TPL: Jake Scott Tour Diary

Featuring coverage from:

May 15th 2022 - Louisville, KY @ Iroquois Amphitheater: Emily May

June 4th 2022 - Irving, TX @ The Pavilion at Toyota Music Factory: Marquel Patton

June 5th 2022 - Oklahoma City, OK @ Zoo Amphitheatre: Sarah Bibb

You released your first EP, which ended up charting and you garnered a lot of attention. Did that surprise you, that it was so well-received and got so much attention?

Absolutely!

I know you had said that you really didn't think it was that good, but then it just kind of blew up!

I was like, "Ok. My close friends and my mom are going to buy these songs and that will be fun." It was, like, a bucket list moment. And then it got in the Billboard and iTunes charts and I started getting calls from record labels and publishing companies and was like "What is all of this? This is crazy!". But it was enough of a glimmer of hope to be like "Oh. Maybe I should do this. Maybe I should go for this."

You grew up in Arkansas and said that music always felt like a pipe dream. What can you tell me about developing your love for music and what set you on the path you are on now?

Yeah. Like you said, it felt like a pipe dream because no one actually makes a career out of music, you know what I mean (laughs)? Growing up in Arkansas, that was the last thing that was possible. But I loved music and grew up playing music in garage bands and church and at school in, like, the talent show and stuff, and so I was always around it. It was never something that I was like "I'm going to do this!". But obviously, you see guys like John Mayer and Coldplay and are like "Oh! I would love to do that!". When I got to college, I had the sense that I had songs somewhere in me, but I was really scared to try to write a song. I was like "What if I'm bad at this and then super disappointed?". But then I was like "Ok. I just have to go for it, even if it sucks. I just have to try to write", and I haven't stopped ever since. Once I wrote that first song and actually liked it, I was like "Oh. This is all I really ever want to do", so now I need to figure out how to make a living doing this. That's the hard part (laughs)!

Do you feel that it benefited you, in that regard, of starting out as an independent artist for as long as you were? I know a lot of artists talk about how with labels, they want to wait months between releases instead of releasing music as often as you want to keep peoples' interest.

Yes! Absolutely. And I think that's exactly right. You have to stay on peoples' radar. Not to use the actual words, but Spotify has a thing called Release Radar and the more you can be on that, the more people will just see your name. Even if they don't listen to the song, it's like "Oh, ok. I keep seeing this guy pop up on the radar. I'll eventually listen", and if they like one song, then they'll go check out all of the others. And for them, even though that song I may have released 3 years ago, it's as if I released it yesterday to them. They'll hear it all at once. I've just signed with a label, and it's been amazing, but I'm so glad that I held off as long as I could because I got to experiment in real time. It wasn't like "Oh. Is my audience going to like this? I don't know. It's a huge risk." I was just like "If they don't like it, they won't listen to it" and I just released it and it may be a left turn from what they're used to and some of those songs really surprised me. And it was like "Oh. Ok. Maybe this is something my audience is actually hungry for and I can do more of this."

You started releasing music in 2018 and decided to do a song a month as a way to stand out. What prompted that decision for you and motivated you to commit to the long game? You talked about how you focus on accepting the reality of where you are now.

Yeah. You said it perfectly. It's like you're signing up for the long game. I think it's really easy for artists, myself included, to write a song and think it's great and then are like "If I make a music video and do all of this stuff, I should be Taylor Swift". But there's so much that goes into building that. So for me, because I got to spend a couple of years writing for other artists, and being their producer and writer and wasn't really releasing my own music at the time, I got to see them make the mistake of always putting their eggs in one basket or waiting way too long between having written a song and loving it and it's ready to go and then waiting 6 months and coming up with a great marketing plan. And it's like, unfortunately, the world is not waiting for this song to come out, and so with that marketing plan, no one is really going to care. I was like "I'm going to make as much music as I possibly can. The second I feel good about it, I'm just going to put it out and post about it on social media." The 100 people that follow me, if they like it, cool, and if not, I'll write another song and release that song. So, it was kind of just like the reality that I have to build this fire one piece at a time, slowly but surely, and, as you said, play the long game and not really put my hope in the fact that one song is going to change my life. But maybe, after enough time, a body of work could potentially change my life. And so, I kind of just committed to that method. I only intended to do it for one year, but then I ended up doing it for 3 years in a row, because of Covid and also from just the statistic growth that it was working enough for me. There was enough momentum, and at a certain point the momentum started multiplying and got bigger and bigger and bigger, and I wanted to continue pushing as much music out as I possibly could.

