Sisters artist follows music’s path

Jacob Everett Wallace has always known that music was his desired path. Wallace recently moved to Sisters and is getting set to release his latest single at the end of August, titled “Wanderer.”

Wallace is cultivating his own production studio in Sisters, located in the industrial park, called Ransomed Songs Productions. The studio will also serve as a prayer house, as Wallace is also a worship leader.

Wallace grew up non-traditionally — schooling year-round and traveling with his family across the country, completing church missions. Music was always a constant factor in his young life. His father was a worship leader while he was growing up, and Wallace aspired to be a musician himself.

When he was around age 8 or 9, his father bought him and his brother a cheap acoustic guitar and if they learned basic chords on that one, they could play his nicer instruments.

“I started being able to play really well and very early on, writing became ingrained in me as well,” Wallace told The Nugget.

In 2004, his family moved their home base from North Carolina to Fort Worth, Texas, where they served as missionaries on the Mexican border for three years.

“After that experience and seeing so much in that area, I was about to go into high school and that is when my songwriting really took a turn and I had this drive to be the best that I could,” he said.

Wallace grew up listening to primarily Christian music and writing music based on scripture. Wallace wanted to branch out to his own songwriting style and write about his life experiences and have his songs be truly his own.

“It became less of a worship style and more toward journalistic stories and experiences,” he said.

Wallace had joined a songwriting group where every February, members of the annual event write songs for the entire month and see who comes up with the most songs for the month.

“This experience really gave me a lot of confidence and positive reinforcement during my formative singer-songwriter time,” he said.

Shortly after February with a new booklet of songs in hand, Wallace holed up in a cabin in Austin, near the Llano River, and wrote the first single he released in 2018, “Orange Haze.”

Shortly after the release of that single, Wallace recorded his first EP in Fort Worth titled, “Where the River Meets the Ocean.” During the process of writing this EP, Wallace had taken a road trip from Texas up to the Columbia River Gorge and Oregon Coast with his brother.

“I had a spiritual moment while standing on a rock on the Oregon Coast looking out on the ocean and I started the writing process for the rest of the EP,” said Wallace.

The title for the EP came from a connection to where he wrote the first song, along the river in Austin, all the way to the ocean where he finished the writing of the songs.

Wallace said: “It was a sort of metaphor for the journey from the desert to the ocean in the process and it was something my Mom had said to me and it clicked.”

Wallace’s song, “Capture Me,” off that EP is the song that he said “is the essence of that EP about the journey to find a home.”

In 2019, Wallace released another EP titled “Arrows.”

Also, in 2019, Wallace decided he wanted a change of scenery in his living situation. He had been keen on moving to Nashville for many years, but it never worked out. He had vaguely heard about Central Oregon and talked it over with his family and decided to move up to Oregon.

“It was a sort of arbitrary decision and I was tired of being on the road after touring with some groups and with my own music,” said Wallace.

During one of his camping trips up near Mt. Hood in 2017 with friends, inspiration struck Wallace again — inspiration for his latest single, “Wanderer.”

“I was watching the campfire late at night and the chorus melody for the song came me and I was constantly humming it under my breath to remember it,” he said.

After returning, he finished writing out the song and decided to save it for a single release in August. Wallace calls it the ‘August song’ because every part of the song was written, constructed and recorded and then released in the month of August — last year and this year.

“A lot of the song is speaking about my experiences based in Oregon and this one comes out of that,” he said. He said in a blog post on the single: “What I didn’t know at the time was how prescient it would be for me and how my journey would unfold. An anthem born in the stillness and quiet would roar when I needed it most.”

Wanderer was recorded in Nashville and mixed and finalized with Raymond Shelley at Sisters Sound Studio.

The cover art for the song was commissioned with local Sisters artist, Raina Verhey.

Wallace is putting down roots in Sisters and hopes to cultivate his songwriting philosophy: “Find your vulnerability.”

“Wanderer” will be released on Friday, August 28, on all major music platforms. To learn more about Jacob Everett Wallace, visit www.jacobeverettwallace.com.