Tony Cummings charts the history of Atlanta's fondly remembered pop rockers JACOB'S TROUBLE

Long after the retro zany pop of Atlanta's Jacob's Trouble had disappeared from the CD racks the band were being eulogized on numerous fan websites. Even fellow Atlanta musicianaries Third Day paid tribute to them. Said Mac Powell, "There's a band originally from Atlanta called Jacob's Trouble. We were all fans of their music. Whenever they were in town we would always go and hear them play. They were always very encouraging to us. They were the band we would always go to see and say, 'Wow, I hope one day we can do what they do!' When we were able to go and make [the 'Offerings' album] we said that we were going to do a Jacob's Trouble song. 'These Thousand Hills' was a song they did that we always loved."

The Encyclopedia Of Contemporary Christian Music summed up Jacob's Trouble's appeal. "Their retro '60s sound was eminently likeable and yet quirky and eclectic enough to interest critics who would usually recoil at bands with such obvious commercial appeal."

The origins of the group go back to 1988 when Jerry Davison (drums), Mark Blackburn (guitar) and Steve Atwell (bass) formed a college band in Atlanta. Davison and Blackburn handled the vocals with their name coming from Jeremiah 30:7, a reference that the trio first heard in the Christian exploitation movie Image Of The Beast. In 1988 the band recorded a cassette EP 'Jacob's Trouble'. On the compilation 'Diggin' Up Bones' Jerry Davison spoke about recording 'Jacob's Trouble' in June 1988. "We recorded and mixed these first five songs in about three days at a little studio called Songbird in Atlanta. We only pressed 500 copies of this cassette-only release in November 1988 and sold them for $5.00 each at two of the four shows we played before we got a record deal."

The tape also contained a praise song, "Psalm 151". Said Jerry, "Steve, Mark and myself wrote 'Psalm' together one evening in the practise room at my mom's house. Mark played us the music, we started humming a melody and Steve and I began skimming through the Psalms for inspiration. The result is a simple, bare-bones song of praise for God. Some bright keyboard and breathy background vocals were added to the version on 'Door. . .' in the hopes of garnering some airplay on Christian radio. This version feels much more honest to me. You would be surprised at the number of people who attempt to look this up in the Bible. And some even say they found it!"

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