David Jacobs-Strain

David Jacobs-Strain—the young man with the age-old voice and guitar chops that make players twice his age break out in a cold sweat—plows new ground with his latest, Ocean Or A Teardrop. It’s a band record, not a guitar album, and includes the sounds of Arabian ouds and African koras and djembes. Just don’t call it world music. “I’m not sure what the term world music means,” Jacobs-Strain says from the sunny backyard of the big house in Palo Alto where he lives with 11 other Stanford students. “I can’t claim to know how the kora plays into the origins of the blues, but the [kora and guitar] have a similar language and I’m excited to bring together sounds that work together and are pleasing to the ear.”

With producer Kenny Passarelli (Otis Taylor, Elton John) Jacobs-Strain assembled a cast of like-minded musicians to honor the music’s deep roots while letting it grow. “It’s not all live, but it’s all spontaneous,” Jacobs-Strain says. “I’d play the songs [for the musicians] and an hour later we were recording. We could have made a more produced record, but I like music with a loose feel. It’s the most fun I’ve had since I discovered bottleneck guitar.”

Which begs the obvious question: how did a kid from Eugene, Ore., become a blues guitar hero? “I grew up going to folk festivals where hand music thrived. The blues had a big, wide-open landscape; its freedom and wild romance appealed to me and still does. I stay true to the tradition, even though I’m not from the tradition.”