Scamtown - Threatin | 8

Episode Date: September 23, 2024

In 2018, a band in Bristol, England, is asked to open for Threatin, a successful hard rock group from Los Angeles that's on a European tour. But once the tour begins, things turn strange. When some in the rock community start to investigate Threatin’s frontman, they unravel a host of lies and schemes that leaves everyone confused and wondering if it was all just performance art. Scamtown is an Apple Original podcast, produced by FunMeter. Follow and listen on Apple Podcasts.http://apple.co/Scamtown

For those of us who have dreamed of being rock stars, you kind of know the drill. You struggle playing in garages, small clubs, busing your butt, gig after gig, just trying to build some sort of recognition, waiting for that big break. And then, finally, you get an opportunity of a lifetime. The chance to open for a major band during their international tour. You spend weeks rehearsing, inviting friends, and counting down the days until the show. But what happens when the gig you thought would change everything turns into something much worse? Welcome to Scam Town, an Apple original podcast produced by Fun Meter.

I'm Brian Lizarte. And I'm James Lee Hernandez. We're filmmakers who've been trading stories now for quite some time, obsessed and compelled to bring some of our favorites to life. We love a surprising heist, an intricate scam, or just pulling back the curtain on something you think you know. Entering a world that's stranger than fiction and writing that line between comedy and tragedy. This is Scam Town, a place for our favorite stories that do just that.

Today's episode, Threaten. It's August 2018. Ed, a young guy from Bristol, England, is planning some gigs with his small, unsigned band, Camino. When he gets a brief generic email from Casey Marshall, a booking agent at Stage Right Bookings, asking if he'd like to play a gig in his hometown at a club called The Exchange. The most brief, generic, sort of very general sort of email. All it said was, would Camino be interested in playing on the 6th of November that year? No details about the show, any of the other bands or anything like that.

He decides to respond and ask for more info. They get a response back and learn that they would be one of the opening bands for Threaten, a hard rock band out of Los Angeles. It went on to say that Threaten was signed to SPV Records. It listed other artists on SPV Records' roster, such as White Snake, Scorpions, Motorhead. It mentioned that Threaten's latest single had charted top 40 in seven different countries. And I think the real sort of clincher was that Casey had dropped at the end of the email to say that the show should provide us with exposure to a wider audience.

I mean, Camino could get a lot of new fans and maybe some attention from a record label. You know, that kind of sounds like a dream come true. I gotta be honest, I would do basically anything that involves Whitesnake. You gotta remember David Coverdale back in the day with the beautiful flowing locks and ultra tight pants, the shredding riffs and the iconic melody of their hit song, Here I Go Again.

Here I go again on my own. I mean, come on. Do you remember the music video? Tony Katayn dancing around on two Jaguars. It was like the hair metal pinnacle. I guess I didn't realize the love you had for Whitesnake. Cool. Anyway, so the show in Bristol was Threatened's fourth stop on their 16-day European tour,

playing 10 different venues across the UK, France, Italy, and Germany. The tour was kicking off at The Underworld, a legendary venue known as the heart of the alt-rock scene in London. Showcasing bands like the Foo Fighters, Radiohead, and Queens of the Stone Age. These, of course, aren't no-name bands. This is cream of the crop, the best of the best, and Threatened seemed to be right up there with them. The band was led by Jared Threatened. And if you remember Lord of the Rings, Legolas, that's basically Jared, complete with long, flowing hair, a thin frame, dressed in all black, and a leather jacket. You could easily picture this guy running towards Mordor in a big, epic scene all while shredding a gnarly guitar riff.

I mean, you can hear those skills on their song, Living is Dying. Living is dying. Which, by the way, that song by Threaten has over 1.4 million views on YouTube. The exchange in Bristol could hold 250 people, which is a pretty decent size. And it just so happened to be one of Ed's favorite venues in the city. It's got that real kind of like rock and roll vibe. Guitars are screeching, the cymbals are going, and everybody's jumping up and down. The sweat's flying off of people, the floors are sticky,

and people are slipping over, and it's great fun. They start rehearsing, getting their act together, until on a dark and stormy night in November, the evening of the show arrives. I always have this joke that it rains every time that we play a show, and I'm pretty sure this was the same sort of dark, cold, wet November night. But still, Ed and his bandmates were optimistic. They're not only curious to see what this threatened guy is all about, but it looked like they were going to be playing to a full house. Looking at the event page on Facebook and seeing 200, 250 names on there attending

and thinking that this is a sellout, this is great, we're going to be playing to a big audience, it's everything it cracks up to be. They begin loading in. So we go through into the venue room, and it's at that point that we're introduced to Threaten's tour manager. She said, yeah, I'm the tour manager for Threaten, and she was running the merch table. They still hadn't seen the band, which isn't unusual before a show.

