Written by Heidi Kristine
Not many artists get to say they stepped onto the stage of American Idol and their college graduation within the span of a few months — but New Jersey native Jake Thistle does.
At 23, Thistle has already spent more than a decade performing live, building a devoted following with his raspy, songwriter-first style that calls to mind artists like Bob Dylan and Tom Petty. From legendary New Jersey venues like The Stone Pony to festivals across the country, he’s built his career the old-fashioned way: one live show at a time.
That authenticity carried him through Season 24 of American Idol, where his understated performances and thoughtful songwriting stood out in a competition built around powerhouse vocals and stole the hearts of Americans and the star-studded cast of judges alike. While Thistle insists he was simply grateful to share space with judges like Carrie Underwood, Lionel Richie, and Luke Bryan, it’s clear he belongs there, on Hollywood stages.
Now, fresh off Idol and newly graduated from Rutgers University, Thistle is preparing for his next chapter: a new record, a national tour, and life as a full-time musician.
Hey Jake! It’s been a minute. Why don’t you start off by telling me how you’ve been since the season finale of American Idol?
I’ve been great, really busy, you know, which is a good thing. We’re planning out a tour for basically the end of the year, with the first leg being in July.
We’re gearing up for a record, which I’m really, really excited about. It’s been a long time coming. It was supposed to come out this year, but early in the year we tabled everything for Idol, just so that way we could not half-ass it. That’ll be coming out in the fall. It’s really been a lot of catch-up based on the things that I put on the back burner for Idol, while also fielding the new opportunities the show brought. I’ve been super excited about it all, and I’m just glad to be keeping busy, it keeps me out of trouble.
It sounds like going on Idol was kind of up in the air—that you weren’t super sure about it since you had to put so many things on pause, right?
This year I got really lucky that the timing worked out. The producers reached out a couple of years in a row, but for one reason or another, it just never really worked out. Last year I think I was on the road, the year before that we were putting out a record, and I had to be around for promo or whatever. It’s such a big commitment, but also I was okay with the commitment, [however] I was a little worried about the uncertainty. I didn’t want to be in a situation where if I had all this stuff going on, and then I cleared my next four months to do it, and then I made it one round, and then I just had four months off. That was kind of a scary thing for what I was doing at the time.
So, when they reached out this year, I sent it to my manager, and it just lined up right. I’ve really lucked out because I made so many great friends this season. I’m sure I would have made friends any season, but I really do think we had a special group. I’m sure people say that every season, but I really do believe it, and I’m so glad that it worked out.
This is probably a very loaded question, I apologize, but what would you say was your biggest takeaway from your experience on Idol?
I really did learn a lot, whether it was just about the process and the show, and how all that works behind the scenes. I think my biggest takeaway was how important the sense of community was. It was something that I hadn’t really considered when I walked into the show. When we did the Nashville auditions, to my knowledge, the standard experience was flying down to Nashville, having a rehearsal day or maybe two with the producers, doing your audition, and if you got through, you’d come back the next day and do your interviews. Then you had maybe a day or two off, and then you did Hollywood Week, which was also in Nashville. That was about a four or five day process with rehearsals and digital and everything like that.
I was on the road, so I flew in and out the same day. I played at The Stone Pony on Saturday, flew down Sunday morning to Nashville, did my audition, and then Monday I had to fly really early in the morning to a music festival in Florida. Then I did some dates in Florida and flew back up for Hollywood Week. I ended up getting stuck in the Charlotte airport because it was during the shutdown, so I was there for like 13 hours. They had to move me to another day, so I missed a day of filming. So I didn’t understand the sense of community. That was the only thing that I didn’t get out of the experience that it seemed like everyone else did because they were all at the hotel and having dinner and lunch. So when I went down after Hollywood Week, a couple of months later, I went to Hawaii, and really met everyone in the Top 30.
That was when I really started to notice how important that section of it was going to be … that just continued all the way through. I was just with everyone for the finale a couple weeks ago, the top 14 got to come back for that, and it was just a blast. I consider pretty much every single person a very close friend right now, and so the sense of community, and how important that was to my growth as an artist, and just a person, I think, is my biggest takeaway.
How do you plan on applying that lesson going forward in your career?
The first exciting thing is, they’re all spread out all over the country, and there’s a ton of people in all these vastly different places than here [New Jersey]. So that’s an exciting thing for when I start to tour — we’re booking these dates, and I’m applying that and thinking, ‘Okay, I’m going to be in that market, I’ll have to reach out to that person, or maybe I could see this person and we could play together.’ I kept reminding everyone that no matter how successful your tour is, you have to go through New Jersey, because there’s so many people here!
Now I’ve got all these allies who are of like-mind and like experience. There’s a bank of people that I can ask, “Hey, I’m trying to sequence this record and one of these songs is making the cut, which one should it be?” And I really trust their opinions. We’ve been through a lot together now, so I know their sensibilities. I’m really excited to sort of apply it through behind the scenes like that as well.
