Jacob Sharp

Jacob Sharp has been writing songs and playing shows for 15 years. And he finally has an album of his own worth sharing. The songs of “Middle Kid” offer a nuanced insight to the relational intrigue that has long driven both his musical and interpersonal worlds. A richly-textured album that feels bound to immediately serve as a lexicon for an increasingly vast indie-folk world, it’s as equally sparse as it is confident, and full of both the emotional directness and pop hooks that have become the calling cards of Jacob’s writing and songs. 

Jacob’s from a small town in the mountains of North Carolina where he grew up surrounded by music and obsessed with bands. A founding member of Mipso, who sprung from Chapel Hill as a genre-bending stringband in 2012 and now serve as mavens to a fully-bloomed folk/americana scene, he has long been most comfortable making music with friends. Though this is a solo-debut, the collaboration at its core is what gives it its most striking edge - and the album is a celebration of the musical community Jacob has built living in Brooklyn and Los Angeles when not on the road over the last decade. It was initially conceived as an outlet for the co-writing that drives his creative world; the record features co-writing contributions from Bridget Kearney (Lake Street Dive), Benjamin Lazar Davis (Maya Hawke, Cuddle Magic), Taylor Ashton, JE Sunde and Shane Leonard. But when demo sessions began with co-producer Benjamin Lazar Davis it became immediately clear that the batch of songs deserved a band of ringers. Jacob’s closest friends and most-treasured musical companions gathered in Los Angeles in the early summer of 2024 and gave the tunes the life they needed to become a record too good to not share.