Date of Interview: August 2nd, 2021.
Introducing for the first time, Jaimee Eat World, the all-inclusive Jimmy Eat World cover song project by Jaimee Jakobczak.
Below you’ll learn the who’s, what’s, where’s, when’s, why’s & how’s of Jaimee Eat World, using questions I imagine might be submitted by you, the reader.
We’ve asked Jaimee Eat World to keep answers brief since the project is still very much just getting underway and she’s got “work to do”. 😉
And now without further ado…
*cue spoopy alien-like melody*.
Who is Jaimee?
Hi! So this is a recent pic of me from just the other day taken in Chicago, Illinois.
(For the record, I don’t actually have a Panda costume like pictured above, that was just a costume for a photo shoot or a picture I lifted for free off of Canva.com.)
I’m a 31 year old woman and I’ve been a Jimmy Eat World fan since I was something like 10 years old. They’re a big part of the reason I write music and why I started playing guitar at 13 years old.
What is this band all about?
This question’s hard to answer succinctly, but I’ll try. As I’ve gotten older and in some ways more mature (and in other ways, less mature), I find myself paying much closer attention to the type of media I consume, and a big part of that is the music I listen to. I grew up listening to bands like Jimmy (of course) but also bands like Treble Charger, Sum41, Blink 182 and Green Day. I think a lot about how the messages from these songwriters impacted my upbringing. I’ve often touted Jimmy Eat World as my favourite band but that didn’t really start until sometime in my later teens and early 20’s when I found myself gravitating towards them more lyrically and somewhere along the way, when I’d feel completely lost and hopeless, they were the band that I felt understood what I was going through the most, so I fell deeper down that rabbit hole.
In recent years this has only become more and more apparent for me. I sometimes struggle with listening to some of my former favourite artists because we’re just not on the same page anymore; we’ve outgrown each other. But with Jimmy Eat World, I kind of feel like we’ve grown together. And although there are times right now where I feel even more lost and even more hopeless than I often did as a teen, they help center and reassure me. “Everything will be alright.”
This band is about showcasing how impactful a group of songwriters can be for someone and how you can take those messages to try and make something of yourself, too. This project is my interpretation of their entire catalogue, from start to finish, and my personal stories that they remind me of or make me reflect on. It’s sort of a study in lyricism, I guess, but really it’s also a way for me to show my appreciation for a group of artists who have in many ways on more than one occasion helped guide me back to the right path, where the “right path” is the one that makes me feel good about myself and my actions, and makes me consider the impact of my own words on others, too.
Where is she from?
I was born and raised in Woodbridge, Ontario, Canada. Our town’s slogan is “the city above Toronto” because we’re like 30minutes north of Toronto and a pretty big central hub for the rest of the Greater Toronto Area.
I’m also Polish-Canadian (dad’s side), with some Scottish/English roots (mom’s side).
When did this start?
I started this project sometime last year in 2020. It was sort of an unexpected off-shoot to my original music project Crooked Forest.
Why am I reading this on crookedforest.ca?
I can only afford one domain name right now, and since I have at this point a few different music projects on the go that are all done exclusively by me and me alone this website acts as my virtual roots, or central hub, where you can keep up to date with all of it as it happens.
How will it be presented?
Because of the complexities involved in presented everything I intend to, and the human-power required to maintain all of these different social media pages, this project will mainly be presented on the Jaimee Eat World instagram page which you can check out by clicking this long text that should be highlighted for you now.
Or you can go on and search @JaimeeEatWorld on your personal Instagram accounts and lightly tap that “Follow” button from there.
Wherever necessarily I’ll also use the Crooked Forest YouTube page to store the longer/bulkier videos in a special Jaimee Eat World playlist for easy access (needs to be updated, please be patient 🙃).
And of course, I’ll house all the blogs on this website.
Do you have anything we can view right now?
Sort of, yea!
As I mentioned this project was kind of an offshoot that happened when I was beginning the Crooked Forest project, which means I’ve already done some acoustic cover songs of some of their music. These aren’t exactly what you’ll see when I start to present this project in an official sense, but because they’re both me I’ll still share with you where you can view them.
The Jaimee Eat World covers will be recorded at a higher quality; some acoustic, some full-band, some live, some studio. The key difference between these covers and the Crooked Forest covers is that, the CF project works a lot different and is meant to showcase what you can do on a very low budget, so all of those covers were just taken with an iPhone and next-to-no editing.
They were also covers learned within an hour or two, as an exercise for how well I could perform under pressure and time constraints. Hope that helps explain.
Okay, let’s see them then.
That’s not a question?
Where can we watch or listen to the CF Jimmy Eat World cover songs?
Great question!
Here are some:
So is this project just a ruse to get people to listen to Crooked Forest?
I can see how you might think that, but not exactly, but also yeah. One cannot exist without the other. Think of Crooked Forest as like, I don’t know, the Marvel universe or something, where many stories exist in parallel and sometimes, but not always, intersect. If I didn’t start this offshoot project, I’d wind up with so many Jimmy Eat World covers on the Crooked Forest page that people would be like, “uh, is this a cover band?” so I uh, started a cover band.
And what’s this I hear about a documentary?
Oh man, I can’t believe that trailer leaked already. So embarrassing! But it’s true. In addition to the entire Jimmy Eat World discography to be presented on the Jaimee Eat World instagram page, I’ll also be including a little documentary series to help explain why I’m doing this, as I do it.
The reason behind this I know not everyone wants to sit on the internet and read a now, quite lengthy interview like this one, so I’ll be adding video blogs, or vlogs as we call them sometimes, to break up the blog posts. But I’ll still be blogging, and I do this for the sake of accessibility. Just as not everyone wants to read a blog, not everyone wants to watch me talk, or has the ability to do so.
I heard someone say you’re just ripping off this band and the fandom hates you for it, is that true?
I mean, if covering songs is a rip-off then uh, yeah, totally. Also have you heard songs by Jimmy Eat World called like, uh, what was that one back in the day, Precision Auto, or uh, that one from 2020 I covered above called Call To Love? Cover songs! What a rip-off.
Are you seriously not affiliated with Jimmy Eat World?
If I was, I’d shout it from the rooftops, dude. I haven’t even been able to explain this project to these guys. That said, for anything Jimmy Eat World related, head over to their official website jimmyeatworld.com.
So are you just trying to meet them or something then, what’s the end game here?
Well, I sort have already met them once or twice. I met Jim and Tom for the first time back in 2013 a couple days after my 23rd birthday.
And I met the rest of the guys briefly during their virtual meet & greet series for the #PhoenixSessions.
And I just met Jim again super briefly outside the Metro Chicago.
But all of these exchanges have been so short (I think Jim said like 4 words to me outside of the Metro, “yeah”, “oh cool”, and “yeah” again.) so I really haven’t been able to tell them about this yet and I’m sort of just trekking it along and hoping at some point it makes their way to their ears, because I have some other ideas for this project but I’d need their hand in the honey pot.
You didn’t answer the end game question… can you answer it?
There is no real end-game here. I’m trying to have some fun and share some music I like with you guys, that’s all.
But what about the honey pot?
I think we’re getting off track here. Thanks so much for all your questions! I’ve gotta jump in my getaway van for the next uh, gig.
Thanks again!
Read more blogs about the Jaimee Eat World project below:
The Hear You Me Playlist Series (Blog Coming Soon). This was explained via live tweets, but I’m gonna clean it up for ya.
Follow the project on Instagram:
If you have any questions, feel free to drop them in the comment section below or head over to my contact page for other ways to connect!
Crooked Forest 