A lot of record labels had shown interest before now, but earlier this year you signed with Elektra Records. What do you feel made them the right fit for you?

I loved how when I met the team there and their ethos of the whole thing was that they don't want a roster with a thousand different artists on it. They want a smaller roster and to be hands-on with everything. The biggest thing that they said to me that sold me was "We're not chasing instant microwave success. We're in it for the long game with you. We want you to be with us for 20 years from now and still putting out music and talking about albums 6 and 7." In a time when literally every label is only chasing, like "Oh this song is working on Tik Tok today. Let's throw a few million dollars at this person and blow this one song up and then we don't care anymore." That, to me, was what I was scared of. So, then I met them (Elektra) and their huge calling card was that they are in this for the long game and are obviously hoping for success but aren't chasing a one-hit-wonder. That's what really sold me. I knew that eventually, it was going to make sense for me to partner with somebody to help me because I can only push things so far on my own.

You have also talked about how Warner Chappell was the songwriting family you dreamed of. What is it about their songwriting team that really speaks to you?

Yeah. Like I mentioned before, I was a full-time songwriter for a couple of years and so many of the people that I would work with in that community, it was like "Oh, who are you with? Warner Chappell...Warner Chappell...Warner Chappell". So many of my favorite collaborators were already with Warner Chappell, and then I would go to the building to write with some of their people and their staff was always super engaged with what we were doing and interested with what we were doing. And they knew their A&R people at the publishing company on a personal level, and I was really just attracted to that and was like "I'd really love to have a team like this". Also, they're the biggest publisher in the world and you could say "Hey. I'd love to write with this superstar songwriter and they're like cool. I'll email them" and I'm like "Oh! Ok. You can do that." I think I was always really drawn to how familial they felt there and I'm thrilled to be with them.

You did your first headlining tour earlier this year and your first European tour, as well.

We had to postpone the European tour. But the headlining tour happened!

What were some highlights of your headlining tour, especially having it completely sell out? I'm sure that was very exciting!

It was so exciting! I mean, in the same way as when I released my first EP and was like "I don't know how this is going to go." For me, having been such a streaming artist, I didn't know...obviously, I was hopeful that my fans were real people and not just robots. But the day before we put the tour up and the tickets on sale, I was like "I hope these tickets sell." But it sold out and I was just blown away by it. It was really full circle for me, because I've spent so much time in my studio just pouring my heart into these songs and putting them out on the internet, and it's hard to feel the response from it. Because yeah, you'll get a few people to post about it and DM or message you, but it's like "Ok. Hopefully people like this", and then you show up to a city you've never been to and you hear people singing every word to the songs and it's crazy! It was so much fun and was really mind-blowing. The whole tour was just crazy.

You have said that you attribute your track "Favorite T-Shirt" to taking your growth from gradual to exponential. What do you feel it was about that track that expedited your growth as an artist? Do you feel like that was really the first track that really blew up for you?

Yeah. Kind of undeniably so. I think it was a compounding effect of one, I love the song. I think it's a good song. I think that because I had just done...it was at the very end of 2019 when that song came out...so I had already released 2 years of singles. Spotify's algorithm had, I guess, flagged me and it had really started to grow. I was getting close to million monthly listeners, which was a huge milestone for me, but I'd never gotten playlisting support. But I think because the algorithm kept highlighting me as an artist to whoever the powers that be within the black box of Spotify are, that helped. When that song came out, it was just a perfect mixture of perfect timing and the right song and it all kind of culminated to a head. And when it got on some editorial playlists and 'New music Friday'...it took me 2 years to get to a million monthly listeners and 40 days to get to 2 million. So that was very cool and Spotify has always been very good to me. That song had kind of a trampoline effect.

