A Life Revised: Jacob Marshall of Mae
Blog / Produced by The High Calling
L.L. here, to say "I'm not a rock aficionado."
I thought we should get that out of the way before I started talking about Jacob Marshall, drummer and aesthetic philosopher from the Indie/Rock group Mae— just in case you expected me to talk music, or offer an analysis of the group's style.
What I really want to share is Jacob's professional story.
He got his first drum set when he was three years old. A Sesame Street special. Jacob's dad was a musician and they were often on the road, so by age five he got his first drum lesson from Ricky Skaggs' drummer.
And that was the beginning... of a long career in...
gymnastics.
I could feel something different for the first time. Heaven made sense and all the words rhymed. No chance of stopping it now. I'm taking it all. And now I'm caught in the air. It's a good glide. Pass it up, wouldn't dare, what a wild ride. I remember being ready and waiting to fall just like I did tonight. --from "Ready and Waiting to Fall" on The Everglow album
His early love for music quickly fell into the background as he grew and prepared for life as a gymnast. For ten years, up to forty hours a week, Jacob pursued his dream. Home educated, he followed his academic passions and eventually got an appointment to Annapolis, after an arduous application process. It was everything he wanted, a promise of the financial stability he had never experienced. It was, in short, the beginning of...
his life as a musician.
Because, holding the paperwork to his future, he was overcome with an intense inner knowing. The kind, he says, "You don't really want to know." It was a fork-in-the-road experience, and he tore up the Annapolis paperwork because he had an undeniable sense that God was offering him a new path.
Still, the next day he went to compete in the final night of National Championships. At the end of a tumbling pass he'd done many times before, he landed "just wrong" and ended up with a massive double hernia complete with ensuing surgery.
After weeks of convalescing, Jacob began to rehabilitate, but on the way home from his first stretching session, he got swiped by a truck. Where do you go when your whole life and skill set has prepared you for one thing, but that's no longer going to be the thing?
Jacob switched gears and went on to study aesthetics and the human reaction to beauty, through an interdisciplinary program he dreamed up and presented to the faculty at Old Dominion in Norfolk, VA. While studying things like sensation and perception, color and sound, literature, and philosophy of music, he eventually wanted to create multi-sensory art.
As a vehicle to explore, he went back to his roots. Drumming.
Mae was born.
Should've known better than to listen when the dreams and the words started falling apart. Should've known I would've hit the ground running. But did you think that the night would possess us? Take us over like the rain that's falling down. -- from "This is the Countdown", on The Everglow album
Jacob explains that the group tries to give its fans an overwhelming experience of beauty, to involve them in stories that encourage them to "dig deeper." Behind this is a theory of how individual volition, merged through connections, makes a society-impacting whole, much the way notes make music and pixels make digital pictures.
"Do you think your fans get that?" I asked. Jacob says, yes, many of them do. Together they have forged important conversations and promoted change in the world through partnerships like a recent one with Habitat for Humanity.
Currently, the group is regrouping after a time of intense travel over the past few years. They've been to 49 States, many times over; to Japan six times, the U.K., Australia, Indonesia, and the Philippines. Jacob has also traveled extensively on his own to China and India, working in orphanages or just getting education.
I know I'm running and I'm moving too fast So we will go home And where I'm headed to it's nobody's guess So we will go home -- from "Home" on Singularity album
I met Jacob at the IAM Encounter conference, where he told of Mae's dreams and humanitarian projects. He also shared that on the final night of their last tour...
...someone stole all their equipment.
“So, if you know anyone in Pittsburgh who has a really nice drum set…” Jacob said smiling.
It’s not the first time life redirected him.
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To learn more about Mae, go to whatismae.
'Destination Beautiful' album cover photo and post by L.L. Barkat.