So Ed and his band soundcheck, grab a few beers, and wait for the gig to start. It's not really until right before you go on that you actually take a moment to look out to the audience. And that's when you get that real sort of kick of energy because you see the audience ready to play and you go, right, this is us for the next half an hour or so. Finally, the moment they've been waiting for arrives. They walk out on stage, look out at the crowd, and see about six people staring back at them. Only six?

This was supposed to be a sold-out show. Where the hell is everybody? If Jared Threaten is such a big deal, why would no one come to the show? And so begins the mystery. I had a follower of mine on Twitter who lives in London,

who got a hold of me and said, like, hey, you should look into this. And there's this guy, he's been claiming to sell tons of tickets. He's from America. He's touring in Europe. And there's been a couple shows, and no one's come claiming to sell tons of tickets. He's from America. He's touring in Europe. And there's been a couple shows and no one's come out to them. And the support bands and venues are angry because he supposedly sold all these tickets and there was no one there. That's Ben Umanoff, co-founder of the website Metal Sucks, where he wrote under the pen name Vince Neil Steam. We named ourselves Jewish versions of 80s metal rock stars. You know, like Vince Neil from Monthly Crew.

I absolutely love this, by the way. The co-founder of this site went by Axel Rosenberg. It's brilliant. I set aside an afternoon and I started checking it out, which included some of the promo materials that he had put together himself that were, to put it very lightly, they were very fishy. There was a video that purported to show how popular his live shows were. This is some of the audio from the promo video that Ben is talking about, complete with another tasty jam from Threatened called Impulse.

I've lost control, so I'm done As I feel the impulse taking hold But the way it was edited, you could either only see him on the stage or you could only see the audience. Never both in the same frame. As I feel the impulse rising or you could only see the audience. Never both in the same frame. The promo video continues this way.

Oscillating between massive crowd shots, fans having a great time, and Jared alone. And the more I started diving into it, there were all sorts of examples like this. Like there were his Facebook page or Twitter page had a disproportionate amount of followers from Brazil. Which is sort of warning sign number one. More than likely, if you're an unknown artist in California, these likes and followers were paid for. To keep up appearances, basically, to make them look bigger than they are.

So Ben writes up a story with all these findings and publishes it on Metal Socks. It was a Friday night. I went about my business. I went to bed. And I woke up the next morning, Saturday morning. I had a whole bunch of messages, emails, texts, direct messages on Twitter. The website traffic was through the roof, like as high as it had been at any time in recent memory. And that was the moment I realized, like, wow, like this is something big, like something's going on here. Ben begins diving even deeper, eager to unravel Jared's various schemes. He created a number of fake companies that would make him appear more legit. He made

a website for a fake booking agency, a website for a fake management company. If anyone were to go to these sites and just click around a little bit, looked legit. They looked good. They were professionally designed enough. Not amazing, but they looked fine. Which makes sense why Ed never questioned getting an email from Stage Right Bookings. But who was that agent, Casey Marshall? Was that really just Jared Threaten? And if you went to that website at the time, you'd see a bunch of bands listed. That sound like real band names, but are actually fake.

For example, there would be Third Eye, which kind of sounds like Third Eye Blind. And, you know, maybe if you're reading past it really quickly, you might subliminally pick up on Third Eye Blind. Other bands mentioned are Cars, Fiona, Youngbloods, and Michael Anthony. Which could make you think of the Cars, Fiona Apple, the Youngbloods, all which are amazing. And then there's Michael Anthony, which either could mean Latino pop sensation Mark Anthony or the bass player from Van Halen. But what about Jared's label, Superlative Records? You mean the record label founded by John Noble and Ken Burns, which may or may not be the

legendary documentary director? I mean, the guy's talented. So we've got a fake label, a fake booking agent. But what does every up-and-coming band need? Press. Believe it or not, Jared even built an entire news outlet called Top Rock Press to further bolster his claims of legitimacy. It appeared like he was copying stories that had already been written on other music sites, not even changing the byline, and posting them on his site mixed in with news about Threatened. It's just really hard to believe that somebody put so much effort into this instead of just writing songs or practicing guitar.

