David Jacobs-Strain & Bob Beach
David Jacobs-Strain and Bob Beach
David and Bob met on a Philadelphia Folk Festival Workshop Stage in 2002. Over the next eight years they would come across each other at festivals, conferences and other music venues. These chance meetings eventually convinced them that working together could create something very special. Since 2010 they have been doing exactly that at festivals, clubs, house concerts and more. They currently perform across the US and in Canada. Their live show moves from humorous, subversive blues, to delicate balladry, and then swings back to swampy rock and roll.
“David Jacobs-Strain and Bob Beach blew me away last summer at Swannanoa. As we say at home, they knocked my hat in the creek. I can’t envision the audience that could fail to take to them from the first chord and to the last. Hear them yourself as soon as you can”. Tom Paxton
David Jacobs-Strain is a fierce slide guitar player, and a song poet from Oregon. He is known for both his virtuosity and spirit of emotional abandon. David displays a range that ties him to his own generation and to guitar-slinger troubadours like Robert Johnson and Jackson Browne. “I try to make art that you can dance to, but I love that darker place, where in my mind, Skip James, Nick Drake, and maybe Elliot Smith blur together.” His newest album, “Live,” speaks of open roads, longing hearts and flashbacks of Oregon– a record of emotions big and small, and lyrics that turn quickly from literal to figurative. “I’m fascinated by the way that rural blues inscribes movement and transience. The music that frees a singer keeps them on the run; there’s a crossroads where a thing can be enchanting but dangerous; damaging but beautiful.”
Bob Beach’s career has spanned more than 55 years. With his roots in blues, rock and folk, his innate feel for the music transcends genre, and can be integrated into everything from hip hop to bluegrass to kids’ cabaret and more. In addition to masterful harmonica, Bob’s skills include strong percussive flute work, and soulful vocals. Bob has performed on stage with Levon Helm, David Bromberg, The Avett Brothers, Langhorne Slim, and many more. Bob has even played the Apollo Theater with a hip-hop band. When not touring with David you can find Bob performing and recording with many Philadelphia and east coast artists. He also co-fronts Bob Beach and Paul Wilkinson and is a member of the Meghan Cary Trio .
“Bob Beach, you snuck into the tunes with us with the grace and sensitivity of an old school sax man, making everything better while calling attention to the music not yourself” Scott Ainslie, blues musician & educator
https://youtu.be/TmSEXWdnweQ?si=-z_A4le95jBeAKNL