David Jacobs-Strain

The first time that I listened to Liar's Day I was intrigued. The second time I was captivated. The third time I was mesmerized.

David Jacobs-Strain is a singer and guitarist from Eugene, Oregon, who has in this album paid homage to the Blues while touching the fringes of Rock, Folk, and even Country. Most of the songs, eight of the 11 penned by Jacobs-Strain, adhere to the soul of the Blues while leaving its 12-bar classic confines. Although he cites Taj Mahal as his touchstone, the influences of a myriad of Country-Blues legends can be heard in the album, but Jacobs-Strain puts his own unique stamp of artistry on the final product.

The title tune opens the album; it's mid-tempo and features evocative guitar, haunting backup vocals, and the excellent bass and especially drum support which appears throughout. It's followed by a Mississippi Fred McDowell song that has the driving, irresistible beat and infectious repetition of that Hill Country legend. "Rainbow Junkies," on its heels, deploys Jacobs-Strain's stellar slide guitar prowess and outstanding drumming by Joe Vitale.

The variety continues with a number of songs that lament past or impending romantic break-ups: "Say It to My Face" is scornful as well as mournful and sounds like Jimi Hendrix modulated through Jimmy Thackery (high praise indeed!); "Don't Have a Choice," with its sparse piano accompaniment by album producer Kenny Passarelli, showcases Jacobs-Strain's soulful guitar playing and smooth, passionate vocals. In fact, the singing throughout is superb.

After a rendition of Robert Johnson's "Traveling Riverside Blues," which is reminiscent of a Bob Dylan/Al Kooper/Steven Stills collaboration, we get one of the standouts of the disc. "Black Cat at Midnight" is a slow, bluesy premonition of romantic disappointment. Two songs of almost spoken vocalization follow with sparse but splendid guitar and organ instrumentation. The album ends on another high note: "Old Tennis Shoes," a dirge-like cry of abandonment with a hint of Country flavor that skirts the border of mawkishness, but doesn't cross it; it brought genuine tears to my eyes.

The guy has a terrific voice, plays great guitar, has excellent taste in fellow musicians, and writes moving songs. Highly recommended.

Steve Daniels is a contributing editor at BluesWax. You may contact Steve at blueswax@visnat.com

BluesWax Issue #401, June 12, 2008
http://www.visnat.com/entertainment/music/blueswax/albumreviews.cfm?#R2661 - Steve Daniels, Blues Wax

The kid can sing and play guitar like he's 60 years old and had a lifetime of pain, pressure and whiskey, so of course you're going to pigeonhole him. But to do so places unfair expectations on David Jacobs-Strain and also obscures the fact that his albums are slow-burning wonders that don't evoke phrases like "wunderkind" or "precocious" so much as "learnedness" and "craftsmanship." None make sweeping dramatic statements or ostentatious declarations of young blues talent, and none feel fit for consumption by the fickle country blues or backwoods soul dabbler.

No, all 24-year-old Jacobs-Strain has done is quietly amassed an impressive catalog with releases that just get better and better. Liar's Day, Jacobs-Strain's latest, is his best and most completely realized yet, and it marks the point where the Portland, Ore. songwriter's written strengths have caught up to--or at least reached the ballpark of--his extraordinary guitar dexterity. If anything, he's more assured of his blues and steady in his engagement with ancient sounds and standards, which means he's less likely to flirt with the more vacuous, generic roots-rock that's miles below his level of sophistication but at which some of his previous efforts have occasionally hinted.

What's evolved most about Jacobs-Strain's songwriting over the years is how he's refined some of his clunkier coffeehouse poetics into a seen-it-all cynicism in the Richard Thompson vein, with a hint of the gallows humor you'd get from a Chris Smither and the is-he-playing-or-is-he-serious type of animus you'd get from Taj Mahal. The title track is a protest song with a chugging beat and organ filigree to temper its protest song-ness, clearing most of the cheap metaphor hurdles such songs inspire. It's clear Jacobs-Strain has his eye on moving away from superficial narratives and focusing more on sparer lyrics, rich in applied subtext depending on how they're strummed and sung. His three apropros cover choices on Liar's Day, which come from some of blues' grittiest and darkly wittiest--Robert Johnson ("Traveling Riverside Blues"), Mississippi Fred McDowell ("Write Me a Few Short Lines") and Walter T. Ryan ("Black Cat at Midnight")--reflect as much.

Jacobs-Strain's rhythm section for Liar's Day is a monster that never announces itself as one. Bassist/producer Kenny Passarelli and drummer Joe Vitale have been around the block more than a few times--they backed Joe Walsh in the '70s and '80s, for starters--but their practiced contributions are withheld enough to ensure Liar's Day is a David Jacobs-Strain album, not a product of veteran manufacturing featuring David Jacobs-Strain.

