Jake Xerxes Fussell

Jake Xerxes Fussell

Jake Xerxes Fussell is an American singer and guitarist from Durham, North Carolina, and is associated with americana. Born in 1981, he develops a style shaped by close listening to traditional music and by a long engagement with older folk, blues, and country forms.

Early life and background

Fussell is the son of folklorist Fred C. Fussell, whose fieldwork takes him across the American Southeast and includes recording blues and old-time musicians. As a child, Fussell often accompanies him on those trips, which gives him early exposure to traditional culture and regional music.

Musical development

As a teenager, Fussell begins studying and apprenticing with Piedmont blues musician Precious Bryant, also known as “Georgia Buck.” He tours and records with her. He also spends time with George Daniel, known as “Rabbit on a Log,” a blues musician, black rodeo rider, rye whiskey distiller and dowser from Alabama.

He later joins a country band in Phenix City whose members are students of Jimmie Tarlton of Darby and Tarlton. He also accompanies Etta Baker in North Carolina.

Berkeley and Oxford years

Fussell moves to Berkeley, where he spends time with documentary filmmaker Les Blank and learns from folk musicians including Will Scarlett, who plays with Jefferson Airplane, Hot Tuna and Brownie McGhee, and the fingerstyle guitarist Steve Mann, known for “Push Boat.” He also appears on A Prairie Home Companion.

In 2005 he moves to Oxford, Mississippi, where he studies in the Southern Studies department at the University of Mississippi. There he records and tours with Rev. John Wilkins.

Recording and collaborators

Fussell begins recording his first solo album with William Tyler in Nashville, working with Tyler and engineer Mark Nevers. The sessions also include Chris Scruggs on steel guitar, bass and fiddle; Brian Kotzur on drums; and Hoot Hester on fiddle. This period marks a move away from tightly bounded traditional scenes toward a broader approach to arrangement and atmosphere.

Style and repertory

His songs and interpretations emphasise the shifting, mutable quality of folk material rather than fixed notions of authenticity. He treats inherited songs with a mix of respect and irony, and his performances draw out their eerie, humorous and fractured qualities. Themes in the material he performs include rivers, work, labour and storytelling, with songs such as “Boat’s up the River,” “Man at the Mill,” “Star Girl” and “Pork and Beans.”

Fussell’s approach presents traditional songs as forms that change through repetition and retelling, with gaps and irregularities becoming part of their meaning rather than flaws in them.