Are you still writing for other artists, in addition to yourself? Do you have any fun collaborations coming up?

Right now, I'm very in the thick of writing for an album for me. I still do it, but it's a little more selective now when I do it and if it makes sense. Even now, for example, I have a song out with Russell Dickerson, who is a country artist. I went into that day thinking we were just going to write for him and then he actually suggested that we both sing and I was like "Cool. That's great." I still love that, when it makes sense, but right now I'm working really hard on my debut album. This is funny, because I've released, like, 50 songs but have never packaged them as an album, so this will technically be my debut album.

You released your debut EP Goldenboy last year and said that you felt as though you had a longer story in you. What can you tell me about the EP and the story you wanted to tell, as well as your promotional partnership with GrubHub supporting mom-and-pop donut shops, which sounds really fun!

It was such a blast! That whole GrubHub thing started as almost a joke. I'm obsessed with donuts and my managers were like "What if we did a virtual donut shop?" and I was like "Ha! That's hilarious!", and then it happened. It was so cool because my favorite donut shop from Arkansas was one of the donut shops we partnered with, so it was cool. But the EP itself...I mean, I wrote it during the pandemic. I think everybody had a lot of time to slow down and get introspective during the pandemic. And I definitely did. For me, it was coming to terms with parts of myself that I had never really reconciled, like from my upbringing and roles I played as a teenager and a younger kid, and kind of shedding that old skin in a way. And trying to come to terms with the emotional maturity of that. And also, being married and going through the process of "Ok. Who am I in the world as an adult?" and realized these things that served me in my past don't work for me anymore. It was kind of this coming to terms with this alter-ego/transformed self and part of that was that I always just became whatever people wanted me to be. I became their golden boy. And then I realized that I can't live that way, constantly performing for people. It was really a therapeutic experience for me, too, to write that EP. It was really fun to make it and I'm proud of it and glad it's out there.

What can you tell me about your latest single "Texas Girl", which is your label debut with Elektra, and the music video that you filmed at your wife's family's ranch in Texas?

The video was so fun, because, obviously, the song is all about my wife Rachel, who is from Dallas, TX. It's just funny because I grew up in Arkansas and grew up believing that there was this fierce rivalry between Arkansas and Texas. I realized after I moved away from Arkansas that no one in Texas is aware of this rivalry. It's a one-sided rivalry (laughs)! I was always like "I'll never date a girl from Texas! Texas is the enemy!" and then I met Rachel and fell instantly head-over-heels. And then I was like "Oh my gosh! I'm marrying a Texas girl! This is crazy!" (laughs)! That's really the simple heart of the song. But then it just made so much sense (to do the video there) because her family has a ranch in south Texas and the song feels like this ranch visually, so it was so fun. It was really cool because that ranch has been in her family for years and years, so it was cool to be kind of full circle with it.

How did you come to be on your current tour as support for Ben Rector and how has the tour been going?

It's been so great. Ben and I knew each other from way back. He went to college in Arkansas and was the only singer-songwriter that I had ever seen come through the state of Arkansas. I looked up to him so much and would go and see him play around town. When I started writing songs, I actually emailed him...we had met each other briefly...and asked him if he had any advice. It's just kind of funny because he's always been sort of like a mentor to me in a way and I've always looked up to him a lot. We wrote together last January and that rekindled our friendship and then when he put this tour up, they reached out and were like "Would you want to do this?" and I said "Absolutely. I love Ben." And it's been awesome. His audience is super and he puts on a great show.

What's next for you? Do you have your European tour rescheduled or anything else coming up?

I think because the touring has been so full throttle this spring, and I knew I needed to spend some time working on this album, unfortunately, the European dates are going to have to wait because I have to write some songs. So right now the focus is getting an album ready to go and getting a fall tour ready to go, which I will hopefully be announcing soon, and it's going to be another headlining tour. That's really going to be the focus for me for the rest of the summer. Obviously, I have the second half of this tour and that will be done in early June. And then I'll spend the summer just writing my life away and hopefully have the album ready for a fall release. There's going to be a lot of new music coming out. I actually have a new song coming called "Green Eyes" on June 10th!