Cris Jacobs is going back to his roots.
Saddled by some recent bouts with mental health issues, along with a self-proclaimed musical identity crisis, Jacobs recently found himself at something of a crossroads in his career. Unsure of his next steps, Jacobs took solace from a serendipitous backstage encounter with bluegrass legend Jerry Douglas.
Inspired by the opportunity to meet one of his musical heroes, Jacobs retreated to his Baltimore-area barn with a pen and notepad, an acoustic guitar, and some old 45s and began writing. The end result, One Of These Days, Jacobs’ sixth solo studio album (out 4/26), represents the acclaimed singer-songwriter’s most vital and intimate release to date.
Eschewing his unique electrified swampy-blues sound that has been a hallmark of Jacobs’ previous studio efforts, One Of These Days takes on a considerably more acoustic/bluegrass vibe and does so with authenticity, thanks to the presence of the rollicking house band, The Infamous Stringdusters, as well as some breathtaking appearances from some of bluegrass’s biggest names, including Billy Strings, Lindsay Lou and Sam Bush.
The resulting eleven tracks, produced by Douglas and comprised entirely of original material, are crackling with Jacobs’ trademark soulful energy and workman-like lyrics nestled in a cocoon of acoustic instrumentation that harkens back to the earliest days of American-roots music.
In a conversation from this past March, which has been edited for clarity and length, Glide’s Dave Goodwich caught up with Jacobs to discuss a litany of topics, including his battles with depression, his musical influences, and what the future holds for Charm City’s most beloved songwriter.
I’d like to start off talking about your upcoming album, One Of These Days. This release seems to be very bluegrass-centric, which marks a stark stylistic difference as compared to your prior studio work. What led to that decision?
It’s definitely a stark difference from the previous albums, but it’s not a stark difference from what I’m accustomed to playing and what I grew up playing. Bluegrass was sort of like my roots of getting into music. When I first got excited about the guitar and music, it was bluegrass and blues and folk and stuff like that. What led to the decision to do it now was a couple of different things. I was sort of going through a patch during the last year and a half where I didn’t really know what I wanted to do next. I was dealing with some mental health issues and wondering what was next in life, in my career. I was at somewhat of a crossroads, mentally and creatively, and kind of in a funk, so I started going back to the stuff that really inspired me and lit my fire in the first place. And, it got me excited again. It got me excited about trying to really lean into that side of things that was always really inspirational for me. It gave me a really good launch pad for writing these songs.
Also, I met Jerry Douglas a couple months prior and hit it off really well with him, so I just had the idea to call him and say, “Hey, would you produce this record? I have this idea of making a little more of a bluegrassy record.” He was into it so I just went for it.
How did your relationship with Jerry Douglas come about?
I met him at DelFest last year. He played right after my set and he was standing there and I said hello. He was super gracious and kind and complimentary so I eventually reached out to him. I just had the idea because he’s always been a hero of mine. I’d never met him, but he sort of embodies everything I love about music, where it’s deep-rooted, skillful and soulful, but also progressive, experimental and creative, which is what I would like to ultimately do with my music.
I feel like there’s a distinct gospel element on some of the tracks, particularly the ones with the McCrary Sisters. That seems to be somewhat of a recurring theme throughout your songwriting and performance history with your various solo endeavors and the Cris Jacobs Band. Where do you think that influence comes from?
Obviously the McCrary Sisters are going to bring that flavor full force. To me, the genre classifications get real blurry when you talk about American roots music and the stuff that I’m really pulling from like folk, blues, bluegrass and gospel. It’s all the same vocabulary. It’s really just the articulations and the instrumentation and the rhythms and the subject matter that differentiates those styles. But to me it’s all the same language.
I didn’t grow up playing music in a church or anything like that, so it’s not even like I come from a gospel music background. I guess the elements of that music resonate with me and it sort of comes out that way when I write. Obviously, the people that were involved in this record added that flavor as well. But it’s never been an intentional thing. When I sit down to write, I just sort of let it all filter out and it comes out the way it comes out. It’s a blend of all the styles that have inspired me. With this record in particular, I think I really tried to hone it down by writing pretty much all the songs on my acoustic guitar and really thinking about things in that vein. Basically, I kind of developed a routine when I was writing this album: I’d sit out in my barn, and I would listen to a record. All the records that I pulled out were all old stuff, mainly. It was all bluegrass, blues, gospel, delta blues, prison songs, work songs. All that old deep stuff that I was really trying to reconnect with. I would listen to a record and then, I recently got into meditation, so I would meditate and then I would just play my acoustic guitar for a little while until something came out and just go with that. That was the process that I wrote this record with.
