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Song Review: Cris Jacobs feat. Lindsay Lou - “Work Song (I Can Still Sing)”

Cris Jacobs used the story of John Henry’s famous hammer to pound out “Work Song (I Can Still Sing).”

The lead single from One of These Days (April 26) features Lindsay Lou on vocals and combines the traditional story with a new melody as the duo sing fresh lyrics:

Long-hair woman, make that honey sweet/when I get home, I get home, I get home/gonna dance around the honeycomb

Members of the Infamous Stringdusters wrap Jacobs’ fingerpicked electric guitar in bluegrass instrumentation produced by Jerry Douglas. Call “Work Song (I Can Still Sing)” a bit of something old, something new, something borrowed, something bluegrass and a high-performance hybrid.

Grade card: Cris Jacobs feat. Lindsay Lou - “Work Song (I Can Still Sing)” - B

Step right up, catch it while you can 

Alligator hugger and the candyman 

Pretty lights junkie like a moth to candle, buzzing around the flame 

Step right up get it while it’s hot 

Anything you want under the big top 

Bang bang monkey with the soda pop 

TopHouse with Cris Jacobs at Skully’s Music-Diner, Columbus, Ohio, March 14, 2026

It was listeners vs. talkers at TopHouse’s March 14 gig inside Skully’s Music-Diner, where the listeners - armed with lots of shhh-ing - ultimately prevailed in the long-running battle royale.

The loud Columbus, Ohio, audience benefited on the breezy “Wine or the Weather,” when the band encouraged them to yell, “I heard ‘Anglo Saxon!’” every time the band sang the words Anglo Saxon. The band suffered during quieter fare and some of their frequent stage banter when talkers overwhelmed the men on stage.

Cris Jacobs alluded to this when he opted to close his well-received, 45-minute opening set with the quiet, tender, “September” in defiance of the squawkers in the house. On his way to the finale, Jacobs accompanied himself on acoustic guitar on the unreleased “Halos” and his Billy Strings joint “Poor Davey.” Plugging in a three-string, cigar-box guitar and playing foot percussion, Jacobs turned in bluesy versions of “Samson and Delilah” and “When the Levee Breaks” that followed the respective arrangements by Grateful Dead and Led Zeppelin.

“You can’t AI that,” Jacobs said in underlining the importance of gathering in the name of live music.

The good-humored headliners refer to themselves as TopHouse the Band LLC and call themselves a folk band. They’re also a bluegrass band, a rock band and a comedy act. After two weeks together in the van they call Black Lung, singer Joe Larson (guitar, banjo, mandolin, keyboards, percussion), Jesse Davis (guitar, mandolin, kick drum, percussion), William Cook (fiddle) and Eli Isbell (guitar, banjo, penny whistle, keyboards, percussion) were sick, with Davis unable to sing harmonies and mostly resigned to bantering by typing into his phone and playing it back with a voice app.

“I can still whisper but it’s a little weird and I didn’t want to turn anybody on,” he said late in the 95-minute show.

“TOO LATE!,” a dude yelled.

Opening with “WDYTWH,” TopHouse ignited rabid singalongs on similarly uptempo numbers like “Drive Back Home;” dived into rock ’n’ roll on the menacing “Run” with Larson’s voice echoing over Cook’s electric violin, substituting for guitar; and shrugged at the inevitable on “Deathbed,” which transformed the diner into an arena.

On the quirky-comedy front, Cook read an excerpt from “the Hobbit” to Renaissance accompaniment from his bandmates; Isbell improvised poetry drowned out by the talkers; and “I Don’t Wanna Move On” was preceded by a shaggy-dog story about a guy named Von asking Isbell to moo.

“I don’t want to moo, Von,” Isbell said to laughter and groans.

That song was interrupted when Cook’s fiddle blew out its amp and the musicians fell out with laughter. It’s a testament to TopHouse the Band LLC that they quickly got back on track and finished the number.

It’s a professional business that creates value for its ticketholders, after all.

Grade card: TopHouse with Cris Jacobs at Skully’s Music-Diner - 3/14/26 - B+

Music Reviews: The Cryin’ Shames, plus Desmond Dekker, Delroy Wilson, Ken Boothe, Dr. John, and Cris Jacobs #thecryinshames @cris_jacobs @desmonddekkerjnr_official #delroywilson @kenboothemusic @aka_drjohn #jeffburger #americanamusic @americanahighways #americanahighways #newmusic2024 #buymusic

Music Reviews: The Cryin’ Shames, plus Desmond Dekker, Delroy Wilson, Ken Boothe, Dr. John, and Cris Jacobs The Cryin’ Shames, a mid-sixties beat/pop group from Liverpool, England, were barely even a one-hit wonder on their home turf. Their sole significant chart tune, a 1966 cover of the Drifters’ “Please Stay” credited to Burt Bacharach and Bob Hillard, made it only to No. 26 on the U.K.…

New Album Cris Jacobs Cris Jacobs – Photo: Joshua Black Wilkins Cris Jacobs’s New Album ‘One Of These Days’ Out April 26, 2024 Single Out Now “Work Song (I Can Still Sing)” Continue reading Untitled

Song Review: Cris Jacobs - “Black Peter”

Cris Jacobs brought “Black Peter” back from the Dead with his solo-acoustic cover of the Grateful song.

Cut live in studio during the so-called Days Between, it finds Jacobs being fully himself, nodding directly to Jerry Garcia only when he once pronounces the word day as dey.

Adding clipped chords to the melody and playing a short, string-bending solo as he approaches the bridge, Jacobs sings with reverence, inhabiting the song and making a successful cover out of one of the most difficult Grateful Dead songs to make a successful cover of.

The only thing missing from this authentic blues rendition is the Workingman’s Dead harmonica solo.

The Days Between (Garcia’s Aug. 1 birth and Aug. 9 death) end today with the 26th anniversary of the latter event. At this point, it’s just like any other day. But that can’t be said of Jacobs’ “Black Peter.”

Grade card: Cris Jacobs - “Black Peter” - A-