Jake Xerxes Fussell

Between his native Georgia and his adopted North Carolina, Jake Xerxes Fussell situates himself in the American folk tradition by working almost exclusively from songs drawn from popular repertoires and field collections from the American South. Now based in Durham after growing up in Columbus, Fussell has developed a singer‑guitarist approach in which ballads, laments, work songs and fragments of country blues are rearranged into forms close to contemporary Americana. His first album, simply titled “Jake Xerxes Fussell,” was released in 2015 on the Paradise of Bachelors label, followed by “What in the Natural World” (2017), “Out of Sight” (2019) and “Good and Green Again” (2022), all of which extend his dialogue with sound archives and oral traditions. Onstage and in the studio he favors moderate tempos, clear, melodic guitar playing and discreet accompaniment—sometimes augmented by a rhythm section or light brass—to let the stories, landscapes and regional expressions contained in these old songs come through. His tours regularly take him to folk and indie circuits in the United States and Europe, often in collaboration with other musicians from the independent folk scene.