Born by the rice fields of Jennings, LA just west of the Mississippi River, Jacob Zachary let down his roots in the fertile land of the Deep South where his father was and still remains a preacher. Jacob’s greatest influences are the people and communities he grew up in and around. “Most places in the South are quite simple”, he says. “A man has either the temple or the tavern. He can choose his vices, or his sacraments, or both, but his heart will only ever have one song to sing.” Jacob’s music seeks out these songs in a way that determines to leave no stone unturned, no secret untold, and no one man blameless for any of it. The characters in his songs are from some older era in the South, where time was more slowly measured. They are Civil War soldiers, widows, murderers, and truck drivers, Their paths all converge in Jacob’s mind with stories to tell. They are stories of tortured souls longing for redemption, and begging at the ears of anyone who will listen. In Jacob’s wartime ballad “For The Love Of Sarah Pine”, the lyrics speak to this point in a spiritual way, from God’s perspective looking down on a mortally wounded Civil War soldier:

I prayed to God He said, “Child, you’ll never know me right/’til your eyes are dark enough to see my light./You keep searching through my heavens looking for some sign/but you’re talking to the wind boy/And you’re a dandelion

“I like to think my songs are about how and where most of our journey’s start – way down in the trenches reaching up to feel the light . The stories I tend to tell may not end with much hope, but it’s hope that inspires the telling.”

scott baker is following