From a fan-financed album to a spot on ‘Beavis and Butt-Head,’ Jake Walden has forged a path of dreams

By John Katsilometes

Thursday, Aug. 4, 2011 | 12:15 p.m.

The conversation doesn’t start, exactly. And it never ends.

With Jake Walden, the dialogue goes on and on and on, living and breathing on its own circuitous spirit.

What to make of Walden? He seems incapable of one-word answers, for starters. There’s just too much going on in that home entertainment center of a brain of his.

Ask him if it it is true that he never owned a computer of any sort until five years ago, something that can be covered with a simple, “Yes,” or maybe, “No,” and a few minutes later, he’s tangentially explaining, “The irony of me is that I’m yin-yang. I’m introverted, yet extroverted. I love to engage, but it takes everything out of me. I like to work in privacy, but everything I do is for someone else, and I need to share it always, or I feel like I am not accountable to my fans ...”

“Yeah,” you say. “But, this computer, was it a Dell or a Mac or what?”

“Oh I don’t know. A regular computer,” he says. “Probably a PC. I can’t remember.”

“What made you buy it?”

“MySpace, actually,” he says. “It was all about MySpace.”

And then it makes sense, the computer allowed the introverted extrovert to reach his fans, “The Dreamers,” as they are known. First it was MySpace, then Facebook and the social media funding Web site KickStarter.com. The man who never operated his own computer until five years ago was suddenly using these powerful online platforms to pursue his dream to become a singer-songwriter who might change lives and become relevant in the music industry.

In that order.

“I don’t care about being famous. I just want to play small theaters and play for 1,000 people,” he said during an interview Wednesday at the Egg & I on West Sahara Avenue. “I want to do a show that leaves them changed.”

Based in Los Angeles, Walden is making a one-off appearance tonight in Las Vegas at the hepcat Fremont East hovel Don’t Tell Mama Piano Bar. The night begins at 7, and Walden is set to take the stage at 8. The event is free and open to the public to those ages 21 and over.

Walden will be playing from his new release, “Same Something Different,” a mesmerizing and inherently personal collection of songs with broad-ranging lyrics that still reach the listener viscerally. From the first song on “Same Something Different,” “Even in Your Doubt,” Walden writes and sings, “There’s a madness in my head / Just a trip no destination. There’s a song beneath my bed / And it’s cryin’ out for you.”

Makes you want to hear what else this man has to say.

“My songs come from a very personal place,” says Walden, who spent 13 months soul-searching (and couch-surfing) while contemplating just how to use his gift of music and writing. ‘But you can make it your own story. They are open to interpretation, of course, but these are the stories of my life over the past three years.”

It has been an odyssey, to say the least. Walden has never sought formal music or vocal training, ever. Five years ago, he bought a piano and taught himself to play. To gauge his own vocal quality, he set up a small amp and spun it around in a sort of one-man karaoke setup. He found what his growing legion of fans have discovered, a voice at once rough but warm, guttural but soaring, vocals sometimes mindful of Bruce Springsteen or Tom Waits that often belie Walden’s boyish looks.

Trained and educated as an actor (he majored in theater at UC Irvine), Walden felt his gift was as a performer. He began writing snippets of material, assembling those scrawls as puzzle pieces until he had created entire songs, and set out on a music career.

Problem is, recording music costs money.

Traditionally, an artist would be financially backed by a record label or some form of investment entity. That wasn’t the case for Walden. In October, he began reaching out to his fans on Kickstarter, providing a platform for them to invest in a new project, “Same Something Different.”

The effort lasted for 30 days. Walden collected $24,000 from 189 fans, adding $5,000 to the cause through formal investors in the release. Of course, those fans who did help finance the CD turned around and bought (almost entirely on iTunes) what they’d help create. Made public on July 26, the release reached No. 12 on iTunes' singer-songwriters charts, and Apple selected “Same Something Different” as its top pick of the week on that chart.

The Dreamers are thrilled, of course, as they helped make it happen.

“I’m being honest as possible with my fans. I’m not just creating music. I post a blog every day, I hold myself accountable directly to the people who support me,” Walden says. “I honestly feel that this music is as much from and for them as it is for me. I want them to feel an ownership of these songs, and to know that I am transparent and honest.”

As Walden talks, you do feel that connection, the persuasive quality that draws fans to a common, artistic cause. What you don’t readily understand is how his music wound up in the hands of Mike Judge, who plans to use it in the revised version of “Beavis and Butt-Head” due for a triumphant return this fall on MTV.

If there is a yin-yang in Walden’s life, it is that his song, “For Someone,” is going to be featured in one of the famously crass animated program’s first 30 episodes. Of course, the only way a Walden song would fit in a “B&B” show is for the boys to mercilessly skewer the tune. These guys have found the likes of Journey intolerable; Walden’s introspective songs will be totally lost on the vapid teenagers.

“Oh yeah, they’ll make fun of it,” Walden says, laughing. “There’s a line, ‘Even whores can fall for someone,’ and it’ll be (dropping into a Beavis impression), ‘Heh-heh, he said whores!’ I’m fine with that. I’m a serious guy, but I don’t take myself too seriously at all. I hope they do a good job with it.”

As Walden surveys his landscape, an unearthed ambition seeps out. Minutes after he says he’s fine with playing 1,000-seat theaters and touring the country on a bus, he says, “I want to play The Hollywood Bowl. I want to be as big as I can be, but it’s not the be-all, end-all for me. It has to happen organically, though. How else would it happen?”

In Walden’s unique career, there is no other way.

“The basis for all of this,” he says, glancing out the window of the restaurant, “is I’m the biggest dreamer of them all.”

Follow John Katsilometes on Twitter at twitter.com/JohnnyKats. Also, follow "Kats With the Dish" at twitter.com/KatsWithTheDish.