One evening in 2016, while Joe Jacobs was teaching 6th^-grade CCD at Holy Apostles Parish in south Pittsburgh, Father Levi Hartle, the newly assigned parochial vicar, unexpectedly stopped by.

It was a recruiting visit. With the blessing of Pittsburgh Bishop David Zubik, Father Hartle was organizing a “Festival of Praise.” Was Jacobs interested in participating?

A Festival of Praise, Jacobs soon learned, was not simply a concert. Instead, it was a Catholic gathering centered on praising God through exposition, adoration and benediction, with opportunities for confession — all woven together by music that lifted hearts in worship. 

But for the festival to truly come alive, Father Hartle needed more musicians for his praise-and-worship band, Praise Nation. As it turned out, Joe was just the person he was looking for.

“I didn’t know Father Levi,” Jacobs recalled. “So when he asked me to join a band, my first question was, ‘Why me?’”

Father Hartle explained that a parish associate suggested Jacobs.

“According to her, I looked like I should be in a band or something,” recalled Jacobs, who is 6’3” with a thick, black beard.

Perhaps the parish associate was divinely directed, for unknown to her or Father Hartle, Jacobs was indeed a musician — just not the kind they likely had assumed. And unknown to Jacobs, he was about to learn more about himself, and about how his music could draw others to Jesus Christ, than he ever thought possible.

Fact was, for nearly 20 years, Jacobs had been immersed in Pittsburgh’s gritty subculture, as a punk band leader.

“As a teenager, I saw a cousin playing a guitar and it was really cool,” said Jacobs, now 44. “But after I took one lesson, I was told I couldn’t be helped, maybe even unteachable. So I’m basically self-taught.

“But I knew right away that even if I couldn’t read music, I could write songs.”

Jacobs was attracted to punk rock, where he said he “found a home.” Meanwhile, his real home was falling apart. 

“I had almost zero experience with religion,” Jacobs said. “I was baptized and attended CCD, but it was horrific. We went to church at Easter and Christmas, but we never talked about God. After Confirmation, I was done with church.”

The Punk Rock ‘Scene’

At 16, with his home life disrupted by divorce, Jacobs turned to “the scene” — Pittsburgh’s underground subculture.

“Someone with a good nuclear family rarely ends up there,” Jacobs said. “At 17, I was kicked out of the house. I went into the scene pretty deep.”

Jacobs would ultimately start four different bands, all filled, he says, with “angst and fury.” They were popular locally and played various venues, some seedy and some more respectable. A community of followers attached to his bands and Jacobs said it all started out “straight-edged,” with no drug or alcohol use. But that edge dulled eventually, through substance abuse and violence.

“Those times were marked with altercations with other bands, neo-Nazis and gangs,” Jacobs said. “Most places where punk bands played were in bad areas. 

“Then heroin came on the scene. We lost friends. Our drummer committed suicide.”

Jacobs eventually escaped the underground when he moved to Michigan to work with his father and become an electrician. (Today Jacobs is part owner of King Electric, a local company.) But his underground experience was not without its benefits: It not only helped hone his songwriting skills (he wrote more than 200), but it introduced him to his future wife, Anna, another victim of a broken home who turned to the punk scene.

“When we met, it was a profound moment from God,” Jacobs said. “I knew she was the one. When we had our first son, it was a spiritual awakening for us. When our second son was born in 2011, we returned to the Catholic Church. We approached it with the same fervor with which we had entered the underground.”

Father Hartle’s Persistence

When Father Hartle asked him to join the band, Jacobs felt he had good reasons to decline. He and Anna, who live in Pittsburgh and not far from Jacobs’ childhood home in a nearby suburb, continued to grow their family (today they have six children). He was working full-time and both were — and remain — active in the church.

“I told Father Levi ‘No’ at least 10 times,” Jacobs said. “He called me a couple of days later inviting me to a Thursday practice. I said I couldn’t attend. Our fourth son was due any day and I was busy at work.

“He said, ‘Okay, I’ll see you Thursday.”

Jacobs agreed to meet with Father Hartle beforehand. The conversation lasted four hours, most of it spent in prayer. Afterward, Jacobs told Anna, “Father Levi really loves Jesus. I’m going to hang around awhile and see what happens.”

Jacobs knew the risk he was taking. 

“My friends just couldn’t understand,” he said. They thought it was ridiculous and a waste of time. You could tell my band members were hurt, saying, ‘You literally just chose this over us.’

“Saying Yes to Father Levi was the ‘punkest’ thing I’d ever done. To throw away everything you’ve built to follow Jesus.”

Anna admitted that, especially in the beginning, she was not a fan of praise music. 

“As a former punk rocker, I just didn’t get it,” she said. “When Joe said he was joining Father Levi’s band, I said, ‘Okay, but you know I’m going to make fun of you.’”

Anna soon saw a change in her husband. While Jacobs had always written songs, now his effort became more intense.

“The songs always just sort of came to him,” she recalled. “Now, when an idea came to Joe, he had to write it right away. What changed most was his intensity. He believed the words were literally being given to him as a human vessel and he couldn’t be sure he could remember them.

“One time in the morning, Joe was in the shower when a song came to him. He continued to pray as he finished showering but when he finished, he couldn’t remember what he had been given. I never saw him so nervous, so anxious. I finally understood what this all meant to him.”

Jacobs was determined not to let that happen again.

“I remember once we were getting the kids ready for a trip and about to get into the car,” Anna said. “And Joe said, ‘Sorry, Anna, I gotta write something right now.’”

Today Jacobs leads Praise Nation and has written more than 100 songs for the group. The all-volunteer, seven-member band practices weekly at St. Paul of the Cross Monastery, an iconic retreat facility on Pittsburgh’s Southside. The band is diverse in age and backgrounds, but what members share is unwavering love for Jesus and a desire to praise God through music.

‘This Fire Burning Within’

Practices begin with prayer; sessions are upbeat and happy, despite the seriousness of their efforts. 

“I’m a proponent of the idea that faith is fun,” said Father Hartle. “God is fun. He made the fun in the world. It should be about enjoying God and life and people. Much joy comes from the intensity of love.”

Today, Praise Nation shares its original Catholic art both live and through social media, including YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, Spotify, Amazon and iTunes. To date, the band has had more than 80 live performances in front of more than 30,000 individuals and released 62 videos reaching more than 1 million viewers and listeners. Yet this is not the true measure of Praise Nation’s success.

“Our audience is the Lord,” said Father Hartle. “My goal is to see people built up in charity and love. As we continue to praise God, that love is infectious and spreads. It doesn’t matter if we reach 10,000 people or only 10. If we fail to praise God, if we fail in losing sight of him, if we fail in our mission, that would be true failure.”

For Jacobs, Praise Nation seeks to build on the fire that the Mass ignites in individuals. 

“Praise is essential and foundational, what binds us together in our faith, drawing us together,” he said. “We experience that when singing during Mass. Once Mass is ended and we’re sent out, we still have this fire burning within, to both be together and to be active for God’s sake. Fundamentally, what we are made to do is to praise God. Hence, Praise Nation.”

Jacobs drew a parallel between his early experience with punk music and his current efforts with Praise Nation.

“Punk rock is extremely intimate, which is off-putting to most people. Christian music takes that intimacy and points it to Christ as an idea, a concept. Catholicism, Catholic music, says he’s right here. He’s in the sacraments,” Jacobs explained.

“The difference between the two, the simple contrast is that with punk music, you have people seeking truth,” he said. 

“In Catholic music, you have people who have found truth.”

Ron Cichowicz writes from Pittsburgh.