By DAVID DUPONT
BG Independent News
Cris Jacobs headed from his native Baltimore to the University of Massachusetts Amherst in the state’s Pioneer Valley to major in business administration.
Jacobs was already hooked on music. Within a year of starting to guitar, he was playing in bands with peers who’d taken up instruments at the same time.
“I knew I wanted to play guitar, but didn’t have enough to show for it,” he said in a recent telephone interview. Business administration was “the low hanging fruit” that appeased his parents and gave him “something to fall back on.”
While at UMass, though, he discovered the music of Doc Watson. He was taken by “the purity, the rawness, the honesty” of the music “There’s the virtuosity and the old soul of it, and how it feels connected to the deeper cosmic songbook.”
Jacobs will share his own contributions to the cosmic songbook tonight (Friday, Sept. 6) at 8 p.m. on the Main Stage of the Black Swamp Arts Festival.
The festival opens today 5 pm. with juried art, music on the Main Stage, and food trucks. It continues Saturday and Sunday with more art and music as well as youth and teen activities. Click for schedule.
When Jacobs graduated in 2000, a career in music was his goal.
He translated the finger picking to electric guitar, and that helped blend the bluegrass with echos of the music he heard growing up. “My dad was a huge music fan and had a great record collection —Frank Zappa, bluegrass, the Neville Brothers, the Beatles, and blues.” He took his son to his first Grateful Dead show when Cris was 14.
“Those things at that point of my life set me in motion,” Jacobs said. Early on he took lessons from a jazz guitarist that gave him a firm grounding in theory.
A year out of college, he was a founding member of The Bridge. They ended up doing 200 shows year over the next decade.
Jacobs decided that as a songwriter he wasn’t going to be tied to any particular genre or the dictums of a tradition. “I felt songwriting was going to be my way of having my own sound.”
He’s not interested in blending the styles in an obvious “schticky” way. He may build a honky tonk tune by slowing down a Del McCoury bluegrass lick. “That’s more how I try to mix it in,” Jacobs said. “I’m still searching for that sound.”
He now fronts the Cris Jacobs band, which includes longtime rhythm section Dusty Simmons, drums, and Todd Herrington, bass.
“We thrive on the live show,” Jacobs said. Their performances are, he said, “high energy and adventurous.”
“I have a feeling that whatever style of music you like we’ll probably satisfy your palate.”