Do you foresee yourself collabing with any of the other contestants in the future?
I certainly hope so. One of my first takeaways was how talented everybody was. I didn’t get to see anyone in Nashville, so I would love to, in sort of any capacity. I’m going to be touring in July with Julian Kalel, who I was on the show with. We’ll announce that soon, but I’m excited for that. We did a couple shows here in Jersey not long ago as well, which is a good time. I love to produce as well — I love to write, so I’m hoping to really dive in with a ton of people from the show.
You got to work with so many big names, like Carrie Underwood, Lionel Richie, and Luke Bryan. At one point during the season, Carrie had said to you that she was jealous of your way of performing. What was your reaction to that? How does that feel coming from someone as accomplished as Underwood?
I kind of took any compliment from the judges as like … kind of ridiculous that I was even in a position for them to talk to me, let alone say something nice to me. I really took it to heart. I was honored she said that. That was kind of my whole thing, you know, I have a lot of experience playing live — that’s really the only place I felt like I had most of my footing for a lot of my life, because I started playing live when I was nine-years-old.
So going into the show I knew the vast majority of people, if not everyone, was going to sing circles around me because I consider myself more a songwriter, so if I could just go out there and be as authentic as I can as a performer, I hope that that might set me apart. I’m not sure if it did or didn’t, but hearing things like that from the judges was something I really took to heart, because that was the aspect that I felt most confident in; getting in front of the band and just showing everybody how much I enjoy being out there, and hoping that they would enjoy seeing me enjoy myself.
Do you have a favorite performance of yours from the season?
I think the last one I did. It was “Have Little Faith In Me” by John Hiatt, and John is such an important part of my life. I got to play that song with him when I was 12-years-old, which was sort of the moment that made me realize, okay, I want to do this. It was my first time in a theater, my first time playing his song, and watching everyone sing it back while he was there, and that was sort of like what made me want to be a songwriter and a touring musician. So, for Faith Week, I wanted to bring it back because he had that faith in me to play that with him, and it kind of allowed me to have that faith myself.
And so that move around meant a lot to me, just because I love that song, and because it followed a great week of rehearsals, and a lot of fun with the top 14 in Los Angeles. That was sort of the last part of the show that I really felt passionate about getting to because I got to play in Nashville on both stages down there, I got to play on both stages in Hawaii, so this was sort of the fifth stage, literal stage that I got to play on, and that’s sort of the last one to unlock. I played everywhere that I could have played this season so that was an important milestone for me. That was sort of a reminder of how far things have gotten, so I just had a great time. I love the house band on Idol so much — it was great to sit behind the piano a little bit and have some fun.
You mentioned before that you consider yourself more of a songwriter than a singer. Tell me a little bit more about that.
I grew up idolizing songwriters. That was sort of one of the first things I wanted to do when I started picking up guitar. That’s the main reason I sing, is because I liked playing guitar, but I realized every guitar player also sang. So for me, being like eight or nine years old, it felt of no use to learn how to play Tom Petty on guitar and not sing it as well, so that’s what kind of encouraged me to. That’s why I started writing songs, is because I looked at all these idols and I would say ‘they’re playing the songs they wrote, so I might as well write songs as well,’ so the singing kind of came as a product of that. I like my voice enough, I’m happy with it. I’m okay where it is, but I’m not going to go out there and rip through a gospel song and make everyone levitate out of their chairs like a lot of people can do on this show. I’m happy with my ability, but I also know where I stand. So I do consider myself more of a songwriter than a singer. I think I got further on the show than a lot of the people I idolized probably would. I probably edged out Bob Dylan in the singing competition. I don’t know if I would deserve to or not, but I think I would.
Tell me about your new record coming out soon. What can we expect?
I had a song come out in May called “Hiding in the Vacancy,” which I’m really excited about. I recorded it in LA in October, right before we finalized all the Idol stuff, so I didn’t know when it was coming out, but I was really excited about it. So the fact that it’s out is really exciting to me, and I’m excited to see what happens with it. It’s a great song to play live with the band, and I’m really looking forward to getting out there.
There’s some really fun dates coming up. I’m playing the Wonder Bar on July 8, and that’s going to kind of kick off a East Coast-Midwest tour that I’m going to be out for the rest of July with. The record is going to come out sometime in the early fall. We’re looking at September right now. It’s pretty much done. We need to take a month to sort of button it up, because half of it was recorded pre-Idol, and now we’re post-Idol and it’s time to bridge those two personalities. Then we’re going to do a lot more touring. It’s going to be an acoustic tour in July. We’re going to take the band out for a tour in the fall, basically like on and off a couple legs, September through December, so I’m just excited.
This is really my first time getting to be a full-steam-ahead-professional-
Jake Thislte performs at Wonder Bar in Asbury Park, NJ on Wednesday July 8. Check out his music on Spotify, Apple Music, and YouTube.
