Go Moonshining with Jake Xerxes Fussell and His “Copper Kettle.”

We hope, as Terry Allen sings, that you’re holding it on the road, y’all. Once again, it’s Bandcamp Friday, and we have two new digital releases for you, from Jake Xerxes Fussell and Red River Dialect. Bandcamp is generously waiving its revenue share today, February 5, passing along all proceeds to artists and labels.

First up, we’re pleased to share some new music—about bootleg whiskey—from the great Jake Xerxes Fussell, his first release since the critically acclaimed 2019 album Out of Sight (and featuring the same band, including Nathan Bowles on drums.) Download or stream his brand-new single “Copper Kettle,” and read Jake’s reflections about the song and its history below. Drink a long draught down with Jake (check the guy’s track record).

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“Copper Kettle” sounds like a song that came out of the whiskey rebellion of the 1790s but it was composed in the 1940s by a person named Albert Frank Beddoe for inclusion in a stage production titled “Go Lightly, Stranger.” The popular Chicago folksinger Bob Gibson recorded a version of it in the 50s, and not long after that Joan Baez added it to her repertoire. After that it became something of a standard among the urban folkies. I guess it should be noted that the berries of the juniper tree have often been used to flavor spirits, especially gin.

Thanks to Kevin McNamee-Tweed for the artwork: Gloaming (detail), 2016, Pigment on raw canvas, 18″ x 24″.

— Jake Xerxes Fussell

 

 

 

 

Acknowledgments for Out of Sight

As he releases his third and strongest album to date … Fussell, a singer and guitarist, is creating his own legacy within the long lineage of traditional folk musicians and storytellers that have come before him.

– New York Times: T Magazine (Editors’ Pick)

5 stars. These are exceptional songs, performed exceptionally well.

– The Guardian

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

Neither rigidly authentic nor conspicuously modern, the NC folk scholar honors the past through transformation rather than reinvention. The music is so elegant as to resist stereotyping. It’s relaxing in the way that pondering a Zen koan is relaxing, and sweet in the way that the wounded, honey-voiced blues of Mississippi John Hurt are sweet. The past is always present; Fussell’s trick is to reveal that—if you know how to look—the present is always past, too.

– Pitchfork

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

Jake is one of those folk musicians who has really dedicated his life to upholding traditional music, but not in a way that feels fussy, and that’s what I really love about him. Jake has gone electric in this record in a new way. He’s playing with a full band, his vocals really jump, and the arrangements are just beautiful on these old classic songs that he instills with real power and personality. Get on board with this guy! You’re going to have a good time.

– Ann Powers, NPR Music’s All Songs Considered