In an effort to get ahead of any confusion, here’s a quick overview on who Crooked Forest is… or is the right question “What is Crooked Forest?”… but also, it’s a place, isn’t it? I mean if you google it…

Okay, let’s try to sort this one out together. 

Who Is Crooked Forest?

Well, they’re a band, and a girl. 

In the shortest of explanations Crooked Forest is a multi-instrumentalist, singer-songwriter who produces, records and mixes music, but like any real girl she’s a bit more complex than even that, if you can believe it. 

She acts like a one-woman-band but in reality spends most of her days alone, scribbling and typing away about the world, people, her experiences and life. But sometimes she also performs as a solo-acoustic act, dropping the Crooked Forest facade and revealing the woman within; you can hear more about that on the Jaimee Jakobczak page – that’s her name, by the way, the real one. 

The name came from an effort to bridge her Polish ancestry to her Canadian roots, which brings us to…

Where Is Crooked Forest?

It’s actually a legitimate place, a real forest in West Pomerania, Poland, and it’s the inspiration behind this entire website and all of the twists and turns found within its trail mix bag. 

See, when I first learned about the Crooked Forest in Poland, I read all about how it got its namesake. The short story there is that it’s a small cluster of pine trees whose trunks are all shaped like hooks, or, as I view them, like the letter J.

There is a lot of mystery surrounding how they got this way because this small cluster otherwise sits in the middle of an otherwise completely normal pine-tree forest, so surely an odd sight for whomever was the first to stumble upon it. 

And there are a couple theories that are all perfectly logical and by all accounts acceptable to explain the phenomenon:

1. They could have been impacted by severe weather when they were young, forcing the trunks to curve in this way, or, 
2. They could have been intentionally planted to do so in order to make hulls of ships, but the impending war (the big one) that overtook Poland meant that they were left before the trees had a chance to fully formulate and be harvested for this purpose

I like the second theory the most because it seems clever and efficient craftsmanship, but I imagine in reality it’s a combination of the two. 

But since there is no real historical documentation on the matter, the Crooked Forest is left to be a fun Polish mystery, and that’s what I like most about the place as a whole, because sometimes it’s more fun just to wonder instead of getting all bogged down in the what is and what isn’ts.

Okay sure, but, let’s talk about those “what is’s” for a second. What is Crooked Forest then, really? Just a musician then having fun with some clever wordplay? 

Hardly. It’s so much more than that!

Let’s just try to break off a couple branches to get a better view of the treetops, shall we? 

There’s Crooked Forest the band, led by Jaimee Jakobczak, who we discussed at the top of this page, then;

There’s Crooked Forest the real legitimate forest which resides in Poland; But finally

There’s CrookedForest.ca the virtual Canadian playground that houses a few of its own leaves, if you will. It’s a “where” as well. It might seem a little confusing for Crooked Forest the band to shelter itself in CrookedForest.ca, but we are family, after all. 

But CrookedForest.ca is also where I like to showcase other musicians and artists and all the little birdhouses that they nestle themselves into. 

That’s why we recently added The Treehouse, which you can sort of think of as being our own little digital publication or megaphone, drawing attention to artists that we’ve stumbled upon, were told about, or caught randomly at a local show, because half the fun in being part of any music scene is sharing and enjoying other artists’ work. 

On that same note, that’s also why we now have The Side Barre, an audio-podcast to talk about music, industry news, and share other work the way it was intended to be heard. 

Of course, I could’ve just built a different website entirely for all those other things, but think of this all from the DIY-artist perspective. At the end of the day all of these pages are created at my hands, and these pages and projects are really not big enough on their own to warrant off-bridging them into their own cluster of trees. As we grow, the website will continue to do the same, and hopefully in time the pathways we carve out will start to get a little clearer so you don’t get lost when you’re off exploring. 

In the meantime I hope you enjoy what I’ve put together here, and as always, if you ever have any questions, feel free to reach out. 

I literally always respond unless I for some reason just didn’t get your message, so if you’re finding that’s the case there might be something broken in the virtual stream. I try to stay on top of this stuff but that’s why I always say the best place to reach me is my own e-mail address. Try me there first if you think I’m overlooking something. 

For more information about what it is I do here, who I am, and what to expect, try some of these previously released blogs:

Introducing The Side Barre Podcast

By Ways of Introduction; Hi, I’m CF!

Disclaimer: A Must Read

Start Here

But that’s not all! You can also learn more about me from these helpful pages found on the Menu bar!

Crooked Forest (the band)

Jaimee Jakobczak

Jaimee Eat World

Mission

Thanks and I hope this helped clear up any confusion! Have a great weekend!