Jacob Church’s babysitter was “Elvira.” Not the Mistress of the Dark herself, but the Oak Ridge Boys song.
“My mom would tell the story that I would be in my little baby swing,” Church says. “One of those swings you wind up. I’d start crying and she’d put on music.” He stopped crying when she played “Elvira.”
But Church, 43, didn’t grow up to strictly play country music. Beginning in grade school, he was forming and joining bands, ranging from folk, rock, jam, pop, and soul to country. He’s been in about 12 bands, and on 14 recordings, including albums and EPs. Today, Church is working on his latest album, Twin Fiction, with his pop-rock band of the same name. It’s slated to be released this summer. He also co-wrote a song with Raneem Imam, “All the Time,” which will be released this spring. “It’s about how time is all we have and yet there’s never enough.”
At a young age, Church was hooked on The Monkees — until he discovered another mop-topped group. After playing The Monkees show theme song on drums in his first grade talent show, his mother told him, “You did such a great job. Your teacher said you looked just like Ringo Starr.” I said, “Who’s Ringo Starr?”
Church became a “Beatles freak” after his mom bought him their greatest hits album. “It was the melodies. I’ve always been a melody person,” he says. “I love lyrics, they’re important. But the thing I connect to first in a song is the melody.”
Church switched from drums to guitar and formed his first “band,” The Crew, with friends in grade school. “We recorded a song on a karaoke machine or something,” he says. “In eighth grade, I got a four-track cassette recorder and a mic and was off to the races.” He began writing his own music — instrumentals — while a senior at Lausanne Collegiate School. He also formed his first real band, Granola Shrapnel. They made their own CD, Dawning Comprehension, in 2000.
Church sang solo on stage for the first time performing Bob Dylan’s “Visions of Johanna” in a high school talent show. “I was shaking like a leaf on a tree.” But his performance was a success. “People clapped. Nobody booed,” he said, “and it pretty much eliminated my stage fright.”
Granola Shrapnel went on to play mostly at the old Kudzu’s Bar & Grill. But things changed in February 2002. They had just finished a show. “I had what I call my ‘freak out,’” Church says. “I had a panic attack for the first time. I had no idea what was happening to me. Now I have language to describe it. It would be called ‘derealization’ and ‘depersonalization.’”
Church stopped playing music. “It took almost a year to feel like I had sort of started to get recentered,” he says. “I’ve gotten a handle on managing it now.”
Church shared his thoughts about the experience in his song, “Hidden by the Rain,” in 2003. “About that feeling of realizing you feel bad and things feel awful and hopeless, but it’s the same world it’s always been. It’s just hidden by the rain.”
Music helped him get through the worst of that period. “I just play music. I have to,” he says. “It’s a part of me I can’t deny. If I don’t, it hurts. It feels bad.”
Granola Shrapnel continued on, but with new members, including Graham Winchester and Church’s brother, Ben. Over the years, Church played in other bands, including Beauregard, Graham Winchester & the Ammunition, Jeff Hulett and the Hand Me Downs, Circle Birds, and a band with Abbye West Pates. He and his brother also formed a duo, The Church Brothers, and, later, Twin Fiction. Church also led his own group, The Jacob Church Band.
He worked as a sound engineer at Ardent Studios, Memphis Soundworks, and Young Avenue Sound before landing a job at Rhodes College, where he’s now a systems programmer analyst.
“How to Be Young” from the upcoming album, is basically Church looking in a mirror today, evoking “the way I feel since I did lose a lot of my youth to mental illness. And how it feels in my early ’40s. I’m ready to be young. I’m ready to do it.”