BEHIND BEST OF THE YEAR PRAISE, JAKE LA BOTZ’S NEW ALBUM ‘SUNNYSIDE’ SAW BOOST FROM PRODUCER JIMMY SUTTON (JD MCPHERSON, POKEY LAFARAGE)

 

MERCURY LOUNGE, KUNG FU NECKTIE, HIDEOUT CONFIRMED AS PART OF ALBUM RELEASE TOUR

 

SESSION CONFIRMED WITH NPR’S WORLD CAFE

 

“One of the year’s best Americana albums.”

– Sarah Zupko, Pop Matters, May 4, 2017

 

“One of our favorite albums of the year.”

– Robert McCormick, Inked Magazine, May 9, 2017

 

NPR asked JD McPherson about the making of his album ‘Signs & Signifiers’ and JD told them, “When we were making this record, Jimmy, the producer, he walked around with a metronome and he'd mess with the metronome and dance around until he found the most danceable beats per minute and that's what we record at.” He’s applied similar magic behind the dials at his own Hi-Style Studio in Chicago to Jake La Botz’s ‘Sunnyside,’ out last week on Hi-Style Records and the result earning raves as a potential best album of 2017.

 

“How I Wish She Was Mine” embeddable single

 

Jimmy, who also co-produced Pokey LaFarge’s breakthrough ‘Something In The Water,’ confesses that scaling up to those golden early rock & roll grooves on ‘Sunnyside’ took some work, "The biggest challenge for me was figuring how to translate Jake: I always knew him as a stripped down solo act. Discovering how to capture the solitude and emotional depth of Jake's solo artist sound while enriching it with musical accompaniment was a challenge."

 

Jake recalls, "I learned a lot about developing my songs by working with Jimmy. I've always been a kind of loner type – in everything, not just creating – but giving over to collaboration with the arrangements I found a lot of discoveries happening for me. I began to really appreciate Jimmy's sensibilities and looked forward to his input. I even started to write songs with his arrangements in mind as well as the sound of the Hi-Style studio."

 

Sutton, along with Alex Hall, had built the Hi-Style Studio to capture sound with all ribbon, tube, and dynamic microphones passed through tube mixers and preamps onto ¼-inch tape.

 

Demoed years, earlier, the title track’s demo formed the basis of the vulnerability on its final rendition. Jimmy reveals, “I wasn't crazy about the guitar sound. But we added some piano and listened to it and I started to love it. When we came back to the demo a couple of years later we realized we had something great to build around. We added drums, bass, backing vocals and it became, what I think, is one of the best songs on the album."

 

NPR World Café has confirmed a performance/chat.

 

Jake La Botz Tour Dates:

 

May 31 – Music City Roots - Franklin, TN                       

June 3 - Kiki's House of Righteous Music - Madison, WI                          

June 4 - Record Release Show at The Hideout - Chicago, IL                       

June 5 - Raccoon Motel - Davenport, IA                             

June 6 - The Southgate House Revival-The Lounge - Newport, KY           

June 8 - Record Archive - Rochester, NY                            

June 10 - Atwood's Tavern - Cambridge, MA                                 

June 14 - Kung Fu Necktie - Philadelphia, PA                     

June 19 - Mercury Lounge - New York, NY

Jake La Botz Melds a Colorful Lifetime Into Gritty, Grooving Early Rock 'n Roll Gold on New Album "Sunnyside"

DRIFTER, ACTOR, BUSKER, FORMER PUNK, DEEP WELLED AMERICANA ARTIST JAKE LA BOTZ READIES FIRST ALBUM IN FOUR YEARS
 

PRODUCER JIMMY SUTTON (POKEY LAFARGE, JD MCPHERSON) HELMED NEW ALBUM 'SUNNYSIDE', OUT MAY 12 ON HI-STYLE RECORDS

 

FROM TATTOO TOURS TO ‘TRUE DETECTIVE’ PART, NASHVILLE-VIA-LA-FROM-CHICAGO ARTIST MELDS COLORFUL LIFETIME INTO GRITTY, GROOVING EARLY ROCK 'N ROLL GOLD

 

"From the first time I heard him playing guitar and singing his songs in a smoky bar on La Brea and Sunset, I became a devoted fan of Jake La Botz. Effortlessly blending authentic blues, rock, country, and gospel, he's created a sound and style that is original and yet instantly familiar. Soulful, personal, painfully funny and sad, he's a true American classic, a gift, and a musical resource that is a joy to be discovered time and time again.”  - Steve Buscemi

 

Cats have nine lives, they say. If that’s true, Jake La Botz must be a cat. A teenage punk, a juvenile delinquent, an actor ( including a part in the classic ‘Ghost World’), a drifter, an apprentice to blues elders growing up in Chicago, self-educated reader, an addict in Los Angeles, a musician in a gospel church, a Buddhist, a meditation teacher, a songwriter touring a circuit of tattoo parlors nationwide. Now, he’s taken all of those experiences and synthesized them with producer Jimmy Sutton (Pokey LaFarge, JD McPherson) for ‘Sunnyside,’ coming May 12 on Hi-Style Records. It’s his first album in four years and finds the new Nashville transplant recounting his past and present atop an irresistible, driving groove. Jimmy Sutton recorded La Botz in his original hometown of Chicago at an all-analog studio, teasing dynamite performances out of the heavily tattoo’d artist.

 

A master storyteller from time spent at the feet of his grandfather and other elders, La Botz infuses his songs with gritty, deeply imagined characters. The album runs along an axis of spirituality on one side and materialism on the other, with La Botz spinning metaphors and subtle dual meanings throughout. Stories include the absurdity of filling one's life with"positivity" (the title track), a portrait of a decrepit hotel with addicts seeking fixes (“The Hotel [Fix Me Now]”), a prisoner searching for a way out (“The Trees in Cali”), a mystical hobo’s description of freedom (“Hobo On a Passenger Train”), a street musician trading art for spare change in the subway (“For Nickels & Dimes”), and the carefree feeling that comes with the arrival of summer (“Feel No Pain”). La Botz has opened for greats like Ray Charles, Dr. John, Mavis Staples, JD McPherson, Etta James, The Blasters, and Tony Joe White.

 

Let some of his peers and media tell it:

 

"Jake La Botz is a creator of dark poetry and haunting song, the kind of music that gets in your bones and rides you for days, a sound and vision only those who've been to the bottom and clawed their way back up can generate. Not everybody will get this music - because not everybody is ready for the truth." -Jerry Stahl (author of Permanent Midnight)

 

“Music from a deep well, a blues with country, folk and sharply observed lyrics... as affecting as a shot of overproof rum on a hot day." -Tattoo Magazine

 

LA Weekly said, “Jake La Botz came up the right-proper, fucking hard way: a teen renegade on the streets of Chicago, dabbling in a mixture of antisocial activities (from car theft to jabbing up his own rudimentary tattoos) and exploring the rich, deep blues tradition as a street singer (with Chi-town legend Maxwell Street Jimmy Davis) and beside Delta-blues originator “Honeyboy” Edwards. That lovely, lurid background forged a musical power that… demonstrates not only an innate mastery of the blues, but also displays what he calls a ‘condensed rock & roll mythology.’