Story

IF YOU WANT TO GET OUT OF THE RAT RACE…

In 2005, after kicking around with a guitar for 20 years in London, Birmingham, New York and Washington Jake Edwards left  a sinking ship with a guitar and a bicycle…Most of his efforts and  hard work within the context of a traditional “career”  seemed like life draining, futile imprisonment inside cubicles – had failed dismally – depression, alienation and BOREDOM seemed like death. Unemployment, struggle and hunger were sometimes around every corner, but a small price to pay on the road towards freedom and real life….

IT ONLY TAKES ONE STEP…TO FIND FREEDOM

Arriving in Aotearoa on the other side of the earth he knew no-one. Edwards’ life in Europe, New York, and the West was finished and he left looking for another wild frontier of an altogether more rarified nature.

THE JOURNEY WILL NEVER BE EASY…

Irrevocably changed by the metaphysical nature of the wilderness experience these songs are a part of an ongoing pursuit of freedom from what society defines as normal obligations. In 2007 Jake met George Nepia and Turei, music producers who recognised  something unique in Edwards’ songs and offered to produce them.

…BUT IT WILL BECOME THE ULTIMATE REWARD

This music is road music and I make no bones about the process from conception through to finished product regardless of the quality of the initial ideas and recordings. Some have been made on mobile phones, cassettes or whatever was available..the pursuit of perfection is a redundant luxury I have no time for when creating a music of ideas – we’ll leave that to the producers and big shots.

The song project fuses Pantheism with Politics, Liberation, and Freedom. It`s a journey through landscape driven by complex ideas, ideologies, histories and more fusing the (French) Revolution, Paine, Blake, & Dylan, with the Gothic, Romantic and American blues-literary tradition.

Jake Edwards is a songwriter & musician with experience from New York to London to New Zealand. After kicking off at age 18 in Adey Lunn’s (Hawkwind) studio Jake spent years hanging out in studios and was lucky enough to jam with some genuine luminaries such as Kenny Jones (the drummer from The Who, The Faces, Small Faces), share the roster at the pub with Eric Clapton, plus meet Jeff Beck, Robin Trower, as well as work with a Platinum selling New Zealand artist and perform on National Television Live.

Edwards has a degree from London University. During 2008 Jake worked as a musician and professional blogger on all things guitar at Jamorama.com and is currently working as a session musician, guitarist & composer in New Zealand whilst riding his bike, concentrating on further songwriting, and planning a Franco-Spanish travelogue.

Jake currently divides his time between Aotearoa, London and Northern Spain.

“My primary concern is with challenging damaging ideologies and preserving the last, final and wild frontiers we have left – the battle for planet earth.”

WE live in an age of surveillance and Orwellian control by drug companies, oil companies, banks; telecommunications companies and systems – a world in which the basic inheritance of life such as LAND, air, water, speech, time and perception are increasingly monopolised, trademarked and owned by the few. So wow and where do you define FREEDOM ?

My life and my work is informed by an increasingly rare commodity – FREEDOM. You can find it between the leaves of a thousand years of knowledge…

A book is a bomb. A book is a time machine.
A book is a recruitment device. A book is mantra. A book is terror.
A book is enlightenment. A book is life. A book is death.
A house of Leaves and a city of Glass…”

All content © Jake Edwards.
All material copyright Jake Edwards.
All lyrics and words copyright Jake Edwards.