in 2007 In the late 1990s, Sobule toured with
Richard Barone as "The Richard & Jill Show". Together they wrote "Bitter" on
Happy Town, "Rock Me To Sleep" on
Pink Pearl and "Waiting for the Train" on Barone's
Clouds Over Eden album. They also appeared together (as Mr. and Mrs. Sobule) in the underground film
Next Year in Jerusalem, which featured another of their compositions, "Everybody's Queer". Their songs have been used on
The West Wing, ''
Dawson's Creek, Felicity, South of Nowhere'', and other television shows. In 2018, Barone produced and sang backing vocals on "Island of Lost Things" on Sobule's album
Nostalgia Kills. From 1997 until 1998, Sobule was a member of
Lloyd Cole's short-lived band The Negatives. In the fall of 2003, Sobule joined
Steve Earle,
Billy Bragg,
Tom Morello,
Janeane Garofalo and others for several dates on the Tell Us the Truth Tour, sponsored by the
AFL-CIO and
Common Cause. The tour aimed to raise awareness of issues including media consolidation and political bias during the
George W. Bush administration, and to get out the vote. In 2004, she acted 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 soundtrack album, performed by series star
Emma Roberts,
Unfabulous and More: a 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 with
Unfabulous series creator
Sue Rose. In 2006, Sobule met actress, writer and comedian
Julia Sweeney by chance at a conference in
Monterey, California, which led to them performing together as "The Jill and Julia Show", an autobiographical mix of music, stories and commentary. They would perform at the
James Randi Educational Foundation meeting in
Las Vegas on January 19, 2007, as well as at regular shows at the
Groundlings Theater in Los Angeles. Also in 2006, Sobule created a theme song for blogger
Arianna Huffington's self-help book
On Becoming Fearless. 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
Josie Cotton,
Tanya Donelly,
Kristin Hersh,
Lori McKenna,
Britta Phillips, and
The Watson Twins. Also in 2007, Sobule's song "San Francisco" became the first single released by
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, directed by
Margaret Cho and entitled "Jill Sobule's Dance Party," distributed for free in two parts on both mydamnchannel.com and
YouTube. Sobule also collaborated with Cho on the 2010 song and video "The Bear Song." 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
R.E.M. 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." After performing together at a 2008
TED conference, Sobule and Sweeney revived "The Jill and Julia Show", bringing it on the road in 2009 and 2010, performing in New York and
Denver, among other locations. The show featured an original theme song they'd co-written. In 2013, a condensed half-hour version of their show, recorded in
Grand Marais, Minnesota, was featured on the public radio program
Mountain Stage, syndicated nationally by
National Public Radio. (In all, Sobule appeared on
Mountain Stage 11 times from 1995 to 2024.) Sobule and John Doe would team again in 2010 to make a collaborative album, which they recorded live in one day at The Pass studio in Los Angeles on April 11, 2010.
A Day at the Pass was released one year later for
Record Store Day, April 16, 2011. In 2015, Sobule co-wrote four songs and sang back-up on a collection of new songs with lyrics by the writer David Hajdu: "The Angel in the Attic," "Bad Idea," "Nothing," and "The Girl in the Grocery Box." The album title,
Waiting for the Angel, came from one of the songs co-written by Jill, who also sang on the track. ==Personal life and death==