Jacob Cummings is an LA-based producer, multi-instrumentalist, and singer-songwriter raised in the small surf town of New Smyrna Beach, Florida. Though primarily known as a photographer and visual artist, Cummings is a classically trained saxophonist and a "total band kid," with a natural aptitude for arrangement and a boardwalk-gothic sensibility inspired by his coastal upbringing. He debuted as an artist with the instrumental “COVID project” Slow Paradise in 2020, followed by Fishing from Heaven with his partner Laney Tripp. Southern & Enlightened marks his first full solo record, featuring his own vocals, and he considers it his proper debut.
Cummings recorded Southern & Enlightened in a home once owned by his grandmother, who passed away shortly before the sessions. He stayed in the house for a month before it was to be torn down, going through her belongings and watching Ken Burns’ Baseball. The memories of the house and the sadness of its destruction seeped into the music, perhaps with some of Burns’ Americana as well. This is tactile music, alive with the feeling of sea spray, sand, winds through open windows, and the textures of old wood and burnished brass.
While Cummings’ arrangements draw from LA’s studio psychedelia, they carry a distinct Atlantic undertone, reminiscent of Louis Malle’s Atlantic City, Harmony Korine’s Spring Breakers, and the seashell-eyed music of Real Estate and Beach House.
