Yesterday afternoon one of my friends messaged me to share a post that another friend had put up on Facebook about a guy who had played a gig at their venue the previous night. You can see a screen grab of that below, but the long and the short of it is that this guy called Jered Threatin had basically pretended to be a massive band from Los Angeles, booked the venue with his own money under the guise of a promoter called Casey Marshall and then flown over here to play the show to literally zero people as nobody knew who he was over here.

Check it out:

To say this was weird/bizarre behaviour would be somewhat of an understatement, but as everybody looked into it even more and the post went viral, we were about to discover just how far this guy had gone to convince everyone in the world that he was a famous musician and then for some reason go through with the entire tour even though it meant he was spending thousands of pounds and playing to nobody. Apologies in advance for the length of this article but I felt like I had to get literally everything in to detail the unbelievable level of this guy’s catfishing and deception. It really is something.

I’m aware that everyone reading this might not know how the music industry works so I’ll try and sum it up for you in a couple of sentences to give you some context. If you’re Jered Threatin from LA then your typical career path would go something like this: you write some songs, you record them, you play some shows, people start coming to see you, you gain a fanbase, you go on tour, you get some more fans, if it goes well you might pick up a manager, a PR person and a booking agent (remember this because it’ll be important later), you put out another record, you gain some more fans, you tour some more and maybe play internationally, then the cycle repeats itself and hopefully your fanbase gets bigger and bigger and you end up playing to more and more people.

It’s the same path that many artists have travelled in the past and at first glance this would appear to be exactly what Jered Threatin had done. However, if you looked into it a bit deeper then it turns out that all of his achievements on the internet are in fact an elaborate lie/catfish scheme at great expense to himself, with the ultimate aim seemingly to be to tour some of the most prestigious venues in Europe and play to zero people every night. Dream big Jered, dream big.

To begin with let’s take a look at some of the music Jered Threatin has put out there. Here’s the video to his mega hit single ‘Living Is Dying’ – almost a million views on YouTube:

OK so first things first, I don’t think anyone is going to deny that Jered can sing and play his instruments to a competent level and if you like 80s cock rock/hair metal/whatever you want to call this then you might be into it. I’m not really, but the guy has clearly practiced a lot and can do his thing. Fair enough, nobody is disputing that.

But THEN there’s the music video which kind of looks like it was made by a 14 year old on Windows Movie Maker about 15 years ago and the concept was devised by someone who failed the audition to choreograph a Whitesnake video back in the 1980s. I’m not really sure what he’s going on with all the visuals in it at all, but I suppose 80s metal did have that kind of vibe so maybe at a push you could say the video is a tribute to that era? That’s a real push though – in reality it’s just a really weird, bad music video by today’s standards and kinda gives you the first clue that this dude isn’t actually a super famous professional musician.

The second thing to take from this video is that he’s featured himself playing every single instrument in the video. I’ve watched a lot of music videos in my time and seen a lot of those where it’s from a guy who plays every instrument on the album and I don’t think I’ve ever seen any of them do that. It’s like dude, we get it – you can play every instrument. It’s just fucking stupid and strange and kinda creepy that you would actually highlight that in your music video and visualise yourself doing it like the band is solely made up of you/clones of you. It’s also the first hint that Jered Threatin is a major narcissist.

Next I did some looking into just exactly what Jered Threatin was all about. Who was he? Where had he come from? What was his deal? This was where things got even more peculiar.

The first thing to look at was obviously his website which you can check out here but I’ve also provided some screen grabs of in case he deleted it. Firstly, you need to note that this is not a good website and looks like it was created in the year 2000 by some guy who was vaguely good at HTML and had paid ten quid for an Angelfire backend. It quite clearly isn’t the work of someone who was paid to design websites in 2018 which is what a big shot rock star like Jered Threatin should really have in the current climate.

