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Thursday, March 28, 2024

Less Than Jake, hometown heroes and veterans of the music scene for more than two decades, are gearing up for their fourth annual Wake N Bake Weekend. The weekendlong festival brings the band back to their hometown and brings fans from across the world to Gainesville.

"It’s not just about the music or coming to a show," Less Than Jake guitarist and vocalist Chris Demakes said. "It’s the whole weekend; it’s three days of hanging out and enjoying each other’s company."

Demakes said the festival has grown to a point where there are people from Australia, Canada, Japan, Europe, England and all over the U.S. flying in for it.

"It’s pretty remarkable," he said.

The event will begin Friday with a kickoff at Loosey’s, located at 120 SW First Ave., where VIP guests will perform Less Than Jake karaoke with the band. Doors open at 9 p.m. and general admission is $5.

Saturday, the band will have a yard sale on the High Dive patio, located at 210 SW Second Ave., with merchandise from their personal stashes.

"I raided my own personal merchandise collection and so have a couple of the other guys," Demakes said. "And we just have, you know, really limited edition records and T-shirts and all kinds of stuff."

Demakes said you can catch the band "hanging out with the fans, havin’ drinks (and) chillin’ out," at the patio from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. for the yard sale.

Less Than Jake will be headlining Saturday and Sunday at High Dive. Supervillians, Kash’d Out and Mrs. Skannotto are supporting Saturday’s show. Doors open at 6 p.m. and the show starts at 8:30 p.m.

MC Lars, The Attack and You Vandal are supporting Sunday, with doors opening at 5 p.m. and the show beginning at 8:30 p.m. Tickets for each show can be purchased for $18 at the door or $15 in advance on ticketfly.com.

Pat Lavery, owner of Glory Days Presents, wrote in an email that Wake N Bake is a unique festival because it happens in an intimate venue.

It is curated by the band in their hometown and he said it gives fans "an unprecedented amount of access to the band."

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"While some festivals have one of these aspects, I can’t think of one that has all of these," Lavery said.

Lavery said that having the festival in their hometown says a lot about the band. Featuring other Florida bands just shows their loyalty and love for the scene and city, he added.

"(Less Than Jake) could do this event in any city in the world if they wanted to, with any opening bands of their choosing," Lavery said.

Part of the weekend’s festivities includes a Sunday tour. The band chartered a bus and a driver to take 150 VIP guests around Gainesville.

Demakes will lead the hourlong tour where guests will see places such as where the band’s first show was and other locations that are important to them, Demakes said.

The band does different activities each year. Last year, Demakes hosted bingo at High Dive and an acoustic show and brunch at Loosey’s.

"It’s not just coming to see us for a couple shows, and that’s why you know we’re attracting people from all over," Demakes said. "And it’s kind of turned into this thing, and each year it just gets crazier."

 

Craziness and angst are not things that Less Than Jake has lost during their time together, as they are known for putting on lively shows.

"We’re still doing the same things we were 20 years ago," Demakes said. "We show up, we try to throw the best… I deem it a party, you know we’re a party band. People show up to want to drink, hang out and have a good time. And that’s what we provide, and that’s what we’ve always done."

With four of the five band members being former UF students, the band was in the middle of Gainesville’s flourishing early ‘90s music scene. In 1996, Less Than Jake drummer and lyricist Vinnie Fiorello, along with another UF student, John Janick, formed the record label Fueled By Ramen. The name Fueled By Ramen is a nod to being a broke college student and eating ramen noodles because they poured their money into the label. The label grew exponentially and now has its office in New York City. Fiorello has since left the label and founded Gainesville-based label Paper + Plastick.

Demakes recalls that his older punk rocker friends would tell him that the years would only go by faster and he would still feel like he was 18 years old, but that he’d look in the mirror and see a 38-year-old.

"And s**t man that’s exactly it," Demakes said.

The spirit still keeps them going and, in that sense, they never grew up, he said.

"We’re still a fan. We’re still the 18, 19, 20-year-old kid at the show, you know? We still feel what they feel. We might go to bed a little earlier than they do now, but we still feel what they feel," he said. "And the hangovers are worse now."

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