Jacob, 16, opens for Aldean

By The Standard Staff - 01/24/2008

Opening for Jason Aldean on Saturday night in her first tour performance will be Emma Mae Jacob, a 16-year-old with a powerhouse voice.

Her first CD, called “Breakin’ All the Rules,” will be released in May.

“I’m so excited,” the teenager said from her bicoastal Colfax, Calif., home, a small mining town, of her opportunity to play in Butte.

Part of the year for the tall blonde is in California and part is spent in Nashville where she is chasing her dream of singing and performing country music.

Jacob started out by performing in showcases for radio stations and record labels and attracting enough attention to pull down two big bookings, singing the national anthem at both the Papa John’s and Outback bowl games.

“It was the biggest crowd I’ve ever performed at,” she said of the Outback Bowl which attracted 70,000 fans.

“I was really nervous.” Jacob’s recently released single — which is also a music video — is called “What If We Fly,” and features a page out of Jacob’s short life. It is the story of a couple who adopt a baby, which mirrors her own experience since she was adopted as a newborn.

“Country tells a story,” Jacob told The Montana Standard. “And it can make you laugh or cry. It’s pretty much a show in a three-minute song.” She is probably the only singing teenager who is a partial owner of a small theater in Colfax, a gift from her grandfather and one of the first places the teen performed. She has been singing since she was a child, but credits her interest in country music to the recordings of country legends like Patsy Cline, Loretta Lynn and Tanya Tucker.

She also said she is lucky to have a family who cheers her on and allows her to chase her dreams.

“They are 100 percent supportive,” she said.