Anyway, here’s his biography which is just something else:

The world rarely sees so much talent wrapped into one person. Jered Threatin, known professionally as Threatin, is a singer, song-writer, and multi-instrumentalist from Los Angeles, CA. He began his career as a solo artist in 2012 upon relocating to California. After arriving in Los Angeles, he immediately began auditioning musicians to serve as his backing band for live performances. When asked about this process in a 2013 interview Threatin stated; “I play every instrument you hear on the studio recordings. But, when I perform on stage I am confined to singing and playing one instrument at a time. So, I am fortunate to have a solid backing band that believes in what I do.” After recruiting these members to fill the band’s touring line-up; he began performing across North America. During this time Threatin proved to be one of the most promising rock artists in recent years. His distinct voice, remarkable musical abilities, and skill for writing memorable songs quickly captured the attention of fans and music industry professionals. In late 2014, Threatin signed a worldwide recording deal with the prominent label Superlative Music Recordings / SPV Records (Europe). In 2015, Threatin recorded his first single entitled, “Living is Dying.” The song received international radio airplay on Active Rock Radio. It was also featured on the Television Station Music Choice On Demand. The song went on to sell over 30,000 mp3 downloads within the first month of its release. Following the success of his this single; Threatin recorded his debut EP “If Need Be” which went on to sell 55,000+ copies. By mid-2015, Threatin began touring more extensively with a North American tour that spanned the United States and Canada.. His high-energy live performances steadily gained attention and increased an already growing fan base. Following this relentless touring schedule; Threatin devoted the remainder of 2015 to songwriting and pre-production for his upcoming release. In early 2016, he entered the studio to begin recording his highly-anticipated debut album, appropriately titled; “Breaking the World”. It was mastered in New York, NY at Sterling Sound by Grammy nominated engineer Greg Calbi (John Lennon, David Bowie, Bruce Springsteen). “Breaking the World” was released worldwide on August 25, 2017. It was well-received by both fans and critics alike. The explosive success of this album led to Threatin winning the Top Rock Artist of the Year Award.

OK where to begin with this. The first line I suppose – whilst it is common for blurbs to start like that first line bigging up the subject, it’s just another indicator of how much this guy loves himself and clearly sees himself as the second coming of Ronnie James Dio or something. Especially when it becomes obvious that he’s written it about himself and hasn’t paid a PR firm to do it.

Anyway, all of the rest of it sounds like a fairly standard bio but when you look into it you learn that a lot of it simply isn’t true. Greg Calibi has no mention of Threatin on his website which features his entire discography of everything he has ever worked on (there’s also no way Calibi mastered his record because the drums sound like ass). Whilst there are also a load of dumb awards like ‘Top Rock Artist Of The Year Award’, another quick Google confirms that this doesn’t actually exist either.

There’s also no record of any of his tour dates ever – except for the tour he’s on now of course. I even looked at his past US tour dates on his Facebook page before he deleted them and there’s literally no mention of his dates from his extensive 2015 US tour there at all. You gotta keep your story consistent there Jered – this is a theme that we’ll be revisiting throughout this article.

It is kinda difficult to find information on the internet about gigs that have already happened, but I looked into these past US tour dates at famous American venues and I’m pretty sure none of them ever happened as well. Here’s the listing for when he was supposed to be playing Wooly’s in Des Moines, Iowa:

Yeah, looks like Frank Foster was playing there that night mate. Anyway, the next thing to draw attention to is his incredible music Wikia page – get a load of this:

Some of these lines are just absolute gold aren’t they? He has never been pictured wearing any colour other than black. He graduated with a degree in psychology. Just hanging out in Beverley Hills like a rock star. It certainly SOUNDS like Jered Threatin is a bonafide interesting rock star doesn’t it? He’s certainly got the persona of one hasn’t he? Also did you get it yet? He’s a really talented multi instrumentalist musician.

Next up was to take a look at his YouTube channel where he luckily recently uploaded an 8 part interview series where he talks about himself a hell of a lot. Lucky us. Predictably, it’s mainly about how he’s a talented musician and a multi instrumentalist and plays everything himself on the records. Duh.

I’m not gonna post all the videos here but here’s a great one about how it’s way quicker for him to record everything himself because he’s THAT good:

What a hero. I also love the studio he’s in with his CDs in the background. It’s literally some bedsheet he’s put up to try and make it look arty in like his toilet or bathroom or something. And honestly who the hell even buys CDs anymore? Why is he trying to promote them? Is he literally stuck in the early 2000s? (As another aside don’t you think it’s funny how one the promo pictures earlier I got off his website was just boxes and boxes of unsold CDs – scroll up a bit if you missed it.)

