By Paul Halvey
Daily Herald Correspondent
Posted Thursday, January 25, 2007

For songwriter and musician Michael Jacobs, life has been about returning to his roots — in both his personal and professional lives.

Jacobs, a Native American of Cherokee descent, brings his songs and guitar to perform as part of Naperville Reads at 7 p.m. Monday at the 95th Street Library, 3015 Cedar Glade Drive.

The performance is among several added to the Reads program this year to serve as an extension of the topics of the program’s books and to highlight this year’s theme of cultural diversity.

“Libraries are no longer just places for reading and research. Libraries are entertainment places as well as information places,” said Mary Bannon, program coordinator for the Naperville Public Library.

She noted that Jacobs has been twice nominated and has won a Nammy Award, the equivalent of the music industry’s Grammy Award, from a Native American organization of musicians and music industry professionals.

His music blends Native American, rock, pop and folk influences. When he sings — in a strong, smoky tenor voice that has been compared to Don Henley — it is clearly from his heart.

But the music he made didn’t start sounding like that until he first left it behind. In the late 1990s, Jacobs was a guitarist in a working and recording rock band in Nashville.

While the city is famous for country music, it has a bustling music scene that spans the spectrum. With that came the demands and politics of the music industry and the strain within the band of performing for a living and each year writing 50 songs from which to cull the few that would be on the album.

Jacobs grew disillusioned with the politics of the music industry and walked away from it to focus on personal issues.

“I felt there was something missing. I always knew I was Cherokee, but I had never experienced it,” he said.

He attended a powwow, a gathering of Native Americans to share the songs, dances and ceremonies of their culture and heritage.

“I had an epiphany. My musical life was crashing down around me, but the journey of learning about being a Native American had started,” he said.

Over time, songs emerged from that experience and inspired Jacobs to pick up a guitar again, but not the electric guitar of his rock band days. This time around he picked up an acoustic guitar, the first kind he learned on, and began writing songs.

“It felt like coming back home. Just me and a guitar,” he said.

While he didn’t sing in his Nashville rock days, as songs came to him Jacobs realized he would have to sing them because they were so personal. He began performing and friends urged him to record the songs.

The CD, “Sacred Nation,” received the 2003 Native American Music Award for best independent recording.

While touring, he came to love Milwaukee, moved to the city and met the woman who would become his wife. It was there he recorded his second solo CD, “They Come Dancing,” in 2004. It, too, was nominated for a Native American Music Award.

Jacobs tours 10 months of the year. November is the busiest because it is Native American Heritage month.

Last November, he performed 14 shows in six states. He appears at colleges, powwows, municipal concerts, museums and libraries. He travels about 40,000 miles a year — a small tour as he describes it.

He writes songs “wherever I can in between everything,” and records every other December. “The Journey,” his last CD recorded in 2005, received the 2006 Indian Summer Music Award in the Spiritual category.

“My audience is very broad as far as age and gender. Heck, my step-daughter is 6 and my wife’s grandmother is 90, and they both like my songs,” Jacobs said.

“My songs have always had something to say to everyone. We all have the same hurts, hopes and experiences. We’re all human. My songs are about that experience. Writing has to have a connection with me inside. The songs have to ring true to who I am.”

The music industry that was the proverbial 800-pound gorilla in his first career had crumpled under its own weight when Jacobs returned to the profession. The emergence of digital recording equipment has cut recording costs. Recording is simplified and editing is easier.

“Making a recording today is almost like cutting and pasting a Word document,” he said.

“The Internet has been a huge boon, too. It has made a huge difference for individual artists,” Jacobs said.

Where there once had to be expensive promotional kits and mass mailings, new business can be sought online and through e-mail. Overhead is lower and music can be sold online, whether as CDs or songs downloaded from iTunes, Napster or Sony Music.

Jacobs has made a career on word of mouth and is reluctant to recruit a marketing professional.

“I love my career and my job. It’s more about getting out and connecting with folks.”

So what should area residents bring to his Naperville performance, and what might they take away from it?

“Everyone has an idea about who Native Americans are,” he said. “I hope people come with an open mind. I want them to get out of it what they need on their own journey.”

He points to the spiritual aspect of the Native American view of life — that all people are connected to each other and the land, and are responsible for both.

“In that context, I just want to bless them,” he said.

There will be smiles and laughter, too.

“I like to entertain. I’m not serious between songs. The song topics are weighty enough,” he said.

Jacobs takes pride in his lyrics, crafting the words and the music around them carefully. Searching for an analogy, he recalled a trip to see the ongoing work to carve a memorial to Crazy Horse in the side of a mountain in the Black Hills of South Dakota.

Sculptor Korczak Ziolkowski, who died in 1982, spent the second half of his life working on the project, which his family is carrying on.

“Not only was he shaping the mountain, but the mountain was shaping him,” Jacobs explained. “When I work on lyrics, it’s like I am chiseling away at words. I’m changing lyrics to get them just right, and there’s a change in me.”

Online samples of Jacobs’ music are available at www.cdbaby.com and his Web site, www.sacrednation.com.

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