Big Rude Jake

Big Rude Jake is a singer, songwriter and jazz musician from Toronto, Ontario, Canada. He recorded several albums with different jazz ensembles and musicians, mixing rock, blues, ragtime, swing, rhythm and blues and punk rock together. Some attention was brought to the band in the late 1990s, during the swing revival. Big Rude Jake then disappeared, and came back in 2006.

Bio

"Butane Fumes & Bad Cologne", the first record by Big Rude Jake and his Gentlemen Players, was recorded in 2 days, on 26 and 27 July 1993 in Toronto. With what the group described as a "ridiculous puny budget" and producer Gordie Johnson of local rock act Big Sugar, the idea was to record "off the floor" twelve songs mixing different jazz styles that were popular six or seven decades before, along with modern lyrics.

"Blue Pariah", the second album, followed in 1996, and "Swing Baby!" was aired in college radios across Canada and United States. Frustrated by the incapacity of having this record properly distributed in the US, Big Rude Jake left his band and Toronto, and established himself in Brooklyn, New York, where he signed a record deal with indie label Roadrunner Records. A third album, "Big Rude Jake" was released in 1999, still mixing jazz, rock and punk, and introducing one of Big Rude Jake's ferocious song, "Let's Kill all the Rock Stars".

In 2002, he recorded a fourth album, "Live Faust, Die Jung", totally different from the first three ones. After that, he disappeared for a while and showed up only early 2006, when he started gigging in Toronto again.

After a change in direction musically and spiritually he has teamed up with Toronto writer/arranger Gary Justice to create a new sound, drawing from a wider set of musical influences. They are planning a release in 2008. Samples of the new work can be found at www.revsound.ca.

Discography

* "Butane Fumes & Bad Cologne" (1993, Spanky Productions)
* "Blue Pariah" (1996, Spanky Productions)
* "Big Rude Jake" (1999, Roadrunner Records)
* "Live Faust, Die Jung" (2002)

External links

* [http://www.bigrudejake.ca Big Rude Jake's official web site]
* [http://www.maplemusic.com/artists/brj/bio.asp Big Rude Jake's bio on maplemusic.com]
* [http://www.vh1.com/artists/az/big_rude_jake/artist.jhtml Big Rude Jake's bio on VH1]
* [http://www.atomicmag.com/reviews/1999/music/big_rude_jake.html About the "Big Rude Jake" album]