So, it’s definitely kind of boxing myself into that world a little more than maybe usual and sort of turning off all technology while I was recording myself with studio gear and doing demos. It was just getting back to that feeling of singing a song on the porch and making that the base of where it all started.
You managed to curate an all-star list of guest musicians for this album. From tabbing the Infamous Stringdusters as your house band to some of Bluegrass’s brightest stars, including Billy Strings, Sam Bush, and Lindsay Lou, among others. How did those collaborations come to fruition?
I did a track with the Stringdusters a couple months prior to when this whole idea sprung up and it was actually sort of instrumental, in my mind. When they came through town, I came in and played and sang on something for them and I even made a comment like, “man, I should do a bluegrass album and you guys should be the band.” Everybody laughed and then I sort of marinated on that and talked it over with my manager and thought this could be cool, so that’s really where that started. Then, as soon as I got Jerry involved, that sort of…people say “yes” to Jerry Douglas, rightfully so. (laughs) So, it was like, “hey, I’m doing this record”, and Jerry Douglas is producing it and everybody was like, “yeah, cool, I’m in”.
As far as Lindsay, she’s been a friend of mine for a while now. We’ve collaborated a bunch. I knew she lived in Nashville, which is where I recorded a majority of the album, so I hit her up while I was there, on the week of the sessions, and said, “hey, I got a couple songs that might be cool.” And then, Jerry said, “You know, the Stringdusters don’t have a mandolin player.” So I obviously was like, “I’ll call Sam”, and we brought him in. It was sort of done as the songs dictated. If they needed something that we didn’t have, like backup singers or a female singer, like Lee Ann Womack. It was sort of like, “oh, I’ll call Lee Ann Womack or I’ll call the McCrary Sisters”. And then, for the track “Poor Davey”, I just had the idea of having Billy Strings on it. So, between my friendship with Billy and Jerry’s friendship with Billy, we were able to get him in there, which was really cool. It is so impressive and inspiring what Billy is doing. And he’s also a really good person and has kept a real good head on his shoulders. A real humble attitude. He’s very grateful for where he’s at and tries to pay it forward. I can’t say enough good things about Billy.
Who else would you like to collaborate with? Was there anyone else you reached out to but couldn’t get for this album?
There are so many people I’d like to work with. I don’t even know where to begin. I definitely mentioned Béla Fleck a few times, but we never actually called him. I wouldn’t say there was anybody that we didn’t get that we tried to get. With this record, even though we got this star-studded cast, it really feels like it’s still a cohesive record to me and it still feels like my songs. It’s not just this hodgepodge of features. Everybody’s there for a reason. I mean, you can’t really impress Jerry with that because he’s basically played with everybody from Eric Clapton and James Taylor to Tony Rice and Doc Watson. So for him it’s like, “yeah, I can call anybody you want, but does it make sense?” It’s not just so that we can say that we had that person come in, you know what I mean? It was all curated in a very musical way to make sense.
Will the format of your live show change going forward? Will it be more acoustic-based? Will you be performing with the same members as the Cris Jacobs Band?
Well, it’s sort of both. I still have my drummer and bass player, Dusty Simmons and Todd Herrington, that I’ve been playing with for a long time now, and I’ve got a new fellow in the band, Bryan McDowell, who is an amazing fiddle and mandolin player and vocalist. For my album release show, we’re going to be having some other special guests, including Alex Berman, from The Dirty Grass Players, on banjo. At this point, my touring band is probably still going to be the four piece with Bryan on fiddle and mandolin along with Dusty, Todd and myself, and I’ll be switching from acoustic to electric because we’re not throwing away the old songs either. It’s been fun to try to find the blend to make it all make sense and to keep the new songs going and keep the old songs going. Some things will have arrangements changed a little bit, but, yeah, I mean, we’re still going to rock, right? (laughs)
I’d like to talk about Baltimore for a bit, both of our hometowns. You were once christened as the “King of Baltimore Rock’ n ‘Roll” by Baltimore Magazine. Would you agree with that assessment?
Uh, no. (laughs) I don’t even know what that means, but that’s cool. I mean, I’m flattered that somebody said that, but I don’t pride myself on that at all. Baltimore’s been great to me and I certainly love it here. It’s given me lots of heart and soul with what I do. It’s just sort of who I am at this point and the people in Baltimore have always supported me really well.
Who else do you think has made a musical imprint on our city?
Well, it depends on what you mean by musical imprint. Certainly there’s artists that have been around doing it for a long time that are some of the best, like piano player Lafayette Gilchrist, who is one of the best musicians in the world. And then you have songwriters like Caleb Stein, who I have ultimate respect for. There’s Pigeons Playing Ping Pong. You have to love seeing what they’re doing all over the country, just packing rooms and making people happy. Then, you can go back to the Baltimore bluegrass scene from back in the day, but you’d have to talk to Tim Newby about that. He’s our Baltimore bluegrass historian.
