Singer and Arrow star John Barrowman has revealed he followed a suggestion from a fan to help get his latest album off the ground.
He said: “I was doing a big talk to about 3,000 people in the States and a woman stood up and she said ‘Why don’t you go through crowd-funding or fan-funding and see if you do it that way?”
The album, You Raise Me Up, features covers of many of Barrowman’s favourite songs and will see him returning to the UK to embark on his first tour in four years.
He said: “It’s been four years since I’ve done a tour and we decided two years ago, while we were doing the album, we would block the time out for the summer this year, so it was that far in advance we thought about it and lo and behold it’s all been blocked out.”
Barrowman revealed that when the recession hit, he was let go from his record label. He said: “A lot of people on the big, what I call the top tier of the cake, got kept and everybody else got released and I got released from my record deal.”
Fans then funded the album through PledgeMusic’s direct-to-fan platform and the bid was a huge success.
Barrowman said: “Within the first 20 seconds of our first pledge it sold out and we made our first goal in less than 15 minutes because we got 100%.”
But fans were given more than just an album in return for their support.
“I didn’t want them to think that I was going to them and saying ‘Just give me money’, I wanted to give them something in return,” he said.
Barrowman hosted an exclusive tea party for a select 100 fans and another group of fans were also allowed into the recording studio to watch him make the album.
Singing aside, Barrowman has hit headlines of late thanks to his role in the hit US show Arrow.
The show, which sees him playing Malcolm Merlyn (aka The Dark Archer), is airing on Sky 1.
Barrowman said: “Well, the season finale in the UK is going to be jaw-droppingly just awesome.”
“There’s something that happens the third or fourth episode from the finale that is what I call the snowball and people are going to be shocked by it but that snowball is going to get bigger and every episode to the end is going to be a massive shock for the audience and it’s just unbelievable.”
“There are also going to be partnerships formed that you never would have thought would happen. That’s all I’m allowed to say.”
The You Raise Me Up Tour will see Barrowman play 20 cities across the UK and starts on May 16.
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