Collaborations
Sobule is a prolific collaborator, writing and performing both with other musicians and with artists from nonmusical disciplines, including blogger Ariana Huffington, television producer Sue Rose and comedienne Julia Sweeney.
In the late 90s, Sobule toured with Richard Barone as "The Richard & Jill Show." Together they wrote "Bitter" from Happy Town, "Rock Me To Sleep" from Pink Pearl, "Big Shoes" from I Never Learned to Swim, and "Waiting For The Train" from Barone's Clouds Over Eden album. They also appeared together in the underground film Next Year In Jerusalem, which features another of their compositions, "Everybody's Queer." The pair continue to collaborate, including on a new song, "Odd Girl Out" for Barone's new album, Glow (Bar/None Records, 2010). Their songs have been used on The West Wing. Felicity, Dawson's Creek, South of Nowhere and other television shows.
In 2000, Sobule joined Lloyd Cole's short-lived band The Negatives.
In 2004, she played one of the five leads in the film Mind The Gap with six of her songs featured on the soundtrack.
In 2005, Sobule contributed music to Unfabulous, a popular Nickelodeon TV series about a 13-year-old aspiring songwriter, including a title song performed by Sobule under the program's opening credits. Four Sobule compositions or co-compositions appear on the series star's debut album, Unfabulous and More: Emma Roberts: a Roberts cover version of "Mexican Wrestler" from Sobule's album Pink Pearl; "Punch Rocker" and "94 Weeks (Metal Mouth Freak)," both written by Sobule for Roberts' character to "compose" on the program; and "New Shoes," a track co-written by Sobule with Unfabulous series creator Sue Rose.
In 2006, Sobule met Julia Sweeney, the actress, writer and comedienne, and started performing the "Jill and Julia Show", a compilation of songs and stories. They performed at the James Randi Educational Foundation meeting in Las Vegas on January 19, 2007, as well as at regular showings for the Groundlings Theater in Los Angeles.
Also in 2006, Sobule created a theme song for blogger Ariana Huffington's self-help book On Becoming Fearless. The tune was briefly featured on Huffington's popular aggregated weblog The Huffington Post in a music video featuring vocals by both Sobule and Huffington.
In 2007, Sobule teamed up with John Doe to produce and record a cover of Neil Young's "Down By The River" for the American Laundromat Records benefit CD Cinnamon Girl – Women Artists Cover Neil Young For Charity. Other contributing artists included Lori McKenna, Tanya Donelly, Josie Cotton, Kristin Hersh, Britta Phillips, and The Watsons Twins.
Also in 2007, Sobule's song San Francisco became the first single released by producer Don Was as part of his Wasmopolitan Cavalcade of Recorded Music, an advertiser-sponsored means for the recording and distribution of new music, part of the multimedia website mydamnchannel.com. The pair also collaborated on a 16 minute concert video entitled "Jill Sobule's Dance Party," distributed for free in two parts on both mydamnchannel.com and YouTube.
In May 2008, Sobule released a CD of music from Prozak and the Platypus, a multi-media collaboration of Sobule, playwright Elise Thoron, and graphic artist KellyAnne Hanrahan. The play, written by Thoron (book, lyrics) and Sobule (music) and illustrated in a graphic novella by Hanrahan, tells the story of a fierce young woman, Sara (a musician) and her father Arvin, a neuroscientist, who relocates his family from Los Angeles to Brisbane, Australia to study REM sleep in the platypus, a unique species native to Australia. Shattered by her mother's recent suicide and unhappy with the side-effects of her own treatment for depression, Sara renames herself "Prozak," rages through her songwriting, and rebels. Meanwhile, in her father's lab, Sara finds an unexpected confidant in her father's current lab subject, a jaunty platypus who speaks to her and calls himself "Frankie." In the piece, according to its website, "Music club and science lab become testing grounds in which angry teen and scientist father pit aboriginal mythology against modern neuroscience research. The dreams of a platypus prove to be the link between the two."
Sobule was a frequent guest on National Public Radio's The Bryant Park Project. Her contributions took the form of musical essays offering commentary on contemporary issues, including record-financing in the music industry, the 2007 Writers Guild strike, and the popularity of tarty, uncreative Halloween costumes.
Sobule toured twice with the late Warren Zevon, with whom she shares a penchant for sardonic storytelling. The two artists frequently accompanied one another during each other's sets, and Zevon was known on multiple occasions to take the lead vocal on Sobule's "I Kissed a Girl". Sobule has said that part of their bond came from the fact that she, like Zevon, was best known for a single fluke hit (Zevon's being "Werewolves of London").
In recent public statements, Sobule has expressed interest in compiling a live album, in addition to shifting her musical distribution toward an online-only model, based on quickly produced, "EP" length works.
In 2009 and 2010, Sobule performed with Julia Sweeney in a revue called "Jill and Julia". Sobule and Sweeney originally met at a TED (conference) and performed together at TED in 2008. They brought the show on the road in 2009 and 2010, performing in New York and Denver among other locations. The show is an autobiographical mix of music, stories and commentary.
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