Although he used to be one of ours, South Carolina-based songwriter Avi Jacob has been lighting up rooms across the country lately with his southern-friendly troubadour sounds.
His strum will be heard and felt tonight at Great Scott tonight in an Allston Pudding sponsored triple bill with indie-roots duo Molasses Jones and Boston Americana/rock outfit the Naked Stills.
That’s a whole lot of strumming — but why not on this eve of Spring, when our hearts and minds are in need of some serious thawing? Jacob’s own career is still budding from the early 2014 release of his Whitehaus Family Record debut So Hard to Reach You (listen closely for members of Gracious Calamity, Old Wave and the Woodrow Wilsons on the record), which the Charleston City Paper called the product of “soul searching and moments of clarification.” It’s not hard to immediately spot the sincerity in his work. In fact, it could become known as his calling card.
Earlier this month the singer dropped a video for his new r&b-inspired single “Cannonball” — a track which indicates good things to come later this year. In it, he sizes up the drama caused by a wayward lover, singing “You’re a cannonball/I’m debris.”
This metaphor of being at another’s mercy is captured wonderfully by puppeteer Will Schutze, who mock’s Jacob’s misery with a doppelganger marionette controlled by unseen strings. But if you ask me, Jacob does a pretty good job giving it right back to the puppet.
Watch it below.
Although we don’t see him as much as we use to, Jacob still loves bringing it to his northern audiences (where, he says, people come to listen and expect more out of songwriters than the typical Brad Paisley new truck fodder that passes for music down south). But in case you miss him tonight, Jacob will also be playing this coming Tuesday at Blastfest (at the famed Whitehaus in Jamaica Plain). I’d tell you to ask a head for an address, but we’re all adults here, aren’t we?