Jeremy Essig

==Jeremy Essig==
Jeremy George Essig (December 11, 1977) is an American record label owner, audio engineer, stand-up comedian, musician, and journalist. He is the owner of the record label, Rhizome Comedy. He is also a fictional character killed by zombies in Jonathan Maberry’s novel Fall of Night.
==Early Life==
Essig was raised in Zanesville, Ohio, where he began playing in bands at the age of 15. He graduated from Bishop Rosecrans Catholic High School in 1996, and from Wake Forest University in 2000. 
==Personal Life==
Essig has been married once, to Jessica Coghill; they divorced in 2010. He has spent much of his adult life in St. Louis, Missouri. In 2019, Essig moved to Raleigh, North Carolina, where he currently lives with his dogs, Grieco, Lucy, and Salem.
==Career==
===Comedy===
Essig's comedy has been referred to as "intelligent cynicism”. He performed his first stand-up set at an open mic at the Jokers Comedy Café in Dayton, Ohio on June 28, 2000. Positive feedback from a comedy event producer led to him being invited back and discovering an unplanned career path in comedy. 
From 2002 through 2018, Essig was a full-time road comic, travelling and performing on stages across the United States. In 2004, he moved to St. Louis, Missouri, where he became a fixture on the scene. During this time, he released two stand-up albums, 2005’s Transient and 2007’s Monque. In 2009, he began touring with Brian Posehn and would continue doing so for the next decade.
In June 2012, Essig met KDHX marketing director Chris Ward. Based on their common interests of music, video games, and comic books, Essig created “Loser: A Live-Action Shame Show.". After performing for a year locally, Essig and Ward took the show on the road for a seven-day, seven-city tour, which they blogged about for the River Front Times.
In September 2012, Essig moved to New York City from St. Louis in search of more comedic opportunity, eventually returning to St. Louis again in 2013.
Upon his return to St. Louis, Essig continued to develop the idea of "Loser: A Live-Action Shame Show", eventually changing its name to "Vinyl Intervention". A pilot for Vinyl Intervention was recorded in the Summer of 2013 at Blueberry Hill's Duck Room with St. Louis-based Coolfire Studios and guest host Steven Drozd of The Flaming Lips. 
One of Essig's stand-up acts once started a riot at The Mall of America after making a short joke about president at the time, George W. Bush. He was interviewed about this event and the path of his career 20 years later, saying "If you had told me in college, here’s what the next twenty years are gonna be, I’d’ve said, well, that just sounds insane. It sounds fun, but it sounds insane".
Jeremy Essig retired from doing stand-up in July 2021, performing his final show at Goodnights Comedy Club in Raleigh, North Carolina. His last two comedy albums released were Exile on Hitt Street (2012) and Whatever (2017). 
===Production===
Looking for a life away from the road as a touring comic, Essig began to focus on audio-visual production. In November 2017, he opened his first recording studio, Listless Sound. It was a professional full-service recording studio based in St. Louis where Essig worked as an audio consultant and engineer.
In the spring of 2023, after leaving Helium, Essig founded a new Raleigh-based audio-visual production company and comedy label, Rhizome Art and Rhizome Comedy. He is currently the Executive Director. Rhizome Comedy is a "new evolution in artist-centric production". 
===Music===
In 1992, at the age of 15, Essig began playing in various bands. By 1995, he became the bass player for Box of Rocks, while also providing some vocals and guitar. Box of Rocks released their debut album, "Good Grief", which was digitally re-mastered and released in May 2020, as "Crossroad Standing". At Wake Forest, he joined the Flaming Moes, a campus band named after a Homer Simpson cocktail. 
Essig eventually took a step back from his music to focus on his comedy career, but continued to write songs and find ways to bring the two worlds together. For a time, Essig was known to have his guitar available during a comedy show, and allow audience members to come onstage and play while he delivered his set.
After meeting lead singer Jason Robinson at one of his Loser shows, Essig joined St. Louis rock band Shark Dad, where he played guitar, wrote songs and provided backup vocals. The band released Almost, Pink in 2017 and The Pink Motel in 2018. Finding himself with a number of songs that felt too personal to hand off, Essig formed his own band, Let’s Not, in 2018. Their releases include Glimmer (2018), Sidewhip (2018) and Manic (2019). 
Essig appears briefly in a Superchunk video, where he can be seen holding the Husker Du album “Land Speed Record”. 
===Journalism===
Essig enrolled in the Journalism program at University of Missouri in 2009. He became a statehouse reporter in Jefferson City, covering state and national politics for the Columbia Missourian and Missouri Digital News, and eventually becoming associate editor for both papers.
Essig went on to write for the Columbus Business Times and landed a freelance gig as a music writer/reviewer for Eleven magazine and the Riverfront Times. 
===Other===
In the winters of 2018-2019 Essig taught a course on podcasting at Webster University. 
Essig has been involved with several podcasts, including “Where'd You Fuc* Up?” (changed to “Where’d You [Bless] Up?”), an interview-style conversation co-hosted with comic Tina Dybal, where guests share a misstep that impacted their lives somehow. 
==Discography==
Selected Comedy Albums Produced
Year	Artist 	Album 	Role
2019	Sean Patton 	"Scuttlebutt" 	Producer
2019	Erica Rhodes 	"Sad Lemon" 	Producer
2020	Andrew Orvedahl 	"Alexa, Play Creed" 	Producer
2020	Benji Brown 	"Sat Down Somewhere" 	Producer
2021	Jared Freid 	"Socially Distanced, Of Course"	Producer
2021	Mary Santora 	"Hillbilly Boujee" 	Producer
2021	Shane Gillis 	"Live in Austin" 	Producer
2021	Andy Haynes 	"Coward of Gramercy" 	Producer
2021	Sean Patton 	"King Scorpio" 	Producer
2022	Jade Catta-Preta	"Jaded" 	Producer
2022	Ali Siddiq 	"The Domino Effect" 	Producer
2022	Doogie Horner 	"Dad Max" 	Producer
2023	Ryan Conner 	"Live from DC" 	Producer
2023	Chris Porter 	"There's No Money in Babies" 	Producer
2023	Erica Rhodes 	"Ladybug" 	Producer
2023	Jeff Dye 	"How I See It" 	Producer
List of Stand-Up Comedy Albums
Year	Title 	Label 	Role
2005	Transient 	Listless Industry Records	Comic
2007	Monque 	Rooftop Records 	Comic
2012	Exile on Hitt Street	 	Comic
2017	Whatever 	On Time Records 	Comic
List of Music Albums
Year	Artist 	Album 	Role
1996	Box of Rocks 	"Good Grief" 	Bass, Vocals
2017	Shark Dad 	"Almost, Pink" 	Guitar, Vocals
2018	Let's Not 	"Glimmer" 	Guitar, Keys, Vocals, Producer
2018	Shark Dad 	"Pink Motel" 	Guitar, Piano, Keys, Vocals, Producer
2018	Let's Not 	"Sidewhip EP" 	Guitar, Piano, Vocals, Producer
2019	Let's Not 	"Manic" 	Guitar, Piano, Keys, Vocals,
Bass, Strings, Drum Programming, Producer
2019	Pls Pls Me 	"Pls You" (Single) 	Guitar, Engineer
2020	The Defeated County	"Chemicals and Science"	Guitar, Piano, Keys, Vocals, Strings, Producer
Category:1977 births
Category:American people
Category:Wake Forest University alumni
Category:American record labels
Category:Audio engineers
Category:Stand-up comedians
Category:Musicians
Category:Journalists