Cris Jacobs

One of These Days

Soundly Music

From 2001 until a final Thanksgiving bash ten years later, the highly gifted singer, songwriter, and guitarist Cris Jacobs led Baltimore’s The Bridge, a sextet that linked rock, blues, funk, folk, and bluegrass in unique, jam-inspired style. The band generated enough critical acclaim and wide appeal to land them slots at such contrasting festivals as Bonnaroo, Mountain Jam, and DelFest. In the next eight years, Jacobs released three solo albums and a celebrated collaboration with Ivan Neville. He then battled depression. That surprises, listening to the way he expresses himself on One of These Days, his first album in five years. Jacobs and his friends play nothing but glowing, stunning Americana music, even when Jacobs allows darkness to peek around the corner here and there. Cris Jacobs is back in a big way.

Cut live in the studio and produced by dobro luminary Jerry Douglas, Jacobs’ eleven remarkable new songs receive a massive boost by the unmatched Infamous Stringdusters (bassist Travis Book, guitarist Andy Falco, resonator guitarist Andy Hall, fiddler Jeremy Garrett, and banjoist Chris Pandolfi), the house band on the entire recording. And as if that was not enough, guest stars include Douglas on lap steel, Sam Bush on mandolin, Billy Strings on guitar, and singers Lee Ann Womack, Lindsay Lou, and the McCrary Sisters. In all, a dream assemblage of players and singers that with Jacobs, create tight patchworks of visceral bluegrass, folk, and blues-tinged music and emotion. Jacobs delivers the songs in a perfectly melodic tenor of mocha soul and boot-ground grit.

“Heavy Water” opens the album, the breakneck pace like falls raging down a mountain, although the song paints pictures of a floodin’ down in New Orleans. “Wild Roses and Dirt” begins on a wistful, tentative melody but soon flowers, the lyrics as interwoven but unravelling as the broken, bleeding relationship described. “Poor Davey,” an ideal choice for Billy Strings to sing and play on, presents a dark tragedy, the music resolute. “Work Song (I Can Still Sing),” with Lindsay Lou helping on vocals, is a beautiful, rambling blues, and “One of These Days,” featuring Bush, is pure, bright bluegrass romping.

Side two—it would seem—takes off anew with “Queen of the Avenue,” spotlighting the legendary McCrary Sisters just as they should be, in a gospel-blues-bluegrass mashup, piping like beacons. “Lifetime to Go,” with Womack, shines with bliss, but “Daughter, Daughter,” a haunting blues duet between Jacobs on cigar box guitar and Douglas on lap steel, has Jacobs fretting for his daughter amid this new world of worry. The old-timey “Cold, Cold Walls,” also featuring the McCrary’s, brings to life a character amid a different type of conflict. The imagery coloring them all astonishes.

Every one of Cris Jacobs’ albums, both solo and with The Bridge, are recommended. But One of These Days presents a masterwork; the songwriting and performances are flawless and exciting through and through.

Postscript: As I began this review several mornings ago, news of Baltimore’s Francis Scott Key collapse had just been reported. How very tragic and very painfully ironic. Prayers for the families.

Tom Clarke for MAS

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