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Bryan Jacobs has made one CD, 'Remington Steel,' and hopes to record another soon. |
Bryan Jacobs picks up a strange-looking guitar and runs a metal slide up and down its neck with his left hand.
With a thumb pick and carefully manicured fingernails, his right hand picks out the melody of an old song that few listeners would even recognize, let alone be able to play or sing.
Taking care to wait until the last reverberating note has completely faded away, Jacobs looks up and smiles.
"I play something most people around here don't play."
While most musicians in the area are picking out either country or rock 'n' roll tunes, Jacobs is playing what he calls a mixture of Piedmont and Delta blues.
And he plays this typically Deep South music extremely well.
"He's probably one of the best slide blues players in the country," says veteran guitarist Tommi Reynolds, who owns and operates Culpeper Music Center. "It's so natural for him. He plays like he was born in the blues era."
One might consider the blues to be an odd venue for an old Fauquier County farm boy who cut his teeth on traditional country music and then took a healthy bite out of the heavy rock sounds of the early 1970s.
Jacobs doesn't agree.
"The blues is the root of rock 'n' roll," he says, referring to the Memphis and northern Mississippi sound that influenced the likes of Elvis Presley, Roy Orbison and Jerry Lee Lewis.
"The blues also had a profound influence on early country music and bluegrass," Jacobs continues. "In the 1930s, if you were white you called it country; if you were black you called it the blues."
Jacobs also finds a deep connection to the blues and country music of the late 1940s and '50s.
"It's the same chords--G, C and D--whether you play the music of Hank Williams or Mississippi John Hurt," he says.
Mississippi John Hurt: To most music fans, this name is about as unrecognizable as the three-speaker, metal-bodied Resofonic guitar that Jacobs plays.
To true blues enthusiasts, however, Mississippi John Hurt is one of the godfathers of the music that made cities like New Orleans famous. And Jacobs cites Hurt as one of his strongest influences.
"Guys like Mississippi John Hurt, Elmore James and Robert Johnson are common denominators between the blues and country music," he says. "After listening to Hank Williams, Ernest Tubb and Jimmy Rodgers while growing up, I started listening to these blues legends and thought, 'This is pretty familiar territory here.'"
But Jacobs also talks of other influences, better known names.
"Eric Clapton was a big influence on my music," he says. "I listened to his music and wondered where he had found that sound."
Jacobs says that the vintage Clapton sound was borrowed from the blues.
He adds that the slide-guitar work of Duane Allman's (of the Allman Brothers Band) intrigued him so much that he decided to give that style of playing a try.
Then there was the late John Jackson. Jackson, who was born and grew up in Rappahannock County, learned the blues from some of the masters of the golden era of that genre and became widely known along the East Coast, playing private parties for wealthy patrons like the Kennedys.
"John Jackson was a national treasure, and I cherish all the time I spent playing with him," says Jacobs.
Jacobs says he was introduced to Jackson one day and the elderly blues musician invited him to sit down and play. During that session and a number of later gigs, Jacobs says he received a musical education.
"John didn't really care where the music came from," says Jacobs. "He wasn't terribly hung up on labels. Whether it was John Hurt or Hank Williams' music, it didn't make any difference to him. It was all blues when he played it."
Jackson developed what has become known as the Piedmont blues style, which Jacobs says he has partially adopted.
"Luckily, I got to learn things from John during the last years of his life," says Jacobs.
During his days at Fauquier High School, Jacobs was part of a heavy rock group called Gashouse Dirty. By the early 1980s, he had migrated to the blues and was playing the Northern Virginia circuit with a group called the Blues Hawks.
These days, the 52-year-old Jacobs performs mostly alone, usually in small settings like coffeehouses, where he admits his acoustic style of guitar playing is best suited.
In 1996, Jacobs recorded his only CD, "Remington Steel," a collection of old blues favorites. Tommi Reynolds was in the studio at the time.
"It was amazing," Reynolds says. "Every song was a one-time take. That's only the third time in my life I've ever seen that happen."
What is there about the blues that lures Bryan Jacobs?
"There is a certain celebration in the blues," he says. "It's historical music on a personal level, storytelling music. It's like, if you can sing about it, it's not so bad."
Then there is also Jacobs' fascination with the slide-guitar style.
"With slide playing [he tunes to an open D], there is something happening all the time. There is a tremendous interaction between the right hand and the left hand."
Jacobs, who is a nuclear parts procurement specialist with Dominion Virginia Power and a part-time Remington farmer, says he hopes to cut another CD at some point in the not-too-distant future, this one with some of his own songs.
Like most true musicians, he says there is seldom a day when he doesn't pick up one of his many guitars and start strumming.
"Sometimes I'll play only a few chords while other times I'll play for an hour," he says. "And whenever I'm on the road for business I take my guitar."
As with most musicians, playing music is therapeutic.
"It makes me feel good," he says. "I enjoy playing for people and educating them to another type of music."
But the joy of playing the blues goes even deeper.
"Every morning I wake up and realize that I am a musician," Jacobs says.
It's a happy start, even for a man who may spend the rest of the day singing the blues.
To reach DONNIE JOHNSTON:
Email: DJohnston@freelancestar.com