I had to look into the comments on these YouTube videos as well as they all seemed to have around 20,000 views with a bunch of comment so it seemed like he was a popular guy that people were genuinely interested in and fans of, especially when you saw what people were saying underneath his videos:

But then:

I mean I could do them all and maybe reverse image search them like they do on Catfish, but I think you kinda get the picture here. Maybe it’s just the case of Threatin having loads of fans that just don’t upload their own content?

Or maybe he created loads of fake YouTube accounts to comment on his videos to make it look like he had a bunch of fans? It’s worth noting as well that most of the comments on his different videos are from the same bunch of YouTube accounts as well:

Also lol why are you writing fan fiction about fake girls wanting to have sex with you dude? It’s already completely weird that you’re creating a fake persona as a well respected Rock God on the internet but that maybe just takes it a little bit too far. Certainly in my eyes. It’s kind of like he’s an incel writing fan fiction dreaming about being a famous rock musician that all the girls cream themselves over.

When does this ever happen as well? Never in the history of YouTube has a video ever had so many views and so few comments.

There’s also this one ‘fan recorded’ video which really does perpetuate the myth of him as a giant rock God:

Listen to that crowd. Look at those metal horns in the front row. Jered Threatin is killing it at MacEwan Hall in Calgary, Alberta Canada, right? (Literally no mention of Threatin on MacEwan Hall’s social media at that time btw.). Definitely not a fake video with one person in front of him (probably his mom), no other people in the crowd and no other band members (sorry guys all the Jered clones needed the day off today). Definitely not a case of that at all.

Just gonna leave this here as well – Erik Wong has to be the best Japanese name of all time right?

So now we kinda know who Jared Threatin is – a multi instrumentalist rock star who clearly loves himself and may or may not have faked his whole career on social media – what about everyone that works with him? The team that has enabled him to achieve his incredible success? Surely he can’t have done this all on his own? (Spoiler alert – he has done all this on his own because in addition to his fake YouTube account and social media presence, literally none of the people who work for him are real and he’s literally spent his whole life creating a humongous fake web around himself on the internet.)

On his Facebook page – which now sadly seems to have been deleted – he had links to his manager’s website Aligned Artist management, PR’s website Magnified PR, booking agent’s website Stage Right Bookings and his label Superlative Music Recordings. I’ve put links into them there so you can check them out yourself, but I’m aware Threatin might delete all of them after this goes viral so I’ve taken some screenshots of them that you can see below as well:

Now, this all looks FAIRLY legit to the untrained eye. You might expect each website to have more information about their brand/product and maybe even be slightly better, but the truth is often in the music industry big labels/management etc don’t put that much on their sites in order to stop losers (like Jered Threatin lol) bombarding them with emails trying to get them to listen to their band. They know what they’re doing so they tend to contact the bands they want to work with rather than the other way round.

However, when you look at all these websites in the context of Jered Threatin then you start to see a pattern. Firstly Aligned Artists and Magnified PR have exactly the same format of website: some nonsensical edgy video trying to look cool and vaguely relating to their industries. They kinda look legit to be fair but at the same time this is Jered Threatin, so you kinda get the idea that he just bought the domain names, whacked these websites together in a couple of hours and left them there so that anyone looking into him would assume that he was a legitimate artist with legitimate representation.

So far so good for the casual fan, but fortunately we already know Jered Threatin seems to be making everything about himself up so it’s a little murky.

It gets more suspicious when you look into Stage Right Bookings and Superlative Music Recordings though. Both of these websites seem to have been made on the same crappy website builder that his own crappy website was made on, seemingly endeavouring to do their best to look like an old Geocities website from back in 1998. You never heard of WordPress Jered?

Anyway, whilst they have a crappy website – it’s literally one page with no links to any of their artists or anything about them – Superlative Music Recordings sounds like a decent label from the writeup. They’ve released over 200 albums, had numerous top 40 hits and sold over 10 million records. That’s decent for sure. Unfortunately for Jered he kinda screwed up here as the one link that does work is the link to the history of the label which directly contradicts the history blurb that’s on the website’s homepage. Whoopsie:

I mean they sound like they’ve got it made and are killing it really don’t they? Definitely a good label for Jered Threatin to be on right now.

Now compare that to this which you can find simply by clicking on the History link on the website:

Still sounds pretty good hey, but dude – you can’t have these two stories on the same website lol. That’s the biggest indicator that it’s complete and utter bullshit ever.

