings, Southern boy Shane (he’s based in Arlington, Virginia) comes over like an English rocker. Trust me, I had to check the bio because I didn’t believe either that this is not a UK band.
For a musical reference, try The Who frontman Roger Daltrey, particularly his solo albums from the Seventies and Eighties, like ‘Under A Raging Moon’. That gets you pretty close. Shane’s voice almost reaches the power of Shepherds Bush’s most famous son.
‘The Glory Journal’, due out on 6th March 2009, is the third album by Shane Hines & The Trance and in seven years. During that time, the band has picked up a loyal fanbase.
It’s worth pointing out that the album was fully funded by fans. Hines raised more han $35,000 to get “The Glory Journal” produced, enough to hire producer Chris Grainger in Nashville. Grainger’s credentials include work for Ludo and Alternative Country act Wilco - though you wouldn’t guess the latter listening to ‘The Glory Journal’.
The Trance is Hines on guitar and lead vocals with Brian ‘Thumb’ Keating on bass and backing vocals. A songwriter and behind the scenes musician for a long time - he’s written with Lori McKenna, Toby Lightman and Pete Wallace among others - The Trance is Shane’s vehicle for getting his songs across to a wider audience.
Hines songwriting talent is increasingly acknowledged outside inside music industry circles. Only last year, Hines was one of three finalists in the category Rock in the 2008 John Lennon Songwriting Contest. Hines’ track ‘Way Up’ was pipped to the post by Texas band Dawn Over Zero’s ‘Catapult’, but you can now listen to it in its full glory on ‘The Glory Journal’.
The contest is a well established event. It has been going since 1997 and the jury includes successfull writers such as the Grateful Dead’s Bob Weir, Al Jarreau, Robin Gibb and Fergie of the Black Eyed Peas among others.
With these writing credentials and an obvious taste for classic English Rock of the golden age, Hines could become a surprise ticket on the live circuit. One for audiences starved of good, old-fashioned Rock music.

- tuneraker.com

April 2009

Shane Hines returns with his latest release “The Glory Journal” which continues Hine’s transformation from his indie rock style to a more aggressively charged melodic rock. Tracks like “Way Up” and “The Broken Breaking Down” showcase the off beat melodies and Hine’s rangy vocals. That being said, the most well written track on the album might be the acoustic driven “We Can Never Be,” with its building melody that might be the best track the band has written to date. Never afraid to step outside the lines, The Glory Journal is no exception for Shane Hines and the Trance who now have another impressive release to add to their already notable repertoire. - Alternative Addiction

A Band's Most Important Backup Players

Friday, May 1, 2009

The new Shane Hines and the Trance album, "The Glory Journal," wasn't funded by a record label. Instead, it was made with the financial support of fans, who collectively contributed $34,180.30 to cover the Washington-based rock band's recording and promotional expenses.
The group solicited contributions last year on its Web site, www.teamtrance.com, offering every donor something in return: For $15, they'd get a copy of the album; $250 was worth a two-hour guitar lesson; $5,000 garnered a recording session with the band. There were 131 donations, ranging from $10 to, yes, $5,000.
"I was shocked that while the economy was tanking, people were still giving us money to make another record," says Hines, who has become one of the area's more unlikely musical hyphenates: singer-songwriterguitarist-fundraiser. "... I had zero expectations, so when someone pays $5,000 for her son to come into the studio with us as a birthday present -- that's mind-blowing. I had no idea that someone would even give us $15 to get a CD."
Flush with funding, the band -- which specializes in tuneful rock -- went to Nashville to record with an established producer, Chris Grainger. Otherwise, Hines insists, nothing changed.
"I wasn't sitting in the vocal booth thinking, 'I hope that donor likes this vocal!' " Also: "We're living on the cheap, trying to stretch the money as far as it can go. I can't go to some steakhouse and spend the money that somebody gave us to make a record; people didn't sign up for us to live nice for six months."
One-time deal, by the way: Hines says the band will not be asking fans to fund the "Glory Journal" follow-up. Here's how the "Glory Journal" balance sheet breaks down. (Based on a total budget of $34,180.30, of course.)
-- J. Freedom du lac


