Roots Run Deep

Alison Jacobs and new partner Matt Mirabile bond through a shared commitment to writing and playing the blues—and knowing its rich history

By Erik Hage

Alison Jacobs is a slight thing in her 30s, but she talks it like an old salt. Blues history just seems to slide from her tongue, whether she’s glorying in a list of old names (Willie Dixon, Memphis Slim, Big Bill Broonzy, Lazy Lester, etc.) or verbally sifting through the genre’s many styles (country blues, delta blues, swamp blues, Texas blues). The local singer- songwriter is relatively new on the scene, but she has a clear idea of her mission—a big part of which is maintaining ties that run deeper than the obvious. “That’s the big thing for me, the history, the traditional side of blues,” Jacobs vehemently points out. “So many people come up and are like, ‘Oh, come on, I want to hear Susan Tedeschi or Janis Joplin…’ but I don’t do that. I do their heroes. I sing Ruth Brown or Big Mama Thornton. The women like that are my heroes.”

Jacobs is deeply wound up in the relative obscurities and deep strains of her chosen genre. Like the most zealous of music nerds, she excitedly unloads facts and names at the least incitement. (It’s a peculiar thing to witness: One usually expects such streams of lore to jump from the lips of middle-aged men who live alone with their records.)

But Jacobs and her partner, 19-year-old guitar-blues whiz Matt Mirabile, don’t just sit around and jaw about the blues, they also play it. And play it well, despite the fact that their collaboration is less than a year old. And it’s a testament to their talents that the Northeast Blues Society handpicked them as geographical representatives at last month’s International Blues Challenge in Memphis. (Mirabile, mentored early on by local player Charlie Smith, has been playing out locally since he was 12.)

That particular journey started in our region last summer, with the Colossal Contenders competition. “It’s something that the Northeast Blues Society puts on every year,” Mirabile says. “It’s a gathering of area blues bands, and they pick one winner to send down to Memphis to compete in the International Blues Challenge, which is a really big deal as far as the world’s blues spectrum goes.”

The brand-spanking-new collaboration won the local competition handily, and just last month they returned from the international stage. Unfortunately, they didn’t make it past the first round in Memphis, but it was an impressive gig for newcomers. “We had an awesome time; we got to see so many incredible bands,” Mirabile recalls. “There were something like 130 bands from all over the world: Poland, Italy . . . everywhere.” Jacobs points out, “The band that won our venue had been together for something like 13 years. They had choreography.”

The local group (rounded out by keyboardist Jeff Potter and bassist Todd Wulfmeyer) didn’t have the best time slot either. “We were like the last band the first night and the first band the second night,” Jacobs laughs. The first night, remembers Mirabile, somebody blew an amp, bumping them even later. “We came on way late, after about six or seven hours of blues. The next night it was like 5 PM. People were like, ‘Are these guys actually playing right now?’ It was so surreal.”

Nevertheless, says Jacobs, “We were proud of our efforts. We’re a new band.” (She also points out that they ate “killer barbeque.”)

Local music runs through Jacobs’ veins. Her dad was the “J” in J.B. Scott’s, the vaunted Albany rock venue of the ’70s and ’80s, and her stepdad was in legendary Albany new-wavers Blotto. Jacobs graduated from Albany High in 1987 and took a long path back home and to music, winding her way through SUNY Cobleskill, California, and her current day job at the New York State Assembly. But even though she was nurtured around music, it took until recently for her to pursue it with a purpose.

Returning to the area in 2002, she was fortunate to run into local (and nationally renowned) rockabilly guitarist Graham Tichy. “I owe a lot to Graham. . . . He was the first person that really motivated me,” Jacobs says. Tichy and local legend Johnny Rabb invited her on stage for a couple of songs at Savannah’s in 2002, and Tichy was impressed enough by the singer to form a short-lived rockabilly band, Ali Jean and the Struts. Tichy says, “Although Alison has a good working knowledge of rockabilly . . . her true love is the blues. Generally what impresses me the most about Jacobs is her in-depth knowledge of the styles she sings. She knows her stuff! She can eloquently discuss contemporary and past blues artists as well as any record nerd or music critic. She has done her homework, and it shows. To me, that immediately sets her apart from the common ‘blues/bar band’ singer, and it truly gives her depth.”

Tichy says he also ended up cowriting tracks with Jacobs for her and Mirabile’s new album, 50-fifty. “She approaches it with the unaffected perspective that it takes to write good simple songs, which is something that experienced musicians often find elusive,” he says. “My role in the process was mostly working with her on the musical aspects: too many measures on one verse or another and generally tweaking things so they made musical sense. But with a couple tunes she would start with just lyrics or a single melody line, and we would develop these ideas into full-fledged songs. There are a few in particular I’m very proud of, and I’m lucky because Alison could have shared these ideas and collaborated with a number of musicians.”

Tichy also hooked Jacobs up with her current guitarist (though Jacobs and Mirabile had encountered each other at Savannah’s Tuesday-night jams). “Graham said, ‘Look, you need a band and Matt is looking for a singer,’” Jacobs recalls. Mirabile adds, “Literally, this came together, like, two weeks before the [Colossal Contenders] competition.”

Asked to define their sound, Mirabile says their blues is “definitely not hardcore traditional by any means, but it’s blues with strong traditional ties.” And as the conversation turns back toward “tradition,” Jacobs lights up, is off again and starts spewing out facts like a caffeinated history professor.