Which begs the question, is his music even good? Most of the people we interviewed said it was kind of forgettable. And maybe even worse, it wasn't even metal. It's almost closer to something like Alice in Chains or like, you know, I don't know, Creed or something like that. Probably not quite as heavy as either of those two bands. Can't believe I just called Creed heavy. Ed, who opened for Threatened back in Bristol, remembers coming home that night bewildered from the show they just played. They left right as Threatened started playing to an empty room.

Camino's bassist pulled out his phone and started to record an attempt to memorialize a very strange night. Welcome to the show. Oh, sorry, this is awkward. I'm sort of sat there, lights down, though, and I'm scrolling through my phone and every single thing, every single social site, Facebook page, Twitter page, anything that I can find with anything connected to Jared Threaten to see if anybody else has actually reported that this has happened.

And like Ben from Metal Sucks, he had done his own sleuthing. We sort of realized that the numbers don't add up. Scanning through phones, scanning through YouTube videos and starting to make some interesting realizations that maybe Jared Threaten wasn't everything that he cracked up to be. And then scrolling through Jared's Instagram, Ed makes another startling realization. I see a picture there of Jared Threaten with his tour manager. And I find out that his tour manager was actually also his wife. Suddenly I'm going through other venues pages, I'm going through other bands pages, and I'm starting to find evidence that essentially everybody else who's taken part in this so far

has had exactly the same experience. Something's being fabricated somewhere along the lines. So all of this seems kind of obvious. Why would these venues even book Jared in the first place? What Jared did was he approached venues and said, I will rent out your entire room for a set fee and then just leave the ticket sales up to me. I'll handle that. And he made sure that he could play shows, basically. A lot of venues run multiple shows a week. At most, they would look up a band and make sure

they exist and had a social media presence of some sort, which Threaten had. And if a promoter or booking agent was hiring out that venue, why would they lie about ticket sales? Worldwide, the last couple of years have been really tough on venues, particularly the more grassroots ones like The Exchange. Few can stay afloat with the rising cost of rent, utilities, staffing, and insurance. And many venues in the UK are choosing to close their doors altogether.

So the promise of a sold-out show really means something to these places. The thing that sucks for the venues was that they were expecting a room full of people to spend money on drinks and to earn money that way. That's a room full of people to spend money on drinks and to earn money that way. That's a big part of how venues earn money. And they didn't get any of that. Which means all of these venues were losing thousands of pounds on bar tabs. And the people hired to help run the event — think bar staff, security, friend of house, you name it, could lose a night of work. So I'm sitting in my living room on my laptop.

It's three in the morning. And my wife comes out of bed to go to the bathroom. She sees that the light's on. She pokes her head in. She's like all squinty-eyed, like looking at me. She just goes, she just asks, Threaten? And I said, yeah. And she just turns around and goes back to bed.

Ben was tracking the tour as it unfolded in real time. I can just picture him up at all hours, surrounded by cups of coffee, clicking on link after link, trying to find everything he can about Jared Threaten. I mean, I would too. The absurdity of this hoax is unreal. Why would you go through all of this effort? What is Jared's end goal here? Is it to become famous? Or is it something else entirely? Through Ben's research, he learns that

Threaten was essentially a solo act, with hired musicians from the U.S. to fill his backing band. And they had no idea this whole thing was a ruse. At some point over the process of the two days after the first story broke and the subsequent stories that came that

exposed more of the scheme, obviously the band was getting wind of it. It was all over the internet. While stopped in Belfast, Northern Ireland, the rest of the band catch the press coming out about the tour, calling Jared a fraud. They confront him about it.

