Double Black Diamond
Here are some facts about singer, songwriter, producer, and artist Jake Troth.
He’s been playing guitar since receiving a Squier Stratocaster at age nine. He’s a
naturally gifted athlete and aspired to be a professional baseball player until he
hurt his knee skateboarding. He spent two years working as a sushi chef in high
school. He played guitar in multiple death-metal bands before venturing into
writing his own songs, which sounded nothing like death metal. He dropped out
of the Savannah College of Art and Design in Georgia, where he studied fashion
accessory design. (When his fellow classmates heard Troth’s song “Material
Things,” they encouraged him to make more music.) In 2010, Troth moved to Los
Angeles to pursue a music career. He’s written and produced songs for artists
like Kelly Rowland, Jennifer Lopez, Erik Hassle, Kevin Gates, and OutKast’s Big
Boi. The latter collaboration led to Troth performing his song “Apple of My Eye”
(while shaking an apple and wearing a sport coat) with OutKast’s Big Boi on The
Late Show with David Letterman. Before he went onstage, Troth met another
guest, the actor Chris Pratt, who said: “Don’t fuck up.”
You could say that all the events of the Davidson, North Carolina native’s colorful
life have led to this moment, the release of his album Double Black Diamond,
and an accompanying short film that serves as a visual representation of the
music. Troth and director Stewart Yost wrote the story, then combed through the
catalog of songs Troth has been writing for the past eight years to determine
what belonged, including two songs he wrote in college, the sardonic “Material
Things” and the album’s epic first single “Everybody Loves You.” “I have always
wanted to make a trailer for a movie that doesn’t exist,” he says of the film’s initial
inspiration. “I thought it would be really funny to work in dramatic catchphrases
like, ‘You're not my dad, so stop acting like it!’ or ‘Give me back my son!’ Luckily,
I realized there has to be a story. You can't just have nonsense on screen for 15
minutes.”
Double Black Diamond, the film, tells the bittersweet story of Jake and Ansa, a
winsome female reporter from Korea who appears by his bedside one morning
and informs him: “I'm here to write a story of your rise to fame.” What follows is
part love story and part satire on the media circus that surrounds a rising artist.
Troth appears on a talk show where the buffoonish host mangles his name and
asks him inane questions like the mind-numbingly broad “What’s your album
about?” Dejected, Troth walks off the set, followed by Ansa who declares: “I’ll
give you love” while the album’s most poignant song, a piano ballad called “The
Queen,” plays. From there, the film shifts into a joyful montage of the two falling
for each other and the heartbreak of Ansa’s return home. (“There has to be a
conflict,” Troth says. “I compare it to a perfume commercial, like one of those
Gucci ones where they whisper.”) Spending time with Ansa gives Jake
confidence, and when he is asked, on another talk show, what his album about,
this time he has an answer ready: “Double Black Diamond is about the dangers
of falling in love,” he says as the audience murmurs appreciatively. We won’t
spoil the film’s ending, but it’s simple, intimate, romantic, and delightfully
unpredictable, just like Troth’s music.
By harnessing the many moods conjured in the film’s visuals, Troth and his coproducer Alex Goose and executive producer Shama Joseph have given the
warmly melodic songs on Double Black Diamond, the album, an extra emotional
resonance — the way a great soundtrack does. In fact, Troth says, the album
was inspired in part by Hal Ashby’s classic romantic dark comedy Harold and
Maude. “When I saw that movie my life changed,” he says. “The idea of being in
a relationship with someone older really connected with me when I started to put
the project together. The songs weren’t so much influenced by the movie, as by
the doomy vibe it gives off while still managing to be hopeful and beautiful. At the
time, I was in a relationship with someone older, so I think it felt it very strongly.
Double Black Diamond means ‘Beware of what's ahead. You're about to get into
some shit. I hope you're able to deal with it.’”
The songs, when taken together, sketch out the arc of a relationship, and were
inspired by various girlfriends Troth has had over the past eight years. “Some are
heated, some are learning experiences, some are magical, but the through-line is
they’re all my perspective on relationships,” he says. “’Everybody Loves You’
was inspired by a girl I nearly started dated, but at the last second, someone beat
me to it. So that one’s about wishing her the best for her with the guy who got
there before I did. ‘Used’ is about booty calls and thinking you have the upper
hand with someone but you really don’t. At the end of the day, you’re waiting for
them to come to your place because you’re lonely.” And then there’s the breezy
toe-tapper “Vacay,” which came about after a girl Troth was hanging out with told
him he was “like a walking vacation.” “That was just about the nicest thing
anyone has ever said to me,” he says. “I sat with that phrase for a long time.
When someone says something like that and you know it's magical, there's a lot
of pressure not to screw it up.” Troth wrote “Vacay” with his friend, the children’s
book author Dallas Clayton. “One night, he came to this little space I was renting
out,” Troth says. “We sat there and wrote that song. His sunshine and smiles
vibe is so perfect for that phrase.”
“’Vacay was the first song I had written where I was like, ‘Damn, this is what I'm
trying to do,’” he says. “The other songs were very exploratory. The sad ones,
like “The Queen” and “Alive & Well,” are beautiful, but I don't want to be the sadsong guy. I would love to make music that makes people feel good. Like Bill
Withers. I want people to feel a warmth when they hear the music. I want them to
feel like someone is listening and paying attention.”
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