The Record Life Biography/History
“Because love came out of
nowhere/And drove away the dark in me.” “My Lover, the Floodlight”
Like many musicians before him, 21-year-old Jakob Johnson’s, The Record
Life, debut album, Into the Sea of Something Big, was inspired by
the genesis of a romantic relationship… the only difference is, in his
case, it was with a woman who never existed.
With a sound influenced in equal parts by his so-called Record Life of
listening and playing, Johnson’s audacious bow represents a marriage of
his own musical influences, from Queen’s operatic scope (“Alone In The
Atmosphere”), the Beatles’ harmonic melodies (“Step On Your Own”),
Elton John’s
storytelling warmth (“Not the Same”) and
Death Cab for
Cutie’s intricate miniaturist pop (“My Lover, the
Floodlight”).
“It’s a tribute to all my favorite artists, genres and songs, an homage
to each of them,” explains Johnson, who picked up the nickname
Tumbleweed as a child growing up in the tiny western Arizona town of
Cave Creek, north of Scottsdale. “I wanted to capture that cumulative
feeling I’ve always had from listening to my favorite music.”
Johnson was introduced to music early on by his father, who he would go
on road trips with accompanied by a mixtape soundtrack consisting of
The Beatles,
Lynyrd Skynyrd,
The Eagles,
Led Zeppelin,
Green Day,
and Social Distortion. “I really grew to love the melodies within the
music,” he says. By the time Jake was 7, he was a member of the Central
Phoenix based choir, touring here in the states and internationally.
“We sang a huge variety of stuff from early American soul songs to
classical songs that were hundreds of years old and entirely in Latin,
but they were always a cappella, and they always had six-part
harmonies,” he says.
Within Into the Sea of Something Big, produced by The Pharmacy’s Kraig
“Sqrl” Tyler and Bret Mazur, former members of Crazy Town, and Lee Miles
(Tickle Me Pink), lies the story of its creation. The album starts with
Jake’s first, fateful trip to L.A. (“Step on Your Own”) and learning his
craft (“Alone in the Atmosphere”) and journeys through the
truth-is-stranger-than-fiction, Cruel Intentions-meets-Vertigo
long-distance online affair he carried on with a woman who deceived him
for close to a year. During the time he worked on the album, Jake went
from sleeping on the dining room floor of a house in Hollywood with
eight other people to living in the back seat of his car, but he never
gave up.
At about this time, Jake met a woman on MySpace who claimed she was a
professional snowboarder and a fan of his music, offering him a place to
stay in L.A., then supposedly suffering a series of mishaps, including
losing both her parents, getting into a near-fatal car accident,
claiming she was raped and losing her house. Despite his own friends’
skepticism, Johnson found himself falling in love with the voice on the
other end of the telephone, until he discovered, quite by coincidence,
that the pictures she had been sending him were of a college student at
New York City’s Loyola Marymount. And for the girl he had fallen in love
with, she actually lived in North Carolina and wasn’t a snowboarder at
all.
“She did a number on me,” laughs Jake. “At least 11 of them. And there
just so happens to be 11 songs on the record. Go figure.”
From the first falling in love (“Got Me Good”), to feeling the shock of
hearing about the car crash (“Head in My Hands”) to the realization she
wasn’t who she said she was (“Not the Same”) and the vow to walk away
(“Write This Down”), Johnson pours his heart into his strange tale of
love lost, found and lost again on MySpace, Facebook and iChat, a true,
21st century romance.
“I want to let everyone know, as dark as it gets, it’s gonna get light
again one day,” Jake says of the experiences that led to the recording.
“Everything’s gonna be alright. I’ve been through some serious emotional
turmoil. I thought nothing could ever get worse, but it did…over and
over and over and over again. It can get bad, but I promise it will get
better. Just keep your head up. It will turn out OK.”
On the epic “My Lover, the Floodlight,” with its tribal drums and
keyboard plunking, Johnson admits he was listening to Death Cab for
Cutie when he wrote the song, “My interpretation of how a perfect
relationship with my ideal would feel…just being with a smart girl who
is as good-looking as she is intellectual.”
In the end, though, for Jake Johnson and The Record Life, it’s all about
the song.
“If there’s a part that doesn’t make the whole song better, then it
comes out,” he explains. “If there was a single goal on the album, it
was to showcase these songs the way they deserve, and not let anything
get in the way. Even it it’s the most ‘get-you-off’ musical part ever.”
For the sequel to The Record Life’s Into the Sea of Something Big,
Jake is ready to take the show on the road… hopefully to a town near
you.
“More than anything, I’m looking forward to playing these songs live,”
he says, with videos of his performances already available at
www.youtube.com/therecordlifemusic.
Biography courtesy
TotalAssault.com |
Listen to Music
Got Me Good (Windows Media)
Got Me Good (Real)
Got Me Good (Quicktime)
Not The Same (Windows Media)
Not The Same (Real)
Not The Same (Quicktime)
|
The Record Life