- The Washington Post

4/9/09 9:12 PM
Music fans pitch in to design covers, back CDs, map tours - USATODAY.com

By Brian Mansfield, Special for USA
TODAY
Chris Kubik always dreamed of designing
album covers. But as a senior graphic
designer forSchumacher Electric Corp., he
was more likely to spend his time with battery
chargers and jump starters than superstars
and electric guitars.
So when his girlfriend told him about a
contest for Rascal Flatts fans to create the
country trio's new album cover, he jumped at the chance. "I
made up a couple of designs and entered them," says Kubik,
26, of Arlington Heights, Ill.
Audio: Hear Jill Sobule's thank-you song to donors
Kubik's design, which features the musicians sitting in high-back
chairs with picture frames representing the group's six albums
behind them, beat out 2,000 other submissions to grace the
just-released Unstoppable, which likely will be the best-selling
CD in the country this week. And Kubik, who already owned all
the group's albums, now has an emotional investment that goes
far beyond traditional notions of fandom. "This is an
unbelievable opportunity," he says.
As CD sales decline, advances from record labels dwindle and
audience demographics break up into smaller niches, more and
more artists from all levels of popularity are seeking to retain
fans by including them in the creative process.

The notion is hardly new. For years, record companies have used focus groups to help determine songs to be
included on albums. In 2004, David Bowie asked fans to blend recordings of his older songs with those from a
new album, Reality, to create "mash-ups" and submit them to his website. And Barenaked Ladies made available
separate instrumental tracks for several songs from its 2006 album Barenaked Ladies Are Me so that fans could
create their own mixes.
The methods of bringing the audience into the creative process have become more personal and may involve all
stages of an act's career. Artists such as John Mayer and the Jonas Brothers' Joe Jonas are known for
communicating directly with fans through social-networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook. Other acts
engage fans through their websites.
"Many times when we're putting together a new tour, I'll get online and ask about what the fans want to hear, what
songs they wish we would do live that we haven't done in a while," says Rascal Flatts bassist Jay DeMarcus.
"Their input and their advice is invaluable to us. It's the main source of research for us whenever we start out to
do a piece of business."
Fan interaction with musicians is blossoming on other fronts as well:
•Kiss is using fan input at eventful.com/kiss to choose sites for its fall tour of North America.
•Nine Inch Nails has a new DVD project called Another Version of the Truth: This One's on Us that includes a
version of the band's 2008 Las Vegas concert edited together from dozens of fan-created video and audio
recordings.
•Queen Latifah used January's People's Choice Awards show to announce a contest in which fans could submit
videos of original songs for possible inclusion on her forthcoming album, Persona (no release date yet). Fans
eventually chose the song Fairweather Friend by Ingrid Woode, a 26-year-old chemist from Cincinnati.
"I was a fan before she (Latifah) made that announcement on the People's Choice Awards, and I always will be,"
says Woode, who is awaiting a date to record.
Rascal Flatts also used the People's Choice website to host its album-design contest, which ran in two stages.
First, the band provided optional photos and design elements to aspiring designers, who then submitted potential
covers. Then, the group chose a handful of favorites and let fans decide a winner.
"It was fun to involve them on the front end of the process, something we had never done before," DeMarcus
says, adding that he's pleased with Kubik's winning design. "I like the simplicity of it. I like the way he enhanced
says, adding that he's pleased with Kubik's winning design. "I like the simplicity of it. I like the way he enhanced
an already fantastic photograph."
DeMarcus also liked outsourcing that particular part of the album-making process because it meant the group
didn't spend nearly as much time choosing photos and debating potential covers.
"I'd much rather be writing or in the studio producing than be sitting around looking at a bunch of photos of
myself," he says.
Going to fans for backing
Instead of outsourcing work to fans, Los Angeles-based singer/songwriter Jill Sobule went to them for backing.
When she saw her usual sources of funding — record-company advances — dry up, she knew she'd have to get
creative if she wanted to record again.
"The idea of trying to get a record deal and go have meetings seemed completely horrible," says Sobule, who had
a top 20 modern-rock hit in 1995 with I Kissed a Girl (not the Katy Perry song) but hadn't released an album in five
years. "The second thing was, no one's giving advances, so why would I do it, anyway? I've never made a penny
off of records."
Sobule made plenty off the promise of a new record, though, by creating a website (jillsnextrecord.com), where