(As an aside, my favourite part of this whole story is when Threatin does something like this to screw up his carefully woven web. Imagine being so careless when you’ve literally devoted what seems like your entire life to building this fake persona. Must be a real bummer.)

Anyway, this definitely tells us that Threatin has a penchant for creative writing – if we didn’t know that already – and knows his music history, although I’m kinda disappointed there was no mention of him as a multi instrumentalist in there. People need to know that every chance you get dude.

Also it importantly shows us that Jered doesn’t know what the difference between it’s and its. A bit like he doesn’t seem to know the difference between fantasy and reality.

But what about the other bands on Superlative Music Recordings? Take a gander below:

All sound pretty awesome right but get this: it might surprise you to hear given how many records the label has sold and how many top 40 hits they’ve had and the fact they’ve been a label for 50 years – or 12 years depending on which story on their website you believe – but there’s absolutely no information about bands like Two Dozen Roses, November 1966, Classic The Band and The Calmness out there. Or solo artists like Fiona, Michael Nicholas and Bill Nelson.

Yep, you guessed it, that’s probably because they don’t actually exist – are we noticing a pattern here? – but damn I would definitely want to check out those bands if they did exist. Killer names you got there Jered. Kinda surprised you stuck with Threatin when you could have had February Morning there bud.

(I did notice that the famous emo band Braid were allegedly on Superlative as well, but a quick look at their Wikipedia and Facebook page confirmed that they aren’t and have never been involved with this label. Just another cool name that Jered came up with that someone had actually used.)

Moving onto Stage Right Bookings now and this is another one pager that looks almost exactly like the Superlative Music Recordings website. The site solely serves to highlight which bands the booking agency works with whilst providing no links to their bios or anything about them. Any guesses of any of the bands that they represent?

Yep, you guessed it again – they seem to have the exact same roster as Superlative Music Recordings. Whilst it’s entirely possible that the record label and booking agency work closely together to develop their artists, it’s again more likely that Threatin just got really bored and couldn’t be bothered to make up any more band names. I mean he’s put a lot of effort into this ruse already and the band names he’s already come up with are completely killer so he had probably already spent a lot of time on them. Give the guy a break.

Jered also had to create more fake stuff on the internet to perpetuate his status as a huge rock star. There’s a couple of links on his website to music websites that have written about him and again, they quite clearly seem to be made on the same shitty website engine that all the other websites are made on and are quite clearly fake.

The first one is called Top Rock Press and to be fair it does actually kinda look like a shitty website that some kid who wants to be a music journalist starts when they’re in high school. He’s actually made a bit of an effort here as well to feature some other bands and other content as well to give it the facade of being real. One of his better efforts for sure. B+.

Obviously Threatin is leading the way for the next generation of rock music though. Bizarrely though Threatin doesn’t use this opportunity to talk about being a multi instrumentalist or about how loads of girls want to fuck him, but instead just to crown himself Artist Of The Year 2017. I suppose another fake award doesn’t hurt does it, but I really feel like he could and should have done more with this when the opportunity was right there.

NY Music Review is less impressive. It’s just a logo and then that same Anthony Kiedis interview from Top Rock Press, but not even on a website that even looks like it’s been made properly. Also a cool advert for chiropractors which I suppose are pretty useful in the music industry right (although that is probably targeted to me, sure).

The point is though that the website sucks and crucially, Jered has also forgotten to feature any information about himself on this website. This makes me believe that maybe even the man himself didn’t think that anyone would go so far down the rabbit hole that they would find themselves here. Sorry to prove you wrong pal.

If this isn’t enough evidence that it’s just him making it all up, then I can also point you to the fact that all the websites are also registered to the same GoDaddy account. Busted.

Of course, there’s one thing that you can’t really fake on the internet and that’s Spotify plays. This screenshot gives a truer representation of Jered Threatin’s popularity and it’s more than doubled in number since I first looked at it yesterday due to his recent viral fame because of his botched UK Tour.

Busted again.

OK so to recap, here’s what we’ve managed to establish now: Jered Threatin has gone to extreme EXTREME lengths to convince the world that he’s a bonafide rockstar, but as you can see, it’s fairly easy to figure out that there’s absolutely no way he’s as big as he’s claiming to be (it took me way longer to write this then it did to figure it out, probably about 10 minutes to figure it), so you’re probably now wondering just how he managed to get himself booked at some of the most prestigious venues in the UK?