But Jared denies everything, claiming he has no idea what's going on. He even throws the fake booking agent and manager under the bus, saying, I'm the guy, I'm the artist, I just show up and play. Everyone else takes care of that stuff. But they don't buy it. And two of his bandmates decide to quit the tour and fly back to the States. The rest of the tour just crashes from there,

leaving Jared a metal pariah. The metal blogs have a field day, including a vlog from Spectre Sound Studios. Hey, everybody. It's time for the frickin' news. And wow, do we ever have a story for you tonight. Let me introduce you to worldwide touring sensation Threat In. See, it's spelled with an I-N. The story spread like wildfire,

and journalists like Ben were clamoring to get a hold of Jared to no avail. Then, on November 14th, 2018, Jared breaks his digital silence and tweets. What's fake news? I turned an empty room into an international headline. If you're reading this, you're part of the illusion. Jared and the whole threatened saga had everyone curious. Who was this guy? Even the BBC wanted to know. Born in Mobley, Missouri in the US, Jared Eames, as he was known, had dreams of being world famous. He shared his father's love of rock music and was introduced to bands like Metallica and Black Sabbath. I mean, that's pretty sweet.

My dad tried to introduce me to Hank Williams back in the day, but that was the extent of his love of music. He actually just preferred talk radio. Jared grew up around music. He started playing instruments around age 10 and even started a black metal band with his brother Scott. At some point, according to Scott, Jared sort of started taking control of a lot of the band's image and likeness in music and taking credit for everything, even though it had been collaborative. And Scott simply had enough and quit and went on his own path. And so did Jared, leaving Moberly behind. In 2012, he moved to California, where he decided to give this whole rock star thing a go with his wife, Kelsey,

a.k.a. Threatens Tour Manager. In December of 2018, a whole month after his failed tour, Jared begins granting interviews, speaking with the likes of Rolling Stone and the BBC, sticking to his guns that this had all been his plan, that this was just performance art, Like when Shia LaBeouf put a paper bag over his head and let people come in and make him cry. Or when Joaquin Phoenix decided to give up acting to pursue his career as a rapper. Jared even stated that he was the

one that originally tipped off the media, anonymously, of course. But the tips were actually sent after Ben had broken open his scheme. Jared also claimed he had developed a massive cult following and had tons of online orders. Ben immediately buys a t-shirt, looks at his receipt, and sees that he's order number 25. Are you kidding me? Order number 25?

Like, okay, Mr. Hundreds of shirts are flying off the shelves. that he's order number 25. Are you kidding me? Order number 25? Like, okay, Mr. Hundreds of shirts are flying off the shelves. Ben, throughout his reporting, tried to get an interview with Jared, but was never successful. But he also kind of felt that the outlets that did secure interviews with him went a little too soft on the guy. You know, is he telling the truth about how he's saying it was the plan all along, or is he not? What do you think, reader?

But what a lot of the articles failed to mention is that, although it was fun to laugh at, a lot of people were hurt by Jared's plan. Two of Jared's bandmates took him to small claims court to try to recoup the money they lost while on tour. This includes everything from their flights back home, lost wages, to equipment and musical instruments they had to pay for out of their own pocket. Jared and his wife Kelsey never showed up, and they won by default. And like we mentioned before, the venues he duped likely lost out on thousands of pounds in drink sales

and hiring staff for what they thought was going to be a sold-out show. But Jared also lost respect from his own family. His brother Scott, who's a pretty successful musician in his own right, playing in various metal bands and touring all around the world, releases a statement distancing himself from his brother. In brief, Scott says that he is disappointed in the choices that his brother made and that Jared could have succeeded in music if he put his mind towards it in a legitimate way because he was a talented musician. Instead, he chose the path of manipulation and deceit. His statement goes on to say, quote, while he may try to spin all of this as an elaborate hoax of sorts, I can assure you, knowing my brother, that this

indeed was a failed attempt at entering the music industry, unquote. He also reveals an estrangement in their relationship. The brothers haven't spoken in over a decade. There was also a Facebook comment on either Jared's personal profile or maybe on the band's, and it was a comment left by his father a couple years prior, saying essentially, where is my son? You know, if anyone knows, please have him reach out to me. It's heartbreaking to see a message like that.

But you kind of have to wonder, since this is a story about someone who's not been totally truthful online, how do we know that this is really Jared's dad? You know, that is a good point, Brian. I think we don't know for sure. It will just have to live in the mystery that is Jared Threaten. So after the initial flurry of interviews and news stories died down, so did Jared. It was essentially radio silence.