fans could contribute money to finance the recording. She raised $88,969, enough to hire Grammy-winner Don
Was to produce California Years, out next week on Sobule's Pinko Records label.
Sobule ran her website much like a public-television pledge drive, offering increasingly enticing perks for greater
gifts. A $10 donation served essentially as an advance order, with donors receiving a free digital download of
California Years upon its release. The most popular level, $50, got donors an advance copy of the CD and a
"thank you" mention in the liner notes. For $500, fans got their names incorporated into the album's final track,
appropriately titled The Donor Song.
Sobule, who kept fans informed with an online tote board tallying donations, also recorded personalized theme
songs for 11 $1,000 donors, among them Dancing With the Stars host Tom Bergeron. One $10,000 donor got to
sing background vocals on the album.
"She was a software developer who had gotten into some money recently," Sobule says. "She'd never sung, so I
made a big day of it, taking her to a vocal lesson. She got it in one take. She was so good, and we didn't have to
auto-tune her!"
Other artists have found success with similar models. Shane Hines never imagined fans would directly fund his
recordings, but that's exactly what has happened for the Washington, D.C.-area indie rocker. "I expected labels to
be involved, I expected tons of money," says Hines, who fronts Shane Hines and the Trance. "When you're 15
and you have stars in your eyes, you expect fame and fortune because of this big machine that makes everything
happen. I've come to find out that just isn't the case."
Instead, he raised $34,000 in increments of $10 to $10,000 via a website to finance recording of the group's EP
The Glory Journal, released in February. One woman contributed $5,000 to give her 12-year-old son a day in the
studio with the group as a birthday present. "We let him in on the whole process," Hines says. "He got to play, and
he got to know from start to finish how the whole thing went."
Hines' premiums for donations included guitar lessons, road trips with the band and home-cooked meals (though
nobody took him up on that one, he says).
"I like seeing people who come to our shows when they're not at our shows," he says. "It makes it feel more like a
community. Community made this record."
Sending fans to the streets
Other artists, such as Nashville singer/songwriter Jeff Black, engage the community on the road. Kiss may bill its
2009 North American run as the "first-ever fan-routed tour," but Black takes the concept a step further. Not only
do fans help schedule his dates, they often serve as booking agents, promoters and hosts.
Black wrote a couple of moderately successful country hits for other artists during the '90s and briefly had a deal
with Arista Records. Royalties from those days still trickle in, but the prolific artist largely has replaced those
income streams with money from fan-sponsored shows, sales of independently produced CDs, even a
subscription-based weekly podcast called Black Tuesday.
"I'm closer to the people who like to listen to my music than I've ever been," he says. Organizers of the fan-
sponsored concerts, which often are held at houses, will print event-specific programs and tickets and take the
word of Black's shows out into the street.
Before one show in a small Kansas town, he says, "they had been copying my CDs, handing out music, telling
people, 'You've got to come to this show. We love this guy's music.' I was the first fan-sponsored show they did.
They've done several since then."
Like Black, Sobule appreciates her newfound closeness with her followers, who make up a fan base that's small
enough to be manageable but large enough to let her sustain a career.
"I don't have to sell hundreds of thousands of records," she says. "I can contact everyone that says something
nice and tell them, 'Thank you.' Maybe Madonna can't do that."
She admits, though, that granting them so much access to her career comes with a price. "It takes up a lot of
time," she says. "Instead of writing a song, I'm on the Internet talking to fans or pumping up some of the people
on my team."
And as anyone who has seen The Beatles' film A Hard Day's Night knows, fans — especially when they come in
large groups — can get out of hand. Last month, American Idol winner David Cook felt compelled to use his
MySpace blog to ask some of his fans to give him some space.
"The efforts by some fans to find our hotel rooms, call our hotel rooms, attach things to our bus, etc., is something
I have to condemn," Cook wrote. "This relationship only works when it remains healthy for both parties."
DeMarcus says Rascal Flatts rarely encounters that level of inappropriate fan conduct: "In every case where
you're dealing with somebody who's in the public eye and admired by a lot of people, you're going to have the
occasional fan who doesn't know where to draw the line.
"By and large, our fans respect our privacy and respect the fact that we have lives outside of Rascal Flatts."

