David Jacobs-Strain and Bob Beach will perform at 6 On The Square in Oxford at 7:30 p.m. Friday, April 12. (Submitted photo)

OXFORD - 6 On The Square in Oxford presents David Jacobs-Strain and Bob Beach for a night of blues and roots music at 7:30 p.m. Friday, April 12.

 Jacobs-Strain and Beach are a multigenerational, bicoastal duo who have performed together since 2010. They currently play between 70 and 100 shows a year on both East and West Coasts.

Jacob-Strain is a striking slide guitar player and song poet from Eugene, Oregon. His deep love of blues and roots music is evident in every one of the songs he writes. He studied masters like Robert Johnson, Taj Mahal and Jackson Browne, but he plays his own sound, his own song, with a virtuosity that is uniquely his.

He began playing on street corners and at farmers’ markets as a teen, and he bought his first steel guitar with the quarters he saved up. Before he dropped out of Stanford to play full time, he already had appeared at festivals across the country, often billed as a blues prodigy, but he had to fight to avoid being a novelty act: “I wanted to tell new stories, it just wasn’t enough to relive the feelings in other people’s music.” 

Jacobs-Strain has appeared at Merlefest, Telluride Blues Festival, Philadelphia Folk Festival, Hardly Strictly, Bumbershoot, and Blues to Bop in Switzerland. On the road, he’s shared the stage with Lucinda Williams, Boz Scaggs (more than 60 shows), Etta James, The Doobie Brothers, George Thorogood, Robert Earle Keen, Todd Snider, Taj Mahal, Janis Ian, Tommy Emmanuel, Bob Weir, T-Bone Burnett and Del McCoury.

For more than 40 years, Beach has been a working professional musician bringing harmonica, flute and vocals to a broad scope of genres. A native Philadelphian, he relocated to western Pennsylvania after high school and worked in bands and musical projects from 1976 to 1997 while based in Pittsburgh.

As a sideman, he has recorded or performed with Ollabelle, Langhorne Slim, The Avett Brothers, Pat Wictor, Beaucoup Blue, Fruit and many more. He also was a sound engineer at The World Café Live music venue for 15 years. Learn more at davidjacobs-strain.com.

Tickets for the April 12 show are $18 in advance or $23 at the door; purchase online at 6onthesquare.org or call 607-843-OTS6 (6876) to make a reservation. Doors open one hour before the start of the performance. The show also will be streamed live online for $10; more information at 6onthesquare.org.

Coming up at 6OTS this spring are Tret Fure (April 27), Martyn Joseph (May 11) and 6OTS’s 17th Anniversary Celebration with The Black Feathers (June 22).

6 On The Square Inc., not-for-profit, volunteer-based acoustic music listening room and arts venue, is located at 6 Lafayette Park in downtown Oxford.

- Information from 6OTS