Don’t call it a sabbatical, but Jeremy Toback is back after an extended recess from his sing song mystic study. Toback says, “I found myself on Bondi Beach, surrounded by beautiful naked bodies, a sold out Brad show on deck, and I was miserable. I missed my family, wasn’t making enough dough, and didn’t have a solo deal, so I threw a hissy fit and quit.”
Before that tantrum Jeremy had seen plenty of music art and biz highs and lows. He was a founding member of the aforementioned Prince obsessed grunge outfit, Brad, along with Stone Gossard of Pearl Jam. He saw Brad’s debut, Shame, pimped by NME as one of the top records of all time, and also saw it buried commercially in the politics of the biz. His debut solo EP gave birth to the elegiac cult anthem “Word Behind Words,” and in the wake of whelming sales, he forged a top 25 radio tune, “You Make Me Feel,” that made more than a few wedding playlists but didn’t quite exemplify Toback at his deepest.
“I gave quitting the artist thing the post grad go, but it just wouldn’t stick; eventually songs started showing up and it felt rude to ignore them.” Jeremy did run a record label, Ajna Music, for a few years, which turned out hipster infused post new age yoga records. And then even put his Princeton degree to work as a high level sales guy at a couple of digital start ups.
It was during the off hours of this sales stretch, that he collaborated with long time friend, Renee Stahl, on a sparse and haunting children’s record. Renee & Jeremy’s “It’s A Big World” continues to ride the long tail to lullaby classic, and has also inspired Jeremy’s return to the stream of music making he had tried to leave behind. “At a certain point, if yer lucky, you begin to give in to yourself, the mask and make up comes off, and you wear your blemishes like a badge of beauty.”
Jeremy lives with this wife and two lads in the San Fernando valley, and is currently playing shows and battle testing tunes for the new record he’s making for fall 2010 release.