It’s always been kind of an interesting music scene though, because there’s so many musicians. There’s all these people that are well known and have fans, but it’s almost insulated in the sense that there’s not as much cross-pollination as I wish there was. It seems like everybody’s just sort of in their own place and the venues are sort of known as “this” venue or “that” venue. I just wish there was more of a collective scene because there’s so much talent.
What are some of your favorite venues around town to play?
The 8×10. I’ve probably played that stage more than anybody ever and I love (co-owners) Abigail and Bryan. It’s home-base for me. There’s so many legendary nights and musical moments that I’ve had there. There’s other venues, but that’s my favorite.
Speaking of The 8×10, some of the most highly anticipated live music events every year in Baltimore are your Very Jerry Christmas shows. How big of an influence was the Grateful Dead for you?
Tremendous. They sort of blew the whole floodgate open for me. I saw my first Dead show at R.F.K. Stadium in 1993. I was fifteen and I just started playing the guitar and it was like, okay, this is what I want to do. Jerry and the Dead’s music was so deeply rooted in all the American roots styles of music: bluegrass, blues, jazz, country, folk, rock and roll. So, as I learned more about Jerry’s influences and the Dead’s influences, it brought me to Doc Watson and David Grisman and Hank Williams and Muddy Waters and Lightnin’ Hopkins. The list goes on and on. So, yeah, hugely instrumental.
My parents were both huge Deadheads growing up, so it was always playing in the house. As a matter of fact, my sister and I hated it until we were teenagers and, you know, suddenly the cool kids at school were getting high and listening to the Dead. And, when you said your parents went to the Dead show last night, it was like, “oh, cool”. So I was like, okay, maybe this isn’t that bad. What’s really cool is that, after all those years, I got a call to play with Phil Lesh and Friends at the Hollywood Bowl, and I brought my dad out with me to be there and just being able to kind of give that back to him was really special. That was a proud moment.
What do you remember about your touring days with The Bridge? Why do you feel that project never got the full acclaim that it deserved?
We had some great years. I was basically living in a van with those guys and we toured the country. We went to Europe a couple times and we just had a blast and we made some great records and wrote some great songs and played some super fun shows. It was all great.
I don’t know why it didn’t take off. I’ve tried to rationalize that but it just didn’t happen. The older you get, the harder it becomes to keep going when it’s not sustaining itself. Those are just the hard, cold facts. It just felt like we never seemed to break through to that next level, outside of a handful of towns, and that’s just not a sustainable thing. I guess we had given so much to it up to that point that we were all like, “let’s just call it a day”. Who knows if we would have just regrouped or kept it going. I mean, we still play shows, but it’s clearly retired. It was pre-social media and cell phones, so it was just a different time.
Stylistically, we were too jammy for the songwriter crowd but not jammy enough for the jam crowd. (laughs) Too bluesy for the folk crowd, blah, blah, blah. You know what I mean? We stepped in all the zones. I still carry that same sort of, I don’t know what you’d call it, blessing and a curse of just being multi-genre because the marketing people hate it. And, we now live in a world where, if it’s not easily digested in a concise little package, it can sometimes blow right by you, so I think we had difficulty with marketing ourselves. It just was what it was, and it’s unfortunate because I really believed in us and thought we were a special group and still are. I’m proud of what we did.
You were invited to perform on tours with artists such as Steve Winwood and Sturgill Simpson. What do you remember most about those tours? Did you get to work or collaborate with them? Did any of them give you any good advice about touring or life as a musician?
Definitely. That was a special little time. It was sort of like back to back tours that just sort of coincidentally happened. I went from being asked to open one show for each of those guys and then having each of them basically say, “hey, you want to do the whole tour?” Steve Winwood is a living legend who embodies everything that I would love to be. Great instrumentalist, great singer, great songwriter and a class act who puts on a great show and is a gentleman. He was nothing but kind and complimentary and encouraging to me and that’s the kind of thing that can fuel you for years. Just the fact that that happened probably bought me an extra couple of years of, like, “okay, even if this isn’t working out, something’s going right because I just did that”.