Until a reunion is announced, James, why don't you go ahead and read that poster in like the most rock and roll way you possibly can. Oh, I got this one, Brian. Coming to you live. Rebreaking the underworld. The infamous Threatened Saga continues back where it all began. November 1st, 2019.

London, England. I can hear the crowd now, James. Pretty good. So the show had everyone wondering, even the BBC, just what was up his sleeve? How many people will show up to see him this year

remains to be seen. Yeah, I first heard about the whole threatened thing, situation, whatever you want to call it, right about when like the first stunt happened. I just so happened to be following a lot of metal and rock pages on Facebook. That's Chris Jackson. And I was also just like, why is that bad? Why are people so mad at him? Because I don't know. I think like just the system can be so broken and so against us that if you find a thing that works and you're just taking advantage, you see an opening and you make it work for

you. Chris, like pretty much everyone in this story, is a musician. One day, Chris receives a message. Hey, there's this show happening in London and we need a bass player. Are you interested? And me being a starving musician, I was like, yes. Okay, well, this guy might be an asshole, but this might never happen again. So why not? He auditions, gets the gig playing bass, and begins rehearsing with Threaten and the other new members of the band. And Chris actually starts to get to know Jared, the man who everyone just a year prior had nothing but questions about.

He's a pretty regular guy. Definitely likes his privacy. Definitely has a bit of a, you know, kind of dark sense of humor. Likes to sort of mess with people. But he's not a bad guy by any means. And according to Chris, starts confiding in him, even sharing some of his motivations for the whole act. He told me he has some condition where one of his arteries abnormally like grew into his lung. So he's basically constantly hemorrhaging blood into his lungs. And he's gone to a lot of doctors about it. And they were basically all like, I don't even know how you're alive right now. So I think he was basically in the mindset of, I could die literally whenever, might as well just get famous.

That is what it seems like was the main catalyst, I would say. That sounds absolutely horrible. One can imagine with death on the table at any minute, you could feel like you just don't have a lot to lose. Eventually, the band heads to London. While waiting at the baggage claim area for his bass, Chris strikes up a conversation with another group of musicians. And they asked

what I was doing in London, and I told them I was playing with Threaten, and they just, they gave me this look of disbelief, like, is he back? Yeah, they just me this look of disbelief. Like, is he back? Yeah, they just couldn't believe that he was somehow accepted back to play at that same venue again. Oh yeah, baby.

Threatens back. And Chris is about to play the weirdest gig of his life. Cut to the underworld in Camden, London. We come in and Jared actually installs a curtain into the stage. And he puts up his own sort of billboard behind the stage. But when the show actually happens, the way it opens is the curtains are closed. We are side stage. So I think him and Brandon are on one side. Me and Elijah, the drummer, are on the other side.

About 50 people or so came to check out this return show. Far better than six. As the show starts, the stage is completely black. Then a recording comes on of soundbites saying Jared's name over and over. The Metal Sucks fan who tipped off Ben of the whole scheme is also there. He takes out his phone and begins recording. There's just soundbites happening of different news people talking about him. Arrogant.

Self-centered. Egotistical. He is this evil genius. I don't know how many of them are real. It doesn't really matter. And then the first song starts, curtains open, and the stage is filled with mannequins that are holding fake instruments, wearing t-shirts that say fake band. To be clear, no one is actually playing music.

This is a pre-recorded track of one of Threatened's songs. The stage is actually empty, with the exception of a few mannequins. I remember as that was happening, Elijah, the drummer, turns around to me and is like, man, what are we doing? I was like, yeah, the drummer, turns around to me and is like, man, what are we doing? I was like, yeah, this is pretty out there. While watching the show, the Metal Sucks fan tweets, everyone except me is a journalist tonight, and then goes on to say, you can tell they're all media because no one here looks like they're enjoying it. The second song starts.

Jared grabs his mic, ready to sing. He takes in a deep inhale and then points the mic to his mannequin. And just staring directly at the mannequin with this, like, the thinker sort of pose. Completely just focused on the mannequin. And every once in a while, he'll take another deep breath, put the mic up to his mouth, and then point it to the mannequin again. And he just keeps doing that. And you could just see people in the audience just like, oh my God, dude, what are you doing? Stop.

