Making his 'Encore': Oklahoma songwriter Greg Jacobs bringing new and old songs to Blue Door show

From Country Music Hall of Famer Garth Brooks to a thrift-store shopper from Arkansas, Greg Jacobs occasionally receives reminders of the lasting impressions songs can make on people’s lives.

“I got an email from a lady one time that said that her husband requested my song ‘All the Answers’ be played at his funeral. You just hear little things like that and you think, ‘That song must have really touched that guy,’ ” Jacobs said in a recent phone interview from his ranch near Checotah. “It’s just pretty cool.”

For his “Encore,” the venerable red dirt singer-songwriter mixed up new and newly rediscovered songs into a long-awaited studio album he said might be his last.

“Unless I go on a writing frenzy … probably. You never know. I never was really a proficient writer. I never wrote a lot. I kind of followed Childers — I learned a lot from Bob — who said it was better to write one good song than 10 bad ones,” Jacobs said.

Whatever else the future holds, Jacobs will perform Saturday night at the Blue Door with his longtime friend Gene Williams and producer Jeff Parker, who helped him make his “Encore.”

Forgotten songs

Recorded at Parker’s Cimarron Sound Lab in Tahlequah, Jacobs spent about a year working on his “Encore."

“During this whole process, I stumbled onto three old cassette tapes that I had made back in like the ′80s and early ′90s. They were just living room tapes, work tapes. ... I took it to Gene’s studio — Gene has a studio there in Tulsa — and we spent a whole afternoon listening,” Jacobs recalled. “We picked about four songs off of there that I had never played.”

Jacobs was amazed when he suddenly heard on one of those forgotten tapes the late Tom Skinner’s voice singing on their ballad “Janie and Billy.”

“We wrote the song together, and he recorded it and I had forgotten it. I hadn’t heard it in 30 years, and suddenly here it comes, here’s Tom Skinner singing ‘Janie and Billy.’ And I’m looking at Gene going, ‘We gotta do this song," Jacobs said.

Lasting influence

The Oklahoma State University alumnus recently got a surprise from another red dirt brother who has passed on: Ashley Warren, who administers the Jimmy LaFave Intellectual Property Trust, reached out to share a recording LaFave, who died in 2017, had done of Jacobs’ song “A Little at a Time.”

“I had no idea Jimmy ever did that song,” Jacobs said.

Fellow OSU alum Garth Brooks not only praised Jacobs as one of his influences, but also sang his song “Don’t It Feel Good” during a news conference for the 2017 Oklahoma City stop on “The Garth Brooks World Tour.”

“She ain't putting on her fancy clothes / or powdering up her pretty nose,” Brooks sang then with a smile. “That was his big song, and I love it. I haven't sang that song in probably 25 years, but you know every word of it, because that's how much you loved him and his influence.”

Jacobs said Brooks used to cover “Don’t It Feel Good” when he played across Stillwater.

“That was really cool … because I didn’t think Garth even remembered me,” Jacobs said. “I got a letter not too long ago from some man in Arkansas. ... He found my first CD, ‘South of Muskogee Town,’ in a thrift store in some little town in Arkansas, and it had my address in there. So, he just wrote me a letter just out of the blue. Little things like that happen just often enough that it just keeps you going.”

IN CONCERT

Who: Greg Jacobs

When: 8 p.m. Saturday.

Where: Blue Door, 2805 N McKinley.

Information and tickets: www.bluedoorokc.com.