Jake Nielsen sets the pace

What do you do when you’re a young rodeo rider, your whole family is familiar with professional rodeo riding, and suddenly a baby bull steps on your face?

For then 9-year-old Aptos musician Jake Nielsen, this was a pivotal moment in his musical journey.

“I actually got kicked in the face. A hoof cut my eyelid,” Nielsen says. “After that, my parents were like, ‘No.'” Instead, Nielsen’s uncle Jayme Acevedo bought the teen his first guitar, an Ibanez.

A few years later, after seeing his son’s dedication, Nielsen’s father, Jeff, surprised him with a trip to Guitar Center in Gilroy. “I picked out a black Fender Telecaster and it’s my number one guitar that I still play all the time,” Nielsen says.

Fast forward a decade, and Nielsen is performing on stages across the country. He’s signed to a new record label and has a packed tour schedule, with a new single, “Baby Let Go,” due out this summer. But don’t worry, Santa Cruz, because you can still catch the Aromas native known for his searing guitar and blazing riffs at multiple shows around town.

Early years

For Nielsen, who was born with cerebral palsy and cannot walk without crutches, playing guitar came naturally. “I can’t really play the piano, but anything with strings I can play,” he says. “It just always feels natural.”

His progression was rapid. At 17, Jake was attending Bay Area open pro blues jams in the city with his uncle’s friend Sal. “It was the first time I was on stage in front of an audience,” he says.

Because I was underage, “they would let me in by myself to play,” Nielsen explains. “I would have to wait in the car.” Open mics were nerve-wracking, he adds, but over time he gained experience surrounded by the other musicians: “I soaked it up like a sponge.”

He always received the utmost support and encouragement from his family and friends at Aromas.

After Nielsen dropped out of Watsonville High School and decided to pursue music, he formed the bands Fubar and later Jake Nielsen’s Triple Threat. He also began performing at local venues such as Moe’s Alley, the Sand Bar and the Catalyst, to name a few.

Although Jake Nielsen’s Triple Threat lineup has changed over the years, Nielsen sees it as part of his evolution as a musician.

“Right now I’m playing with two different drummers and two different bass players this summer,” he says. They include Bay Area drummer Dennis Dove and David De Silva, who also plays bass for Archer (another Santa Cruz band). “One cool thing about being a solo musician is that I can pick up good musicians wherever I go and play with a lot of different people,” Nielsen says. Bassist Brendan Brose (What’s Good and THC) and drummer Christian Walsh round out the band’s extended family.

Nielsen says he enjoys the chance to play with different musicians, as he did recently in New York. Although he’s had a few different drummers, the professionalism of the musicians has generally exceeded his expectations. “It’s cool to see that caliber of musicians,” he says. “It pushes my playing.”

In the archives

Nielsen released his first full-length album, Everyday thing (The Orchard Records), in December 2022. The first single, “40 to Life,” is an energetic blues-meets-reggae rhythm, with lyrics inspired by Nielsen’s cousin, who was caught up in gang violence and served a lengthy prison sentence. It’s a true story.

In addition, he has since released two new singles Everyday thing dropped. “Baby Let Go” is a “vibey-reggae island” track that’s coming out later this summer. He also recorded “Pick up the Pace” with Expendables drummer Adam Patterson. “We recorded a bunch of tracks at his home studio in Corralitos. It was awesome to sit in the studio with him and talk about music and travel stories. I grew up a fan of theirs. … They’re super humble dudes.”

“Pick Up the Pace” is now available on Spotify and all streaming music platforms.

Last summer, Nielsen signed with Just Call Me By My Name, a record label distributed by Orchard, a New York-based subsidiary of Sony Music. When we spoke, he had just returned from a live performance and media tour organized by the label, which took him to New York’s Scarsdale Music Festival. He had hoped to play a few small shows beforehand to prepare, but that didn’t happen.

Nielsen notes that this was his first show since joining the new label, saying, “The first show of the summer was a big one.” After the day in New York, where he did interviews for the Associated Press and others, “it was basically a whole day of answering the same questions over and over again,” he says.

For Nielsen, who faces many challenges as a disabled musician, the road to success hasn’t always been easy. Before he discovered music, he tried his luck in adaptive sports, which weren’t integrated with able-bodied athletes. “I’m still discovering new differences every day,” he says. “I just have to learn to deal with it.”

For example, Nielsen says he doesn’t use a lot of effects on his shows. “My amp has a pedal and I go from clean to distortion, maybe a little echo and reverb. I can’t really hit the pedals. I’d have to grab a stool and hit a pedal with it. There have been times when I’ve missed it (the pedal), so I just keep it simple.”

And thankfully, there’s that strong family dynamic: His brother, wife Ashley, and their two kids are always there when he needs them. “I’ve always just been who I’ve been,” he says, tackling the challenges along the way. “I’ve never been able to walk or run, so it doesn’t really bother me that I can’t.”

In fact, Nielsen has turned his disability into an unusual part of his live show. In what the band jokingly calls “the chainsaw massacre,” Nielsen uses his crutch to play slide guitar. “Every time I do it, people freak out,” he says. “One time I didn’t do it and they called me out on it. Nothing about it sounds good, but people love it.”

With each performance as unpredictable as it is inspiring, each show draws its audience. “It all depends on how my legs are that day,” he says. “A lot of days the energy of the crowd makes me want to get up… I just can’t sit down.”

Let Jimi take over

With an ambitious tour schedule—Denver, San Diego, Lake Tahoe—Nielsen is looking forward to a full day of music on July 12 at the Hello Inclusion festival at New York’s Bethel Woods Center for the Arts, his second consecutive year playing the show. “It’s super cool,” he says. “It’s kind of like Shoreline. They built it on the same ground as Woodstock ’69.” Yes, that Woodstock, the very same festival ground where Jimi Hendrix delivered his famous guitar feats all those years ago.

“Hendrix would have loved Jake,” says Ken Trush, co-founder and CEO of the New York-based Daniel’s Music Foundation and Just Call Me By My Name Records. The foundation is a nonprofit that supports musicians with disabilities. “Jake is a star and he’s a great speaker, but more importantly, he just lets his music do the work,” Trush says. “And when he lets the stool fly, everyone goes crazy.”

The Foundation, co-founded by the Orchard label, hosts the Danny Awards, a global video call featuring approximately 110 musicians of all abilities. Nielsen joined the top 10 finalists in New York last year and went on to win the award. He was signed by the label this past summer and won the chance to perform with the other finalists at Bethel Woods. He will be featured on the foundation’s second sampler EP, Call Me By My Name Part 2which is set to be released on October 18. “This is about moving the needle for our community, because we see so much talent,” Trush added. Nielsen will also perform with this year’s headliners, Jason Mraz and the Boston-based band Ripe.

The transition from power trio to solo moniker was inevitable for Nielsen. At the very least, the name change should make it easier for promoters to spell out. “The worst one on a marquee was ‘Jack Wilson’s Triple Treat,'” Nielsen says. “I’ve seen it screwed up.”

For now, Nielsen is looking forward to what the future holds, whether it’s forming a new band or pursuing a solo career, as long as he’s making music. “I’m never going to stop,” he says. “If a couple of us get together, I can see us being together for a long time,” he says. “Either way, I’m not stopping. The show has to go on.”

Jake Nielsen plays Junction Park in Boulder Creek at 12pm on Fourth of July, Midtown Block Party in Santa Cruz at 7pm on July 19, and “The Lot” concert series at Pleasure Point at 2pm on July 20. Learn more about upcoming shows and where to find albums and singles at jakenielsenmusic.com.