Jake Xerxes Fussell

americana

Jake Xerxes Fussell is an American folk and blues singer and guitarist, born in Columbus, Georgia in November 1981 and based in North Carolina, known for reworking traditional and vernacular American songs rather than writing his own. He grew up close to the material: his father, Fred C. Fussell, is a folklorist, curator and photographer, and as a teenager Fussell apprenticed with the Piedmont blues singer Precious Bryant, touring and recording alongside her. He also studied with musicians connected to Jimmie Tarlton of Darby and Tarlton and accompanied the guitarist Etta Baker at North Carolina concerts, and before making records of his own he did fieldwork documenting Southern vernacular music with the music historian George Mitchell and the folklorist Art Rosenbaum. His self-titled debut appeared on Paradise of Bachelors in January 2015, produced by William Tyler and featuring Chris Scruggs on steel guitar, bass and mandolin and Hoot Hester on fiddle. Three more albums followed on the same label: What in the Natural World (2017), Out of Sight (2019) and Good and Green Again (2022), the last produced by James Elkington, who also produced When I'm Called, Fussell's 2024 debut for Fat Possum Records. He and Elkington then scored Rebuilding, Max Walker-Silverman's feature starring Josh O'Connor and Lily LaTorre, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in January 2025; the soundtrack was issued in November 2025. A further Fat Possum album, The Old Beloved Path, is due in September 2026, previewed by a version of Rock Island Line. Amanda Petrusich named What in the Natural World one of her ten best albums of 2017 for The New Yorker. Fussell has toured as an opening act for Wilco, Bill Callahan, The Decemberists and The Magnetic Fields, appeared on A Prairie Home Companion, and hosts the radio program Fall Line Radio.

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