Jake Xerxes Fussell

“Talented folk traditionalists like Jake Xerxes Fussell have a particular knack utilizing songs with origins from another time and place to act as catalysts for auditory time travel.” – Ashville Stages

Tickets: $30 (fees not included)

Jake Xerxes Fussell (yes, that’s his real middle name) is one of his generation’s preeminent interpreters of traditional (and not so traditional) “folk” songs.

Based in Durham, North Carolina, Fussell is a singer, guitarist, and folksong interpreter whose approach has a refreshingly unfussy lack of nostalgia and preciousness. He recontextualizes ancient vernacular songs and sources of the American South, allowing them to breathe and speak for themselves and for himself.

The robust burr of his voice, which periodically melts and catches at a particularly tender turn of phrase, and the swung rhythmic undertow of exquisite, seemingly effortless guitar-playing pull new valences of meaning from ostensibly antique songs and subjects, humanizing his material with his own profound curatorial and interpretive gifts.