JAKE NICOLL
Musician, Engineer, Producer
About Jake
Jake Nicoll is a musician, songwriter, and music producer who lives (most of the time) in St, John's, Newfoundland. Forever a Southern Ontario farm kid at heart, Jake's attitude toward repair, (re)invention and tinkering inspired him to create a studio arsenal filled with self-built microphones, compressors, amplifiers, and preamps. In this studio, Jake has recorded everything from live off the floor EPs for the St. John's punk scene, to more involved pop, folk
and rock productions which have gone on to win Music NL, Music PEI, and ECMA awards, as well as end up on the short list for Canada's prestigious Polaris Prize (Kelly McMichael). Over the course of the pandemic Jake built a mobile recording studio into a 1970s camper trailer (The Scamper) which he has used in site-specific projects in PEI and Nova Scotia. In 2020 he formed Idlefield Art Lab with collaborators to explore creative and community-based sound and music production through art and installation projects. Using the Scamper, Idlefield presented the Phonoautomat -- an open studio which produced cassette singles for attendees at Sappyfest and Art in the Open.
An in demand instrumentalist and collaborator, Jake has recorded and toured internationally with several projects, including The Burning Hell, Kelly McMichael, and Family Video. As a songwriter, Jake has produced a prolific and genre-shifting output. His latest single "Asking For Forgiveness" won the 2023 Newfoundland Arts and Letters award for songwriting.