Photo by Brad Bunyea.

Hear the Entire First Side of Jake Xerxes Fussell’s Out of Sight.

Jubilate, y’all! Jake Xerxes Fussell‘s Out of Sight is out in one week, on June 7, and preorders are now shipping. Hear new single “Jubilee” (premiered by Uncut Magazine on their July covermount CD) and all five songs on Side A via YouTube or Bandcamp here, where you can also preorder the record, or below.

P.S. Our paw-paws are really thriving this spring! They just needed some Xerxes-Gro. ???

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K2uNovT_IzA]

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RaJCnhbVM64&list=PLGLGDT-9ZI4JnicPgrPWrvMqFRGUPF-w4]

Pre-order Out of Sight

$9.00 – $29.00

Or support via:  Bandcamp  (LP/CD/MP3) |  Other Options (physical/digital/international)

For Out of Sight, Fussell’s third and most finely wrought album yet, he is joined for the first time by a full band, featuring Nathan Bowles (drums), Casey Toll (bass), Nathan Golub (pedal steel), Libby Rodenbough (violin, vocals), and James Anthony Wallace (piano, organ). An utterly transporting selection of traditional narrative folk songs addressing the troubles and delights of love, work, and wine (i.e., the things that matter), collected from a myriad of obscure sources and deftly metamorphosed, Out of Sight contains, among other moving curiosities, a fishmonger’s cry that sounds like an astral lament (“The River St. Johns”); a cotton mill tune that humorously explores the unknown terrain of death and memory (“Winnsboro Cotton Mill Blues”); and a fishermen’s shanty/gospel song equally concerned with terrestrial boozing and heavenly transcendence (“Drinking of the Wine”).

Jake Xerxes Fussell Tour Dates

Fussell, who is currently about to hit the road in Europe playing guitar for Mississippi gospel group the Como Mamas (May 24–June 21), will also embark on a North American tour this fall supporting Daniel Norgren. A full list of dates are below.

Wed. Sep. 18 – Chicago, IL @ Lincoln Hall*
Thu. Sep. 19 – Louisville, KY @ Zanzabar*
Fri. Sep. 20 – Asheville, NC @ The Grey Eagle*
Sun. Sep. 22 – Nashville, TN @ 3rd & Lindsley*
Wed. Sep. 25 – Washington, D.C. @ Black Cat*
Fri. Sep. 27 – Brooklyn, NY @ Music Hall Of Williamsburg*
Sat. Sep. 28 – Boston, MA @ Brighton Music Hall*
Sun. Sep. 29 – Montreal, QC @ Petit Campus*
Mon. Sep. 30 – Toronto, ON @ Great Hall*
Wed. Oct. 2 – St. Paul, MN @ Turf Club*
Thu. Oct. 3 – Boulder, CO @ Fox Theatre*
Fri. Oct. 4 – Seattle, WA @ Neptune Theatre*
Sat. Oct. 5 – Portland, OR @ Revolution Hall*
Tue. Oct. 8 – Los Angeles, CA @ Teragram Ballroom*

* = supporting Daniel Norgren

Stream Jake’s Spring Playlist

Acknowledgments for Jake

Jake Xerxes Fussell creates music that resides at the seams of Appalachia and the cosmos.

– NPR Music’s All Songs Considered

9/10. An outstanding collection. Fussell’s sublime third album sees the singer and guitar once again exploring the furthest reaches of American folk and blues, excavating that seemingly bottomless archive and giving these lost songs a fresh life. Fussell is a fantastic singer and arranger, and here he’s working with a full band for the first time… They deliver a beautiful suite of diverse songs. There’s so much to admire throughout.

– Peter Watts, Uncut

He has a nearly encyclopedic grasp of various strains of musical traditions in the southeastern United States. His songs are lively and present-tense, full of richly imagined characters, grim tragedies, and everyday triumphs. But it’s the ways that he complicates and deepens those stories that makes the album so immersive and imaginative. To a certain extent, these songs are about remembering: not just Fussell remembering these songs and the people behind them, but the people in these songs recalling hard times.

– Stephen Duesner Uncut (5 pp. feature profile)

4 stars. Fussell is one of those rare artists who can transform folklore scholarship into living, breathing new music. On his third and best solo album … [he] has a full band to flesh out his vision, providing front porch grooves that carry the same kind of woody resonance as those of The Band. Tragic ballads are given a good-time swagger, ancient sing-alongs lovingly remade, for one of the most life-affirming and transcendent Americana albums in an age.

– John Mulvey, MOJO

4 stars. Fussell is the real thing. He discovers traditional songs — of the kind that Fahey would have called death chants, breakdowns and military waltzes — and recreates them faithfully but not fustily.

– Financial Times

As long as Jake Fussell is making records and playing shows, there is ample cause for optimism in this world. 

– Bonnie “Prince” Billy

Jake Fussell understands a couple of things about old songs: they weren’t always old, and they changed as they went from hand to hand or sometimes country to country. They shouldn’t be trapped in an imaginary past, but should be refreshed and reinvented. Now, on his third album, he’s subtly shading his music with more instruments. It’s still uncluttered. Still melancholy. Still threaded through with that elegant, deceptively simple guitar—its tone like no other. This is a journey you need to share.

– Colin Escott, author of Hank Williams: The Biography