Claudia Jacobs Band Releases New Album

The Claudia Jacobs Band independently released its first full-length album at a packed University Café on March 22, a collection of songs they call "Rally On!" – a name befitting the process through which the album came to exist.

By that we mean, it almost didn't happen.

"After two years of working on it in the studio, we lost everything due to a computer malfunction," said Jacobs, a Three Village resident. "We were getting so close."

She even took the computer to a data retrieval specialist, but to no avail. So the musicians spent even more time and more money and kept moving forward.

"The good news is that after so much work and money, your biggest fear is that it won't live up to your standards," Jacobs said, "and we're really happy with how this came out."

The 12-song collection has a fairly hopeful tone. Jacobs, , looked back at the songs she wrote and realized, "I'm actually a very hopeful person."

"It's sort of like rallying on," she said. "You get certain things you have to deal with ... but you have to have a pick-yourself-up-by-the bootstraps kind of attitude. There's always hope."

On the album: covers of Bob Dylan's "Buckets of Rain" and The Kinks' "Looney Balloon." Otherwise, the rest are originals that fall into the blues, jazz, and folk genres.

Jacobs's band also consists of Greg Galluccio, playing the guitar – acoustic, slide, and electric – and doing background vocals, and Dan Weymouth, playing the organ, piano, accordion, and background vocals. The band also worked with Tristan Eggener, a tuba player and Stony Brook Universaty doctoral graduate, and drummer Mark Portugal.

Also interesting to note: the songs were mastered by Gene Paul, the son of legendary guitarist Les Paul who has worked with The Rolling Stones, Bette Midler, and Billie Holiday, among others. The album was mixed by Bob Stander at Parcheesi Studios in Huntington.

As for the content of the songs, Jacobs, the primary songwriter, describes them as slightly activist, slightly spiritual in nature.

"There's at least three songs on here that touch on the idea of 'whatever floats your boat as long as you're not hurting anybody,'" he said. "My spiritual and political beliefs."

The Claudia Jacobs Band's "Rally On!" album is available for purchase at shows for $15 and retails for $9.99 on iTunes. Visit Jacobs's website to preview the album and learn more about the artist behind the songs.