NEWS

08-24-2025

Yet Another Anniversary (jfc...)

Once again I come before you to celebrate another anniversary… but it’s not for a Tomato related project! Twenty years ago my first band (Snott) recorded our first demo (Snott) and to celebrate I am issuing the demo in it’s entirety online for the first time. You can listen to the first half on bandcamp here or download the entire session (where we do a handful of covers) under the download tab (hey I made a download tab under the LINKS tab, neat-0”.

The Snott demo was recorded just before going into 10th grade. Our singers stepmom ran a barber shop in town and cut the hair of a local college student going to school for audio engineering. His name was Mark McQuire and he and he and his classmate spent a whole ass day trying to record us in my basement. We spent 95% of that session trying to record our parts individually until (realizing how trashy it was) we scrapped those tracks and pumped out 13 recordings live together.

It’s great revisiting this stuff and watching footage from the recording session. Everything was done sloppy and janky and no one involved seemed to know what we were doing. Somehow we made it work and you can, 20 years later, listen to the fruits of our janky labor.

Here are some choice pics from the recording session

08-08-2025

UPDATE: I forgot to update!

Welcome back! Sorry for the 5 month delay. I did the thing where I get real hype for a project and then drop tf off the face of the earth of it when it’s finished. The state of social media has me reeling back where I belong. EDIT: I was about to post this update and completely forgot about the other album I released this year and haven't mentioned!

Also side note: I have noticed that there’s some malicious elements to the site when you click on certain links. Please use an adblocking program or vpn or any of the basic security measures you need these days while browsing the site. Back to our regularly scheduled programming.

I mentioned that I would be releasing an album in April. That month saw the 10th anniversary of Tomato Face’s The Eggs: An album I hold dear to my heart. It was the first album I really worked on musically. My old bandmate did the words and I did the music. I love it but dislike the recording we did in 2015. It’s very much a first draft instead of a finished work. We would really hone in those songs in the months to come. The Eggs was a pivotal piece of work in developing Tomato Jake. I actually released the instrumental synth tracks a few weeks earlier on the tapes Yolks and Debug Mode for my first solo tour.
Tomato Face would play those songs until we split. I had recorded drums for the entire thing back in 2020 and had the album ready but unmixed. Mixing would take place over the next few years on and off until I finally put my foot down last year and committed to releasing the damn thing. You can find both Tomato Face and Tomato Jake versions on all the streaming things. You can find the Tomato Face version on bandcamp here and the Tomato Jake version on bandcamp here .

Now why I have actually returned to the site to announce the release of my new project: TFJ! With this being the 10th anniversary of Tomato Jake I have done a TON of reflecting. One thing that I’ve been stewing on is the lack of community I find myself in these days. While friends and family are nice, I feel isolated as a musician from everywhere. While I have friends all over, I feel like an alien like a pariah. It is a rare occurrence to be reached out to by local folks to play shows and the apathy I have to reaching out to play shows is in equal measure. I think a lot of this Is due to how weird I am in a pretty basic area as well as the nature of being a solo artist.
What I would like to do with TFJ is to foster a band that is a little more straight forward while retaining the energy of Tomato Jake. The first step is releasing this collection of home recordings I will be releasing over the next several months. It’s a collection of old, new and unused tunes spanning the entire gambit of Tomatoness over the past (almost) 20 years! You can listen to the album on bandcamp or download the mp3’s here.

If you think you’re a bad enough dude (just to clarify, dude being gender neutral here) and wanna audition for the band feel free to email me at TJPAbooking@gmail.com or hit me up on insta @tomatojake.

Also keep an eye out for lots of other little thing’s I’ll be releasing in the next several months. Later in August I will be releasing in it’s entirety the very first recording I ever did with my first band SNOTT! It’s been 20 years… o__0

Tomato Jake signing outtt

P.S. I don’t think that 10 year reflection ever uploaded on substack and I don’t have a copy on my computer. Ope! I'll try and rewrite that by the end of the year...

03-15-2025

Ten year reflection and bug fix

Hello! I have just uploaded a new essay on the Substack where I reflect on the last ten years as Tomato Jake. It was really interesting because I didn't realize how under-utilized TJ has been through most of the years it's been active. I cover the hits and spout some sage advice. let me know what you think if you're able to do that!

I also fixed the broken link on the Home page to check out the show tab.

There will probably be a bit of radio silence as I am wrapping up another project slated to be released in April if everything works out correctly.Y'all be the first to know what's up. Ciao

03-12-2025

Welcome!

Welcome to the Official Tomato Jake Website! If you don't know I am the "Infamous Tomato Jake": Musical Chaos Nerd extraordinaire! I have spent the past 2 weeks working on this site from scratch. It started out as a joke video to play in the backgorund of my most recent tour. I made the whole thing in Sony Vegas and there was no coding involved whatsoever. However, after returning from tour I looked at the video and decided I would make the thing for real! I am currently working on another website that you can check out HERE. That one is a way more in depth site that still is far from being complete.

Besides being for fun, my intentions for this site are to be a way for folks to depend less on social media and big tech bullshittery. This is a space where the limitations are my lack of coding knowledge. I do not have to adhere to whatever new nonsense instagram wants to push me into doing. Big tech has been a driving factor in how fucked up our world has become. I would like to believe the interent is not a lsot cause and with some solidarity we can have an internet that works for the people instead of the tech bros. It's important that we find alternatives to their grasp on out attention, space, and money.

Excuse me while I get off my soapbox...Anyways!

I'm fairly certain the site is not mobile phone friendly. my plan is to start working on that next! Could take a few days or a few weeks. I have not looked into any of that at yet so we'll seeeeee. Thank you for checking out the site and I hope you keep coming back to see what's new!

This is Tomato Jake saying, over and out.