Photo by Brad Bunyea.

JAKE XERXES FUSSELL SHARES SECOND SINGLE FROM OUT OF SIGHT AND SPRING-THEMED COMPANION PLAYLIST

“North Carolina-based folk and blues guitarist Jake Xerxes Fussell creates music that resides at the seams of Appalachia and the cosmos.”

— NPR Music
Today, Jake Xerxes Fussell shares new single, “Michael Was Hearty,” from his forthcoming album, Out of Sight, out June 7th. Following the lead single, “The River St. Johns,” “Michael Was Hearty” is a gorgeous rendition of a tragicomedy by Irish Traveller and ballad singer Thomas McCarthy. When showed a YouTube video of the song by friend Nathan Salsburg, guitar wizard and curator of the Alan Lomax Archive, Fussell was inspired to arrange and record his own version.

“I immediately wanted to commit the words to memory, but I had to come up with another way to perform it that worked for my way of singing,” says Fussell. “So I worked out a waltz arrangement on my guitar and taught it to my band. Some great imagery in there too: ‘High was the step in the jig that he sprung / He had good looks and soothering tongue’—don’t we all know somebody like that?”

Alongside the new single, Paradise of Bachelors also presents a Springtime-themed companion playlist to Out of Sight, curated by Fussell. Stream the playlist here via Spotify.  

Listen to “Michael Was Hearty” and Jake’s Spring Playlist

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sgLWt9OZxXA&list=PLGLGDT-9ZI4JnicPgrPWrvMqFRGUPF-w4]

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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 NathanBowles (drums), CaseyToll (bass), NathanGolub (pedal steel), LibbyRodenbough (violin, vocals), and JamesAnthonyWallace (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”).

Acknowledgements for Jake

In our house we’ve listened to more Jake Fussell than any other individual artist over the past year, with the possible exception of Laurie Spiegel.  We’ve had the opportunity to witness several intimate performances of Fussell’s (to my mind, he creates a new standard for the value of up-close musical experience) here in Louisville.  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

Fussell has a deep respect and affinity for the Southern folk vernacular, though he also maintains his childlike awe for it. [What in the Natural World] marks a move into more existential questions … vignettes of Southern life, with an open-hearted groove that would please scholars and little kids alike—Fussell’s burly, winking voice is made for storytelling.

– Laura Snapes, NPR Music

9/10 (Full-page Discovered review.) Achingly beautiful… a record that yields a procession of hidden treasures. There’s an almost carefree swing to much of Fussell’s music, the easy authority of his silvery guitar work matched by an invitingly cordial voice that makes these arcane songs shine. Like Ry Cooder, Fussell has an uncanny ability to illuminate the present by propping up a window against the past. Whatever the raw material’s vintage, the protagonist’s pursuit of abstract notion—freedom, empowerment, danger, fulfillment—is every inch as pertinent today.

– Rob Hughes, Uncut

While some have called Fussell’s music “atmospheric,” the descriptor misses his historical grounding; on the flipside, any implication of “root” overlooks the ease and freeness of his sound. The image of a river, featured on both of his albums’ covers, is well suited—the history of each song selection, like tributaries, flow into the main waterway, feeding a powerful current of evolution and exchange. And here is Jake Xerxes Fussell, floating down that river, strumming away. 

– Jack Rosenberg, The Oxford American

It’s difficult to imagine another contemporary interpreter delivering a tale of desperation and sadness with such tenderness, warmth, and grace. The room he leaves for the song to breathe allows it to flourish into its own fully-formed, nuanced world – one as familiar today as during the time of its origin. Here, Fussell taps into those roots and in turn carries the pathos across an entire century, creating something wholly his own. No small feat and just one of the many exhibits that display a truth as absolute as the suffering in this song: Jake Xerxes Fussell is a national treasure.

– Chad Depasquale, Aquarium Drunkard