Jacob Vanags’ Music is stuck in my head
(Jacob Vanags playing Familiar Faces - the song currently stuck in my head)
With my newly acquired overabundance of time, I set out on a mission to find new music. My current playlists were all going stale and I was hoping to utilize my last month in NYC to see some of the “underground” everyone’s always talking about.
My mission: Find singer/songwriter “musician & their guitar” types who are little known & are likely to be playing a NYC show in some dive bar this month. Which is actually a very specific description now that I write it all out like that …
Obviously Myspace and the twitterati are my first sources. I should go to Time Out NY … but that’s just too dense while I’m always online anyway. There are two people I trust to give great music suggestions 90% of the time: 1938media and Icon Music.
1938media vlogged about this young piano genius Jacob Vanags (lots of videos at his myspace). I personally think he’s the next Ben Folds … only I like his music far better than BF. A little stalkerbooking went down, I found him on ALL his sites, wrote on the walls of a few. You know the drill. Lo and behold, a day later his ROOMMATE friended me on facebook and a date for the next weekend was set.
I can’t believe I didn’t take any pictures of the show, but I promise you it was amazing! It’s just what the doctor ordered: a little dive bar in Chinatown, the show started late due to technical difficulties (as only the best shows do), and I got the chance to chat with Jacob about his plans to travel to South Africa for the World Cup (via couch surfing with strangers) after graduation. Perfection.
Then the show started. Whew! The tracks on his myspace are piano-heavy and exciting enough - but watching him deftly knock out those songs with such exuberance and talent was the real treat. I didn’t expect the drums and horn to improve the raw unbridled talent of his acoustic recordings, but boy oh boy when he goes in to record his new stuff with the accompaniment he’s planning, it will truly blow you away. (again) Adding horn to “Manhattan and Me” gave the song the perfect touch to invoke that jazzy feel of a cool NY summer night.
Also unexpected was the high quotient of supremely good looking people. With the exception of me and my wingman, Rhea, everyone there was personal friends of Jacob and Bassel. Jacob, his roommate (and manager), Ryan, and Bassel are all hotties. And those type of guys apparently only make friends with pretty people too. This was obviously a very nice place to be that night.
Check out Jacob, and let his EP get mercilessly stuck in your head. You won’t regret it.
2 years ago • Notes