Jake La Botz recently released a new album, They’re Coming For Me, a success that was described on this website as “not only his finest, but most focused set yet” and in support of those efforts comes a video for “Without The Weight.”
Videos by American Songwriter
The video was made with his brother Traven, and shot in the Brooklyn neighborhood where he lives. It also features La Botz’ wife, Annika Gunderson. It has a gritty vibe that presents the city itself as a strong character.
La Botz told American Songwriter that the song went from an extra cut on the record to one that he likes the best.
“Before heading up to Chicago to record my new album at Hi-Style studios I went through my garageband demos and gathered up the tunes I thought we should lay down. Although we had enough songs to make a record, more or less, I wanted to write one more; one that was really catchy and melancholic,” he said. “One that would fit the melody haunting me every night since I got up to the studio. Typically a song could take me several days to a week to finish but we were down to the wire with only three days left… and the only time I had to work was at night after the sessions. With no time I was forced to mine old lyrics from songs that never panned out and see if there were any good lines I could grab. I found this one at the bottom of a pile of song scraps: “naming pretty girls that we thought we knew”.
“It fit perfectly with the melody and vibe that I was hearing in my head so I built the song around that line. I ran it by producer Jimmy Sutton and he loved it as much as I did. For both of us it turned out to be one of the best songs on the album. “Without the Weight” was partly born out of a need for one-more-song on the album but mostly out of a need from me to express the sad-beauty that’s felt in missing someone and reflecting on shared experience.”
The song fits in with the totality of the current album. As it blends a style that is hard to pinpoint as one specific genre with a range of storytelling lyrics that can only come from a diverse background — one that La Botz certainly has.
He has spent time as a regular on Gilmore Girls, other time as a recovering heroin addict, and all places in between. It is a spectrum that many would have a hard time processing, but one that also gives La Botz a perspective that others don’t have.
It also gives him an aggressive style of making music. One that mixes well with an old-school philosophy that was put into the mix in this album as he again worked with Jimmy Sutton and the 60s pop/70s rock blend that often get associated with his music production.
“I’m of the school where you make a record in one day because you don’t have money for more than that!” La Botz says. “There was a lot of learning for both of us in our first record (2017’s Sunnyside). We learned to really appreciate and work together. This one was a lot easier for us, we took our time with it, and we were much more sympatico. If he had an idea, I was able to catch on right away.”
Check out La Botz and his new video below.
