Benefield: World-traveling troubadour Jake Stotlemeyer sets down roots in Santa Rosa

About 16 hours before he was due at his first nine to five job in some time, Jake Stotlemeyer pulled out his guitar and played a tune.

My heart’s on fire but my soul feels so cold

I don’t think I got what it takes to be alone

I never told, no

I never told nobody that

Barefoot, in shorts, long hair pulled back from his face, Stotlemeyer, who performs under the name King of Scoundrels, and sometimes just King of S, has no accompaniment — just a guy and his guitar.

It’s been this way for the 32-year-old Stotlemeyer for years. For almost a decade, he’s been wandering the world, singing his songs.

I climbed a thousand mountains and I swam the Seven Seas

Yes I’ve done the things they’ve only done in their dreams

But I done it all, swear to god baby, I done it all

Stotlemeyer, unlike many a troubadour before him, is not taking artistic liberties with those nods to wanderlust.

Not many at least.

He really has climbed mountains and swum seas.

He’s lived on six of the seven continents. He’s shoveled cement in Romania, taught English in China, manned a boat off the coast of Nova Scotia, studied Mandarin on a scholarship in Taiwan, was in the Peace Corps in Albania, worked in hostels in Istanbul and Bolivia, farmed in Peru and served customers at a Dairy Queen in St. Louis, Missouri.

And more. Other places, other adventures.

But at every stop, he’s had his guitar. He’s played and sung his songs in upscale hotels and on the streets, on boats and in hostels. His songs (he’s got a tune called “Dancing Shoes”) have inspired people to cut a rug on trains.

His songs have sometimes paid for his meals. Sometimes not. But they have always kept him company.

On a recent afternoon in Santa Rosa, as he played a song about doing what most people only dream of doing, Stotlemeyer was preparing to do what many people regularly do — head to the office.

In the morning, he’d start his gig as a nutrition specialist with Catholic Charities.

“As of tomorrow, I’m a working man,” he said.

After 10 years of travel, having seen the world, Stotlemeyer has chosen to make his new home base — for making a life and making his music — in Santa Rosa.

A nice place to live

“Having seen so much of the world, I have come to appreciate a nice place to live,” he said.

Santa Rosa is it.

He lives near Howarth Park. He runs in the park system that connects Howarth to Spring Lake Regional Park and Trione-Annadel State Park.

“That is such a diamond in Santa Rosa,” he said.

There is something fitting about Stotlemeyer running in Santa Rosa, meeting people on foot, taking the time to really explore a place.

He’s been doing that all over the world for a decade.

“I think, in a lot of ways, my quest has been to just understand everyone at a more profound level and the way that I’ve been able to do that is by walking everywhere and experiencing it myself,” he said.

And he’s found playing music is a natural ice breaker, no matter the differences in language or culture.

“You are sitting at a hostel and you don’t know who to talk to and then there is this long haired, unshaven guy with a guitar who isn’t too bad,” he said.

As a kid growing up in St. Louis, Stotlemeyer “begrudgingly” studied the piano for years.

But as an anthropology major at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, Stotlemeyer made his own kind of discovery.

“I picked up the guitar and realized it was much more fun to play at parties and easier to carry,” he said.

The guitar would become a lifelong companion.

As an undergrad, a semester in Ghana and another in Ecuador, gave him the travel bug. Visiting his sister at her host job in Greece sealed it.

“I sort of saw her life there and thought, ‘Oh this is interesting,’” he said. “There is so much to see and hear and that I need to taste and just do.”

So he did.

A month after he graduated from the University of Wisconsin, he went to Israel. But it was expensive, so he moved on.

He was in Bucharest when someone told him about WWOOFing — Worldwide Opportunities on Organic Farming.

“You basically trade labor for housing and food,” he said. “It was so great. When I was 22, I had a lot of labor to give.”

He signed on at a small farm in rural Romania, but his host was less than ideal.

“I was still full of my romantic vision of working hard,” he said. “But he was building a stone compound and I was shoveling a lot of cement into the grinder.”

So Stotlemeyer moved on.

And at almost every stop, he’d play his music. Sometimes he’d put a hat out to collect coins and the occasional bill, sometimes he’d play at hostels, sometimes he’d play in train cars.

He figured out that he made significantly more in countries where the smallest coins were worth something.

"If it’s worth a halfpenny, people have no problem throwing that into your hat,“ he said.

Much of the time, money felt pretty tight.

At a stop in Thailand, he fell off a motorbike. It wasn’t anything serious, but it was serious enough.

“I had really bad road rash on my knee, they wanted to call 911, an ambulance, and I was like ‘No money, no money,’” he said.

The people who helped him insisted. An ambulance took him to a hospital, a doctor tended his knee, gave him medicine and sent him away.

The bill was $12.

And on top of that, a pair of inn keepers took him in for free. He stayed with them for a month while his leg healed.

“I call them my angels,” he said.

Stotlemeyer’s globe-trotting took him to Australia where he hoped to get serious about his music. He heard it was a welcoming scene for street musicians.

“You have to apply for a permit. It’s a true profession, the street performing,” he said. “The cost of living there is so expensive.”

Stotlemeyer took advantage of free entry to museums during the day, and doing what he could at night.

“I would spend my time walking around museums and seeing fine art, meanwhile living like a vagrant and vagabond,” he said.

He ran out of money.

So he flew home to St. Louis, lived with his parents and got a job at Dairy Queen.

But he didn’t stay long before heading back out.

In Ho Chi Minh City, Stotlemeyer caught folks’ attention on a popular Facebook page for expats after he posted videos of himself singing.

He got a regular gig at the Caravelle Hotel. He met a music producer. He got serious about recording his music.

But then, almost on cue, he picked up and left.

He called it a quarter life crisis.

He joined the Peace Corps. He went to Albania where he taught English.

But then the coronavirus pandemic sent him home, again, to his parents’ house. Then his parents moved.

So, with the world closed down to travelers like him, he followed his parents to New Mexico.

He got his master’s degree in Eastern classics. He met a woman in her third year of medical residency who would eventually move to Santa Rosa.

So he moved too.

But then he accepted a scholarship to Taiwan to study Mandarin.

But he was in love.

“My partner moved to Santa Rosa and she wanted me back here,” he said.

So he returned to Santa Rosa and he brought his guitar with him.

In the spring of 2022 he released a 5-song EP he dubbed “Twenty Twenty Two.” His songs are on just about every platform he can think of: Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube and he’s on Instagram. You can buy his stuff on BandCamp.

The King of Scoundrels plays open mics. He’s played at Brew. And at HopMonk.

Audiences are appreciative.

He uses the word “stability” to describe his life right now.

“I think I really enjoyed the lifestyle of going into a hostel and playing and singing on the street, that was really, really fun, but I think now with this added stability I can do more for my arts,” he said.

He’s working on a memoir. He’s working on his music. And he’s working nine to five.

He doesn’t worry that a work-a-day job will stem the flow of his creative juices. In fact, he said, it may feed them.

And he hopes to be performing soon at an open mic near you.

The scenery may have changed but the song remains the same.

This ain’t meant to be a good song, this ain’t meant to sing along

This ain’t meant to be anything other than I love you

From behind the guitar, baby

From behind the guitar, baby.

“Very few people get to live their dreams,” he said. “I just want to be an artist and want to never kind of extinguish that flame.”

You can reach Staff Columnist Kerry Benefield at 707-526-8671 or kerry.benefield@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @benefield.