Like, he's getting on everyone's nerves so much. And he does the whole second song that way. The antics continue from there. At one point, Jared sings and then mouths the lyric, seemingly pretending that the mic was cutting in and out. His hair even gets stuck in Chris' bass. There's even a blow-up doll on stage with a T-shirt reading, BBC News. And then, at the end, Jared, in true rock and roll style, trashes the stage.

He's ripping down everything. Just destroying it. And we kind of just get off. Let him do his thing. And then he gets off stage. He goes to the green room and he collapses. And he's hacking. He's just completely

overexerted himself to his full limitations having the condition he has. Jared does a few interviews after the show and then fades back into obscurity. Here's Ben. Like, where do you go from there? What do you do next? Like, when your big comeback show that's supposed to support the premise that this was the plan all along fails, like, what can you really do other than maybe go dark for an extended period

of time and then come back with something that hopefully actually does grab people's attention. But I could also just see him being so demoralized by the whole thing that he just gave up for good. Chris checks in with him from time to time, but no one has really heard from him since. He's just like a guy with a wife and some cats. And yeah, just, it's just doing his own thing. After all of this stuff, I still think he's a great guy. And I do still consider him a friend

so I hope he is doing well I don't know about you James but I feel conflicted about this guy on one hand he lied to venues and his bandmates and people lost money and that's kind of unforgivable but on the other hand he really wanted something so bad and that's kind of unforgivable. But on the other hand,

he really wanted something so bad, he tried something completely outrageous. He put himself out there and it didn't work. In some ways, I also feel a little bad for him. I know what you mean. I feel the same thing too. And unfortunately for the story, we never got to hear directly from either Jared or Kelsey. We reached out to both,

but never heard back. I just can't help, but keep wondering why fake an entire tour just to descend back into obscurity. Nobody knows, but everyone has a theory from Ed. It's an interesting feeling. Listening to Jared threatens opinion of the whole thing about the performance outside of it, Everyone has a theory. From Ed. It's an interesting feeling listening to

Gerard Threaten's opinion of the whole thing about the performance art side of it, because to some extent, it's quite a clever ruse. And to another extent, I just wonder what he thought he could gain from it. He's clearly spent quite a lot of money for a limited amount of exposure.

He's not gained any fans from it, really. he's gained a few people on the internet saying oh yeah well that song's not so bad but it's it's not the same as actually building a kind of buzz with your band so it's a strange thing ben if i trump myself up and make myself appear huge people people will believe it. And they'll have to come down to my shows to see what all the hype is about. And then they'll see how awesome I am in person. And I'll be a huge rock star is basically what his thought process was. And Chris. Say what you want about every other thing I've mentioned in the show. Like he put on a show. He showed that he can really play guitar well.

He did really get a band that knew what they were doing. He was able to get people to show up. So I guess that he didn't really explicitly tell me what his goals were, but I guess that was it. So maybe we've all fallen into Jared's trap and he's fooled the media yet again. You know, here we are, talking about him. But in today's attention economy, Jared's plot kind of makes sense. Go viral and have a successful career.

However, Threaten hasn't won Album of the Year or played the halftime show at the Super Bowl. Well, what I'm looking forward to is, according to Chris, Jared Threaten is now working on a hip-hop album. You know, maybe he can get Eminem's touring agent and blow up. That'll do it. Maybe he'll get 10 fans this time. You know what? Prove us wrong, Jared.

Prove us wrong and blow up. We'd love to see that. On the next episode, the world's most prolific book thief. He said, I'm not so sure if they buried these books in a 20-foot pit and encased it in concrete that he wouldn't have found a way in there because he was that good. That's next week on Scam Town. Scam Town is an Apple original podcast produced by Fun Meter. New episodes come out each Monday. If you want to check out a few extras from our show, you can find us at Fun Meter Official on Instagram.

The show is hosted and executive produced by us. I'm Brian Lozarte. And I'm James Lee Hernandez. Maggie Robinson Katz produced this episode. Mark Hay Brian Lazarte. And I'm James Lee Hernandez. Maggie Robinson-Katz produced this episode. Mark Hay was our researcher. Our co-executive producers are Shannon Pence, Nicole Laufer, and Matt Kay. The show was edited and sound designed by Jude Brewer. Final mixing by Ben Freer from Fiddle Leaf Sound. Music for the podcast was composed by James Newberry. Additional music by Five Alarm. Follow and listen on Apple Podcasts.