Over the last 20 years, Tucson musician and Arizona native Jacob Acosta has explored many avenues in music. He has released 17 records in different genres, including shoegaze, pop, blues, rock, deep house, progressive and organic house and folk, since 2008. He’s performed with a number of bands, including Mason, Roll Acosta, Burning West, HYTS and Race You There.
With his current group, the Golden Hearts, he has been developing music in the country genre.
During a performance at Club Congress on Friday, Aug. 8, the band will be recording their live performance for their upcoming album “I Want to Be Your Cowboy.” During the show, the band will play music from Acosta’s 2024 album “Saint Corazón” along with unreleased music developed for the new album.
Emerging artist Erika Segura will also take the stage. She and Acosta previously did a single and music video of “Shallow” together.
The band consists of Acosta on guitar and vocals, bass player Barry Young (who also worked with Acosta on “Saint Corazón” and Mason’s “My Kind of Trouble”) and drummer Jeff Browning. This group has been playing together for about two years. Their biggest performance was for a crowd of 4,000 at the Corral at White Tank Ranch in Waddell.
Acosta said the new songs have a different sound than music he has done in the past.
“It’s going to be with a country-pop sensibility that’s very different than what I’ve done in the past, which has a Southwest-pop sound and folk-pop sound. This is actually a country-pop sound, so it’ll feel like country music,” Acosta said.
He often records albums live and does overdubs in the studio. He did this with both “Saint Corazon” and “My Kind of Trouble.” He will often rework older songs to fit his current band or project.
Acosta said after doing the live recording, the Golden Hearts also want to do a studio album.
“It’s exciting because in some of these albums, you’re going to get different versions of the same song,” Acosta said.
Music on the new album is meant to evoke different feelings and responses. Acosta describes the title track “I Want To Be Your Cowboy,” a country ballad, as “my Tennessee whiskey.” The album will also have a number of dance tunes along with a cinematic cowboy song and one recording that incorporates salsa-cumbia sounds.
“I guess style-wise, it’s really fitting more into the classic ’90s country, but it has a lot of pop sensibility. This genre stuff I like to do, where I like to mix a bunch, that’s gonna happen, and that will give it a different flavor. Plus, there’ll be the Southwest thing…We’re trying to create a sound that feels like this region, too,” Acosta said.
He hopes to bring positive vibes and feelings of love and unity with his music. He said this is why much of the new music encourages listeners to dance.
“The world can be really hard, critical. You’re not excited about the next headline. I said, ‘We need to change that feeling.’ When we’re onstage, we need to make people light up…That’s what I shoot for now is how do we make people feel a little more connected? We can still be reflective about stuff that’s hard, but we can feel better that we’re all in this together, and it feels good to dance. We should dance. It’s a great way to live. It’ll help you get stuff out. It’s cathartic. It’s just joyful,” said Acosta, who expects to be jumping and moving around onstage at the upcoming show.
He said when he and the band play live, they really try to bring an experience that is tailored to the audience. “That’s what’s great about this group. We size up every show. Our set list shifts because we always think about the audience. What songs do they want to hear? Can we turn a corner and go into pop? Can we go into rock? These guys are brilliant. Playing with these guys is really like playing at a new level…I think we have just created a culture of great production minds and musical performers. That’s something I like to be around. I think it creates good art. It also creates a lot of great opportunities in the performance world.”
Acosta recently returned from a Southwest tour in which he promoted his “Saint Corazón” album. It took him to different parts of Utah, Colorado, Nevada, California, New Mexico and Arizona. He said that audiences had a very positive response to his music.
“Out there on the road when I would go play these venues, play this Southwest music, they loved it…My hope next year is to take this new sound I’m working on with the whole band back out there and see if we can grow this a bit more.”
Acosta grew up in Phoenix and has lived in Tucson for over 30 years. He has also had brief stints in New Jersey and the San Francisco Bay area. He studied classical guitar at the Fred Fox School of Music at the University of Arizona and worked for six years as a jazz saxophonist before he turned his attention to the guitar and vocals in 2003. He has also taught classical guitar and piano and has done jingle writing for companies such as FOX, Ford and ESPN.
Throughout his life, Acosta has been inspired by different genres, including folk, R&B, soul, Motown, Banda and Tejano music. His sound continues to evolve.
“There was a whole period in high school where I listened to only Mexican and Spanish radio for three months straight because I felt like I really needed to absorb what’s happening in this style. I tend to do that a lot when I want a genre jump. I just start listening a lot to that stuff,” he explained. “How do I get what I want out of this? I hear this rhythm. I hear this melody. What if I did this with it? I’m very much inspired by the Latin sound. I have a huge background in jazz…It’s morphed over the years into, ‘How do I take the best of the genres I like and just start slapping them together?’ I’m Mexican-American, so I have a lot of that in my history. What’s probably going to be the edge we have with the style, as far as the country sound, is there’s going to be elements of the Southwest in there, almost like you hear in the Mavericks.”
Over the years, Acosta has sometimes worried he is changing too much, and it will be difficult to build an audience base. So far, however, it has not been an issue.
“Nowadays, it does seem that people are versatile. They seem to have versatile tastes, and they seem to like different styles a lot,” he said. “I’m noticing a lot of my audience is following me and not just the last album…Now, I have enough material out there where they’re starting to key into me, my performance and my writing…I’m starting to be happy with being a genre artist that moves around. I think by going into country, it’s going to open up a whole new door of people who have never heard of me before.”
Jacob Acosta and the Golden Hearts
WHEN: 7:30 p.m. Friday, Aug. 8
WHERE: Club Congress, 311 E. Congress Street, Tucson
PRICE: $15 in advance and $18 day of show plus fees
INFO: hotelcongress.com/event/golden-hearts-tour-w-jacob-acosta/, jacobacostamusic.com
This article appears in Jul 24-31, 2025.