Review: Jake Xerxes Fussell, Strange Brew – ‘Like taking a dip in a cool creek’

There are days when you just need the world to stop. To cease the endless whirring, the endless babble.

There are days when you need to find a sanctuary, a small hideaway, somewhere to be still and quiet. There are days when you need, really need, Jake Xerxes Fussell.

Fussell is from North Carolina, he plays guitar, sings and mines the forgotten, ignored, slightly crumpled pages of the great American songbook for old songs, obscure songs that need a merest breath to revive them.

Mostly these songs are from the American South, mostly they are sunburnt slow, mostly they are extremely beautiful.

In its original form Duke Ellington’s Jump for Joy is a socially conscious, 40s swinger, in Fussell’s hands it’s relaxed and gentle, it has a floating melancholy, the swinging horns replaced by delicate, effortless finger picking.

It is the perfect way to start his show at Strange Brew, immediately arresting and causes utter silence, total reverence.

Fussell describes himself as an obsessive “folk music dork” and his set is, mainly, made up of traditional songs or songs that go way, way back.

Push Boat, taken from his 2015, self-titled debut album, features a voice that is so expressive, with a slurred blues-y lilt, while Jubilee echoes with rhythmic guitar lines, flickering like sunlight over a rippling stream.

Both set up the pace for the evening – it’s slow, like deep sleep breathing, and never really wavers.

The pace might be slow but it’s a wonderful pace to operate at. Fussell forces us to take a breath, to inhabit his world and to simply drift away.

The giggling stoner boys at the back understand – they smile their wobbly smiles, slowly shake their addled heads and mouth the odd phrase. They are completely lost in the humid, swampy place that a voice and a beautifully played guitar can create.

Raggy Levee, learnt from the Georgia Sea Island Singers, is more ragged, more blues-y, but calls to mind the atmosphere of the Delia Owens novel Where the Crawdads Sing. It is otherworldly, mythical, lovely.

Breast of Glass, taken from his latest album Good and Green Again, is another classic take on gorgeous American folk music. It holds the memories of hundreds of other songs but is spellbinding, captivating.

The crowd is so quiet that Fussell has to keep checking that we’re OK. That’s almost the only talking he does, aside from the odd, charming “Thanks so much, y’all”.

And then, just as we think that we have the measure of this affable Southern gentleman, he throws a delightful curve ball.

Nick Lowe’s I Love the Sound of Breaking Glass is not American, not obscure, not even folk music but Fussell makes it fit into his fabulous set.

It fits without any hint that it shouldn’t. It’s slowed down, sandblasted and somewhat bewildered. It is exactly what a great cover version should be – a reinterpretation that makes you find something new.

In a world that sometimes threatens to spin horribly out of control, Jake Xerxes Fussell is like taking a dip in a cool creek. Re-energised, you can face the madness again.

Main photo: Gavin McNamra

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