Gay country singer raises £70,000 in a day for debut album

Gay country singer Steve Grand has raised over $116,000 (£70,000) in a day after launching a Kickstarter campaign to fund his debut album.

Grand, a former underwear model, released his gay-themed debut single All-American Boy last summer (2013) and saw the video go viral – it has now notched up over 2.7m views on YouTube.

Yesterday (February 26) he asked fans to “be my label” and pay for his first full-length record by pledging a total of $81,000 (£48,000) on fundraising website Kickstarter. The fundraising campaign will run until March 30, but Grand has already comfortably exceeded his target.

Grand tweeted earlier today (February 27): “Kickstarter goal SURPASSED in just 17 hours! #speechless u r unbelievable. So grateful. So humbled. I love u all!”

On his Kickstarter campaign page, Grand writes: “Recording and producing an album can be an expensive undertaking. Record companies often spend hundreds of thousands of dollars — millions for the bigger artists —producing and promoting an album. My goal is $81,000.

“That will allow me just enough to finish my record, create album art, package it, and film my next music video, which I plan to release on the same day as the album. If we can raise this money together, you can count on my album being out sometime in May. And then I’ll see you on tour!”

Fans can give as little as $1 (60p) on Grand’s Kickstarter page, but the singer encourages larger donations with a rising scale of incentives. A pledge of $25 (£15), for example, will buy a fan a custom magic marker portrait drawn by Grand himself, while a donation of $3,000 (£1,800) entitles a fan to meet Grand for dinner and enjoy an acoustic performance of songs from the album.

Watch the video for All-American Boy below:

[youtube height=”HEIGHT” width=”WIDTH”]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pjiyjYCwNyY[/youtube]