The Sturgill thing was awesome because it was sort of the same scenario where he was just like, “hey, man, want to do the tour?” I hopped on with him right when he was catching fire with Metamodern Sounds in Country Music. It was his first bus tour where he had gone from playing 500-capacity rooms to 1500 and they were sold to the gills. The fever was hot and you could tell. It was really cool to see that happen to somebody and watch how they handled it. You know, learning to surround yourself with a good team of people that you trust. A small knit team without too much bullshit or distractions. Staying healthy, keeping your shit together and making sure that the show is the number one priority every day. Because believe it or not, it’s only a small fraction of the day out there when you’re touring. You sometimes forget this little ninety minutes is actually the whole reason I’m out here. I remember him telling me, “as long as you just show up on time, don’t be an asshole, and do your job well, you’re going to be fine”. So, I sort of kept that advice and try to follow those rules.
You’re playing some festivals this summer like Telluride Blues & Brews and Cheat Festiva in West Virginia. What are some of your fondest memories from your festival gigs? What festivals would you like to play that you haven’t had the chance to yet?
Some of the fondest memories probably go back to those All Good Festival days with The Bridge. We were doing that one every year for a while and that was always the perfect fit for where we were at in our lives. More recently, the High Sierra Music Festival in California is one of my favorites. We’re doing that again this year, and that’s just always just an amazing time. DelFest as well.
I’d love to do the Telluride Bluegrass Festival as well, but I’ll take Telluride Blues & Brews any day. I mean, I’ll play anywhere cool. I don’t know of any festivals that I’m necessarily, like, dying to play. (laughs) I’d like to do the Cayamo songwriter cruise. I just got off my fifth Jam Cruise. But yeah, other than that, most festivals are pretty fun, so as long as they want to hire me, I’ll play. (laughs)
What are your thoughts on artists like Billy Strings, Tyler Childers and some others in the modern country-ish music scene that appear to lean more to the left side of the political and social spectrums than what the genre has been known for previously?
I think it’s great. Without getting too political, I align with a lot of those values. Jason Isbell is another one to mention. You know, a guy from Alabama who’s very vocal about lots of political and social issues. I think it’s nice for people to see all sides and I think it’s nice for folks in that world to see other people that come from the same places that they come from with that type of thinking.
I know where I stand. I’m not bashful about that. I try to not be too aggressive about politics because it’s just a bummer, but I certainly keep myself involved and aware and try to speak up when I need to. Tyler Childers, especially, I think is a great example. Like, that video he put out recently with the gay coal miners was awesome and just so bold. And I mean, it shouldn’t be so bold, but it is, especially in that genre. I know that was a big, hot topic amongst his fans. And the fact that he was willing to take that stand is very admirable because there are a lot of managers and agents out there that’ll cringe at that sort of thing because of the bottom line. People always say to me, “oh, you don’t want to lose fans”, but it’s like, number one, I don’t think you lose that many fans and number two, I think you actually gain fans. You strengthen fans when you take a stand on something. I’ll just leave it at that.
You recently began practicing transcendental meditation. What effect has that had on your playing and songwriting?
I think it’s been great. It’s one of those things that’s just made me feel better and made me more relaxed and open and just sort of curbed the anxiety and has probably helped me reach deeper areas in my brain. It was a great discovery for me. It was kind of exactly what I needed.It’s been a great tool for me for writing and for prepping for shows and just keeping the right frame of mind in my daily life and balancing my family life. It’s very grounding. And, like I said, it also really opens your mind and sheds away a lot of distractions and noise and allows you to sort of go outside of yourself, which, when I’m writing, I think getting in my own way was my own worst enemy. You know, second guessing and inserting myself too much into the conversation when it should be pulling from what’s out there. I find that when I have a good session of transcendental meditation, it feels very similar to a really good session of guitar playing when I’m really locked in, and I’m really pushing my creative boundaries and feeling like I’m hearing what I’m playing and playing what I mean to play. So yeah, I’m all about it. It’s been really helpful for me in a lot of ways.
You’ve been pretty public about your recent battles with mental health issues and depression. What advice would you have for any fans who may be going through something similar?
I don’t consider myself having it any worse off than anyone else. I consider myself very lucky in many ways, I’ll say that. It’s definitely not like a “poor me” kind of thing. But I think that’s the point, is that it took me a while to accept the fact that, even though I’m not addicted to drugs or losing my marriage or out on the street, this overwhelming sense of sadness, angst or anxiety is still very real. I think I had been living with this sort of functional depression for a while, and I think there is a chemical element involved. I also think there’s a habitual element involved. So, I think the bottom line is that admitting you’re not 100% okay is a brave thing to do. It’s not a sign of weakness. I think it’s something that a lot of us experience and on various levels. And just because it’s not like ruining your life completely doesn’t mean it’s not hindering you from being happy and having a better life. So accepting it and dealing with it has gone hand in hand with the whole last year or two of making this record. It brought me out of a funk for sure.