- USA Today

Naming their EP The Glory Journal may seem brash, but Hines & Co. spill over with energy and exuberance that affirm accuracy in advertising. Way Up and I Promise Me set the tone but Need is most notable, echoing Freddie Mercury and Queen in both its drama and delivery. Performing Songwriter - Performing Songwriter

The Retriever Weekly
Feb 2009

Shane Hines and The Trance get introspective with their newly released album The Glory Journal
By By Derek Roper ?Staff Writer
Looking for a rock band today is like looking for a rock in the Rocky Mountains. But every so often one can find Zinc. Shane Hines and the Trance have deposited rocking minerals in The Glory Journal.
Approaching the CD isn't very intimidating, it only boasts seven songs. But there is a saying that big things come in tiny packages. The CD's tracks flow well, "the last record felt a little inconsistent, it was a great record but we wanted to put together a cohesive set of songs," lead singer, Shane Hines said. "The writing is different in this album," said Hines, "because no one wants to hear the same thing."
The first song on the CD, "Way Up," is a tribute to the highs and lows of life. For some reason rock bands like writing about medication (right, National Product?). But that is the key to this song. The track opens up with "Here comes the shine, the glow," seems like it can only go up from here right? Well, Hines lets the listener drop and follows the beautiful image with "Here comes happy followed by the hollow." Sure enough, the rest of the song is a soft portrait of despair. What is even more impressive is his intonation in the chorus. For "Way Up" he sends his voice soaring so high into the big metaphor in the sky. Like a toy rocket, it comes crashing back down and the "meds" and "wine" mentioned prove to be only temporary.
If there was going to be a song that makes this band it is the unique but hot sister called "I Promise Me." The tone is very upbeat which is good because it picks the listener up and dusts them off to tell them that being taken advantage of is wrong. The song starts out with "Go ahead drag me down, cause I'm bigger than your doubt." The song is unique because how many times do singers whine and cry about loves they can't have or a broken heart. There is rarely a CD that says "I'm doing this for me and you can just screw off." Boy, if Billie Joe and Jason Wade were walking hand in hand this would be the pie in the face (a good pie of course).
"Boy," is the right title for this; it is the grass roots cousin of this hepta-track family. For a while the guys play wise uncle and educate the listener to take control of their lives. They don't have all the answers but they say "you think too much but you're not all that wise." Hmm, maybe rock can teach you something other than sorrow and how to throw a damn good party.
If there was one song on the CD that means the most to Hines, it would have to be "What a Beautiful Day." Hines says the lyrics took everything he had out of him to write it, which is a song dedicated to his mother who passed away. "It's about not getting resolve and growing emotionally," Hines explained. The songs lyrics are very raw. Hines sings "I watched them shovel dirt on your grave, punch drunk and dazed." The cold light of day shines into the ears of the listener. The melody is very bare and real with this one, music is not breakable but this happens to be the exception.
The CD in itself collects styles of music from all over, which happens to be very rare today. If one is looking for rock, straight through and through then sorry to disappoint. Some of Hines' influences were B.B. King, the Beatles, Rubber Soul, and Regina Spektor.

- UMBC