It’s a good question. Again, maybe you don’t have that much information about how playing at a venue works, but normally a promoter will contact the venue and book it out for the night and then proceed to promote the night and the band in question, hence their title. Sometimes the venue will book a band themselves and promote the night in house if they think it’s going to be successful. Normally a booking agent will pick up a band and inform the promoters/venues that they’re touring and need a show and sort out a deal for them. That’s the way this works.

I obviously already had an account of the Bristol show from the original post, so decided to hit up the Camden Underworld to get an idea of what their night with Jered Threatin entailed. The Facebook Event for the gig has been deleted, but I have it under strong authority that about 300 people were attending, but they were all based in Brazil as was the case with the Bristol show. I guess Threatin doesn’t play down in South America, so often so they have to come over to London or Bristol to catch him.

Anyway, Patrice Lovelace from the Underworld was kind enough to get back to me and said the following:

We were contacted by Threatin’s agent Casey Palmer at Stage Right Bookings about the show and he booked the venue out himself. He claimed to have sold 291 tickets on his end which seemed strange to us as we had only sold three. Only three people turned up to the gig and the support band brought them. About three people watched Threatin’s set. His band were all session musicians and it was a completely awful experience for everyone involved. The bar only made £30 all night so it was a waste of time for the venue, although at least the venue’s hire out fee was covered. We would NEVER book an artist like this in-house, it was a hire out and as we’re not that cheap to hire we assumed the “promoter/agent” was serious. They spent £650 + VAT (£780) hiring Underworld for that waste of time! We’ve never experienced something like this before, we just took the hire money knowing the artist was horrendous but assuming the agent was truthful about how many fans without taste in music he had 😉 Literally three people watched Threatin play. The night was a complete and utter disaster.

Same old story there huh? I could have contacted other venues to look into them but was it really worth it? I knew what they were going to say. It seems kind of clear what has happened here, as bizarre as it is.

To sum it up, it seems like Jered Threatin has spent a considerable amount of time creating a fake online presence for himself which gives out the impression that he is a literal monolith of a rock star. He then used this online presence to book his own tour of the UK and Europe using his OWN money to buy out the venues and then proceeded to embark on said tour and play to literally three or four people a night in venues that literally hold between five or six hundred people when at capacity.

In case you don’t realise, let’s just break down how much that has probably cost the guy. If you have enough money to fly yourself and your band over to the UK (say about £2500), hire backline and driver and tour manager (probably at least £500 a day or something), hire out every single venue on the tour (assuming the Underworld’s fee is about the same price as all the others so £750 a day) and also pay your bandmates and provide food/hotels etc (I dunno maybe like another £500 a day?) then why would you do that to literally play to absolutely nobody? For a 16 day tour the guy is literally paying at least £30,000 to travel around Europe and probably play to about 40 people in total on the whole tour (I think I’ve undervalued it as well so it’s probably costing him more). That’s literal insanity.

OK, so playing Devil’s Advocate here whilst there is some logic that maybe the support band would draw a crowd and they would stick around to watch you, is it really worth paying £30,000 on the off chance you might pick up a couple of fans from these shows when you know NOBODY is coming to see you? Maybe to Threatin it is but I doubt it is to anyone else in the history of the world.

Just think about what he could have actually done with that money in order to achieve his dream of being a rock star.

Maybe hire an actual PR person to get your name out there? That’s not even gonna cost £30,000 a year pal and would be a whole lot more useful.

Maybe hire someone to make you a completely sick music video that wasn’t made on an old version of Windows Media Player? Wouldn’t cost you anywhere near £30,000 I wouldn’t have thought.

Maybe he could have even bought onto another fucking tour for that money so that he could have definitely played with some bigger bands and people could have actually seen him play. I reckon you probably could have bought onto most tours if you were willing to give them £12,000 (that was the fee for booking the venues) rather than just booking out your own venue and playing to literally nobody. I’m sure Monster Magnet are looking for one last payday, hit them up.

And finally, if you’re gonna do this elaborate social media ruse as well why didn’t you just pay someone to make a decent fucking website? For the love of God.

