Jedediah P. Aaker (born May 22, 1975) is a musician, performer and a theatrical producer. He is also the cofounder of the Portland Beardsmen. He has worked as bartender for a failing club featured on the fourth season of Bar Rescue and as host of Barfly Bus Tours. Alternative newspaper Willamette Week dubbed him a "beard-about-town". In a 2018 feature article titled "Twilight of the Hipsters", the French edition of Rolling Stone introduced Aaker as an "actor, concert booker, chauffeur for rock stars, and distributor of the Lucky Egg vending machines that he installs in bars."
Portlandia
Portlandia first entered the global consciousness after satirical music video "Dream of the '90s" premiered online in December 2010 and thrust Saturday Night Live star Fred Armisen between a motley assemblage of circus folk, exotic dancers, and idiosyncratically styled local luminaries. Standing directly to the right of Armisen throughout the video while wearing only star-spangled swim briefs, black leather, and a sizable beard, Aaker stood out as the swiftly-trending clip sparked interest worldwide in the forthcoming sketch comedy series. In the process, Aaker soon became widely known as, in the words of Willamette Week, "that guy in underwear and a leather jacket in the 'Dream of the '90s' clip."
In addition to serving as a background actor on several episodes, Aaker has played a scavenger hunt umpire, a member of Spyke's wedding party, and a guest at Nina's birthday party. Ranking the "Best and Worst" of the series' third season, Portland Monthly critic John Chandler determined the "hirsute man-about-town" tied with a veteran theater actress for "Best Performance By A Local". Although "Aaker plays himself (presumably)" in episodes four and five, Chandler wrote, "the man's beard has star quality." By season four, Aaker had appeared in almost two dozen of the 37 episodes then filmed.
Additionally, he served as Kumail Nanjiani's assistant on webisodes of IFC's travelogue series Kumail Tours Portland. When the series finished its eighth and final season in the spring of 2018, its network IFC estimated that the collective number of Aaker's various performances ranked below only co-founders Armisen and Carrie Brownstein.
"Portraitlandia" In 2013, during a month-long residency at Portland's Newspace Center for Photography, acclaimed San Francisco photographer Kirk Crippens sought out 45 PDX locals for a series of portraits eventually titled "Portraitlandia". Over the next year, according to Portland Monthly, the "series went viral, drawing millions of eyes to the site of its photographer." Images from the Portraitlandia series would be exhibited at London's National Portrait Gallery in conjunction with the Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize and toured the United States as part of the Photolucida exhibition.
Although Crippens told Wired that he'd "expected his work to stand in sharp contrast to the fictions" of Portlandia, the artist found "significant overlap" – particularly so when the first episode he saw after beginning the project happened to showcase Aaker and another two planned subjects. Aaker, "a man about town who owns his own lion suit," was among Crittens' favorite subjects. For their shoot, Crittens said Aakers made available the roof of the nightclub where he tended bar and then asked the photographer "if I wanted him to curl up like a kitty in the ivy growing over the top of the roof. Yes, yes I did."
Music
Aaker has been involved with several NW rock bands. He spent years playing bass for the Fabulous Miss Wendy, a performer who has toured with Slash and was lauded as the "sexiest rock star ever" by Revolver. He's a founding member and bassist of The Gnash, whose music he has compared to "a primer-gray broken down Camaro." The group recently put out a split single on the Voodoo Doughnut Recordings label entitled "She Took My Doughnut (And Left Me the Hole)".
He's currently a member of the re-united Lucky Thirteens with former Weaklings vocalist Bradly Battin. Battins and Aaker previously played together in short-lived 00s group DARLINS. One venue owner explained the Lucky Thirteens' sound as "fun, poppy-punk like you'd hear coming out of the jukebox ... back in 2000."
For several years throughout the 2000s, Aaker served as frontman of glam metal group Diamond Tuck & The Privates – "an eight-piece band carefully culled from the lifers of the Portland rock scene." Willamette Week referred to their appearance on a (local punk mainstay) Club 21 compilation as "epic … buttrock."