For the last 15 years, singer-songwriter Avi Jacob has written songs, produced albums, and performed across the country using his real name. In recent years, being Avi Jacob all the time, had started to bother him. As he recalls, it was his booking agent who put it into words he previously hadn’t found a way to express.
“A buffer. That was exactly how my booking agent was, like, this can be a buffer for you. Because she knows how uncomfortable I am promoting myself. I’m very uncomfortable talking into a phone and saying, ‘Hey, you should listen to my album and you should come see me.’ I hate asking for that. It feels weird.”
Enter: “Hawk in the Nest”, Jacob’s new name for his music. Sometimes it’s just him performing. Other times, he’s accompanied by musicians. For Jacob, it’s broadened the possibilities of what his music can be.
“I think it was always folk leaning towards soulful folk. I mean, that’s a way that people would describe it a lot in articles or when they wrote bios, they would say, ‘this is very soulful folk.’ But now I’m more just going into it sonically in a way that makes it more obvious.”
Jacob has a new album in the works, his first as “Hawk in the Nest” including the title track he wrote, which ultimately inspired the name change . He says reaching the point of having this new name was its own journey.
“I had a manager that said I had to change it (to “Hawk in the Nest”), and that was much cooler than my name, and that if I didn’t change it, they didn’t want anything to do with me. And then I talked to a record label that was like, ‘We would like to put out your album maybe if you don’t change your name, we need Avi Jacob. It can’t be Hawk and The Nest. We don’t like the name “Hawk and The Nest”. We think it’s too vague and broad.’ So it was really funny hearing two people who are legitimately successful in music say completely opposite things.”
Now Jacob finds comfort in the new name, and the new opportunities it presents.
“I love it. I had a show in Charleston (South Carolina) and it was awesome. The show went well. There were more people dancing than have ever been dancing at a show of mine, and people afterwards didn’t know my name. They just were happy and they would give compliments to me and to the band, and it wasn’t just about me, and it felt really nice.”
Check out “Hawk in the Nest’s” performance from season five of “Ocean State Sessions.”