Passarelli, Jacobs-Strain's mentor, is a bit more assured from behind the boards than in his last effort with Jacobs-Strain, 2004's Ocean or a Teardrop. He knows when to pour it on; "Rainbow Junkies" has a driving Bo Diddley-beat shuffle, and Jacobs-Strain's Eastern-influenced, tone-bending flavors--a V.M. Bhatt thing going on, undoubtedly--for its guitar heroics. But by contrast, "Don't Have a Choice" ratchets up despair not with drama, but with austerity, its only real effect a haunted piano.

Jacobs-Strain's guitar is still his major selling point. Much of his work has a psychedelic folk quality at times, and his string acrobatics, when uncluttered, can open up a range of sounds and textures. He has remarked in interviews about his interest in the trance-inducing qualities of acoustic blues. He uses his dexterity to explain what that means. But it's not an overused thing, either. Jacobs-Strain seems aware that if you start creating guitar heroics that divorce themselves from song structure by nature of their formlessness, you crack your own foundation, which is why from him you're as likely to hear standard 12-bars and spare, folk club strains as you are note-y, speed-picked sheets.

The final song on Liar's Day is "Old Tennis Shoes," which gives us embittered aggression masquerading as quiet resignation. Listen to Robert Johnson's "Come On In My Kitchen" long enough, and the terror beneath the ostensible narrative begins to emerge. Jacobs-Strain is beginning to walk those same lines: songs with basic surfaces whose emotional subtext goes deeper and darker by the way he fills out his lyrics with the nuances of his singing, the force of his guitar virtuosity, and the fitting choices in his other effects.

Sings the young sir: "I know you babe / you got my heart in your hand / I don't even care / about your other man ... I'll be waiting for you / right here at the door."

Play it, pallie. For real.

PopMatters, 5-June 2008
http://www.popmatters.com/pm/reviews/article/58999/david-jacobs-strain-liars-day/

- Chad Berndston, Pop Matters

I'm an eccentric extremist by default. Whatever emotion comes over me surges through in a rather hyperbolized way, often giving rise to over-reactions married to exaggerated language. Hence, when I heard David Jacobs-Strain's latest album, Liar's Day, I had to wait a couple days before I could set out to write a review on it so I wouldn't come across as having some sort of infatuation with the guy (and, still, I think I failed at that).
Jacobs-Strain's home is Eugene, Oregon. Listening to Liar's Day, however, would make you think his roots were in the Appalachian Hills of eastern Kentucky or from a New Orleans' blues bar that has been touched by the craziness of Mardi Gras. The rootsy, forceful, psych-folk that Jacobs-Strain creates is in-your face dance of impeccable chops. Jacobs-Strain knows the fret board liks his life depends on it, ripping riffs like a DJ at New York's hottest dance club.
Jacobs-Strain's voice is full like David Bazan, mature like Ray Lamontagne, soft like Tyler Ramsey, and so forcefully unforced that it is nothing short of uncanny to see such a baby-faced youngster vocally match his dynamic musical compositions. As some have already claimed, this is indeed Bob Dylan re-envisioned. This sort of music makes me want to sit around with my friends, drink some bourbon whiskey, talk about old times, and laugh the night away.
Having played since he was a ripe 11 years of age, Jacobs-Strain has had over a decade to develop his ingenious lyrics. Liar's Day is rife with the heart and soul of a bloke three years my junior, and I'm aghast by the poetic brilliance of this singer-songwriter. The album's bookends are songs "Liar's Day" and "Old Tennis Shoes." The opening song tells the horrific experience of unfaithfulness: "How's the children, and the worn out shoes?/That don't have much to offer/It's just looking for something you can use/Some people call this freedom/I call it liar's day/Don't you call me among your martyrs." Then, right in the middle of the album, in "Don't Have a Choice," Jacobs-Strain declares, "I wanna scream, cry out loud/Ain't coming back around/To hear you talk about/The meaning of forever."
Liar's Day concludes with the song "Old Tennis Shoes," a melancholic, bluesy song that seems to echo the musical influence of the Mississippi Delta. Here Jacobs-Strain comes to this painful conclusion: "I know you babe/You got my heart in your hand/I don't even care/About your other man... I'll be waiting for you/Right here at the door." That said, Jacobs-Strain is an informed youngster who is engaged in a communing genre that is renowned for being political. In "Liar's Day," Jacobs-Strain plays off the feeling of betrayal with, "I wrote a letter to my mother/She's always talking about the war/Said, I turned 21, it was just me and my gun/Does anyone at home know who we're fighting for/Some people call this freedom/I call it liar's day." This guy is not afraid to say what's on his mind, and this tendency, coupled with his brilliant, magic-infused music, is reason enough for the Dylan comparison.

Jacobs-Strain's third album is his first independent release, and his producers couldn't be happier. What gets me, really, is that this guy is only in his mid-twenties. Jacobs-Strain is going to be in Kettering, Ohio on June 26th, and you can be certain that I'll be there with every other blues-folk fan, under the spell of a real artist, a wonderfully adept Picasso on guitar.

Christopher Green

Tracer Magazine, May 9, 2008
http://www.tracermagazine.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=52&Itemid=49 - Christopher Green, Tracer Magazine