Less Than Jake Tickets

About Less than Jake

The band began after the members of Good Grief parted ways. Chris Demakes went to college, leaving the remaining high schoolers, drummer Vinnie Fiorello and bassist Shaun Grief, without a lead singer and guitarist. Grief would go to New York, but Fiorello started to write songs with Demakes. The two were itching to perform again, but before they could find a bassist, sell concert tickets, or record an album they felt they needed a name.

The name ended up being Less Than Jake. The name itself illustrated the appreciation of humor for the two founding core members. Fiorello had a dog named Jake at his house that was treated better than any other family member, thus everything else was less than Jake. The sense of humor has been as much a factor in their popularity and has sold as many tickets and albums as the unique sound that merged punk with the horn section that they adopted a year later in 1993.

Less Than Jake would earn their record deal with Capitol Records after releasing their first LP, Pezcore, in 1995. Capitol Records help expose them to a national audience. College students became a driving force behind the success of Losing Streak (1996) and Hello Rockview (1998). The small college towns bought the concert tickets and albums that kept the group going.

The relationship with Capitol Records became strained, as Less Than Jake felt that the label was moving too slowly to capitalize on the success of this like “History of a Boring Town”. The group parted with the label in 1998 and struck out on their own again. After releasing Borders and Boundaries on an independent label, the group returned to a major label, Sire Records. The return to a major label increased promotion of their albums and helped drive the sale of tickets while they toured and albums in the stores.

Less Than Jake returned to the independent label after releasing In With Out Crowd in 2006 and have since released a new full-length album, GNV FLA. The group has been maintained with Demaces, Fiorello, and bassist Roger Manganelli, but has had a heavy rotation in the horn section that now features Buddy Schaub on trombone and Peter Wasilewski on saxophone. The lineup will go forward as they tour and sell concert tickets throughout the country.