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A film by
Steve Piper
Assistant camera
Live shows recorded at |
Featuring Jake Stigers
Jake Stigers representation
All music ©2005 Jake Stigers |
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Synopsis
Out of Idaho is a 22 minute music documentary profiling the New York based independent rock singer/songwriter Jake Stigers. Originally from Boise, Idaho, Jake worked his way up on the gigging circuit and launched an independent career on moving to New York, performing hundreds of shows per year and shifting thousands of albums without any industry support. When the following began to spread across the Atlantic to the UK, Jake's management Lil' Pony got together with our sister company, booking agency Coffee Artists, who pulled together an acoustic tour. The film profiles Jake's past, present and future through a fast paced montage of interviews, UK gigs and recordings from the USA.
26.08.2006 Aeon Expo, UK (screened twice)
To celebrate Jake signing a deal with UK label Voiceprint (the album Do You Feel High was released in May 2007), the film was released online with an extended ending including footage of full band performances from 2006 and 2007, shot as part of an unfinished feature film project. It was released on video sites including Myspace, YouTube, Google Video, Addicting Clips, Revver, Playstar Music, Indie TV, Jakestigers.com, Coffeeartists.com, Brightcove, Metacafe, Yahoo Video, Your Kinda TV, Blip TV, SMS.AC, iFilm, Icine, Vsocial, Zannel, Sharkle, Small Fish Online and Crackle.
In an interview with Skope Magazine in the US Jake discussed his reaction to seeing the film for the first time; check it out here.
In late 2005 our sister company, music agency Coffee Artists, put together a short UK tour for fast emerging New York rock artist Jake Stigers. Although he had almost no profile in the UK the quality of his recorded work (and the quality of our agency!) landed him a solid schedule of acoustic performances up and down England. When he arrived in the country we decided it was a sensible time to shoot an introductory kind of film on Jake at a time when he was being introduced to our country, so we sat down for a couple of interviews and I made it along to a couple of gigs. Sadly, the combination of our small budget and a faulty sound desk left me without much live sound, fortunately Jake sent me over some live recorded tracks and I worked that in with album tracks to end up with something of a collage of the UK live shows, the recorded album, and Jake on his own in a studio; getting all the lip movements synched proved something of a challenge. Over the next two years Coffee Artists continues to book Jake tours and he was quickly visiting twice a year with his full band The Velvet Roots and playing 25 date tours each time to packed rooms and £1000 a gig pay cheques, we hitched along for the ride shooting hours upon hours of footage. Things built up to a small deal with a UK indie distributor and an album launch at a packed Borderline club with assorted wigs from Universal and Warners in the audience. The feedback was great, "best live band I've seen in about three years" said one suit as the others nodded, but something didn't fit, the big deal didn't come, the money disappeared into publicity that never quite happened and within six months everyone was arguing over what the next step was and things fell apart.
It was a fun couple of years with some great people and a thing it died, but better to have thrown everything at something and not wuite made it, than never tried at all. Out of Idaho doesn't even begin to tell the story, but it is a snapshot of a moment in time, at the start of a big adventure and a fair portrait of Jake; a very sweet, genuine and funny guy with a mountain of talent.
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