It’s the most bizarre thing I’ve ever heard of and this has been confirmed by pretty much everyone I’ve ever met in the music industry. The guy has absolutely no clue and is literally pissing his money away on one of the most pointless endeavours anyone has ever embarked on.

Obviously the big question here is why? Just WHY would anybody do this? Surely if you want to be a rock star then your time would be better spent actually promoting yourself on social media to people rather than creating fake profiles to make it look like you’re a big deal when you’re actually not? That’s seems so unbelievably obvious to me?

I don’t have an answer as to his motives though unfortunately. Patrice from the Underworld reckons that he has really rich parents who have given him a load of money and literally let him do whatever the hell he wants with it. Whilst that’s almost undoubtedly true, it still doesn’t answer the question of why he’s chosen to spend his money in the worst possible and most bizarre way ever. Whilst the guy’s music might not be for everyone, I’m pretty sure there are people out there who will like it somewhere, so why spend all your time creating one humongous lie and then perpetuating it by going out every night and playing to nobody? I just don’t understand.

One other option is that maybe Threatin is performing some kind of social experiment/internet art project akin to Joaquin Phoenix’s I’m Still Here, but I just don’t believe that’s possible at all. There’s no way someone would do this just to get a reaction because literally nobody has reacted at all for all the time he’s been doing it until now. Could he really have been building it up this long and waiting for the penny to drop?

I don’t buy it. It seems clear that he’s some kind of messed up narcissist who was determined to create fake attention when he couldn’t get any himself. A truly unfathomable, unbelievable and possibly mentally unwell person. There’s literally no logical explanation for his actions except that he might possible be deranged or insane or something.

In the interests of fairness, I did reach out to Threatin over Instagram and I emailed his PR and manager to try and get his side of events. I didn’t receive a reply on his Instagram – which appears to still be running and operated by him – or his PR/manager. That’s probably because the PR and manager don’t actually exist though.

I did talk to the support band at the Underworld Evyltyde (cool name) too who kinda stuck up for him and said it wasn’t that unusual to see empty shows all over the country. Whilst I believe that, I don’t believe that it’s usual for people to create fake rock lord personas and then spend thousands of pounds to book out a venue thousands of miles away from them when there’s a literal zero per cent chance of anyone showing up. They did say that Jered seemed like a nice guy though, as did his band and tour manager. At least he’s got that.

Another friend of a friend emailed a different support band called The Unresolved and this was the message they received back:

Lol. That’s so rich that he’s saying that when literally all the evidence seems to be pointing at the fact that THREATIN IS HIS OWN TOUR MANAGER/BOOKER. Or at least his mom or dad is.

Yes, I know that there’s a tour manager on the tour with him – and it would be great to figure out who that is – but I think it’s safe to say he’s probably in on this ruse with Threatin too. Or maybe he’s actually behind it and has engineered this whole situation and Threatin is just an unwilling pawn? I don’t really buy that theory because it’s too ridiculous, but I don’t know the truth so I’m just putting it out there because I’m trying to figure this out but nothing I’ve come up with seems like a viable version of the truth.

Anyway, this kinda seems like the end of the story. Threatin’s Facebook account has already been deleted at the time of writing and I imagine most of his other fake websites and social media accounts might follow suit, as it doesn’t seem like he’s enjoying the idea of being busted about all this. Hopefully he keeps them up though. I don’t know if Threatin’s remaining shows are continuing or not given what Patrice Lovelace said she was doing, but if he’s playing your city please go along and see what it’s all about. At the very least it will probably double the attendance at his shows and help the venues out.

The remaining tour dates are below:

The irony is that given how much this story seems to be blowing up on my social media in the past day or so, Threatin may well end up achieving his dreams of being a huge rock star. It’s just going to be for all the wrong reasons, as he’ll be remembered as a bizarre Tommy Wisseau character that people just love because he literally put their whole heart and soul and life’s savings into doing something that was completely nonsensical and beyond insane. But hey I just wrote all this about him, so fair play to the guy. Rock on brother.

Oh and hey if you’re reading this and you are Jared Threatin himself then feel free to get in touch. Would love to hear from you – no fake people pretending to be Jared Threatin though please. Same goes with anyone who plays in his backing band or one of the ten or so people that actually bought tickets to his shows.