Excerpt: Jake Xerxes Fussell on ‘When I’m Called’

It’s a big day for the music world as we greet the arrival of Jake Xerxes Fussell’s fifth recording project, When I’m Called, the artist’s first for Fat Possum Records.

Produced by James Elkington alongside an eclectic-yet-sympatico ensemble of players and thinkers (Blake Mills, Joan Shelley, Robin Holcomb, Joe Westerlund, Jason Richmond and Tucker Martine, to name a few), the record stands alone as a confident tour de force while carrying forward the modest narrative of his catalog.

As fans might expect, Jake expands and reframes American vernacular source material from a variety of backgrounds, engaging listeners with his driving, understated guitar playing, warm vocals and a penchant for the fantastical tales of tradition. Pushing this goalpost even further, one can’t help but notice a deeper insight into Jake’s ethos by way of ensemble formats, unexpected song choices and subject matter therein (such as the outpourings of a delinquent youth and a jocular diss of Andy Warhol from cowboy artist, Maestro Gaxiola).

In his own words, he is occupying a “sketchier land” than previous efforts, most notably through his embracement of timbral space which dissolves the expected scripts of ensemble playing. The result? A project that feels like the confluence of blues musicians J.B. Lenoir and Fred McDowell, poet Kenneth Patchen, and the post-expressionist composer Paul Hindemith.

Sitting down with Jake at his home in Durham, North Carolina, I was able to get the inside scoop on his sources, arrangement process and gear during the making of this wonderful record (including photographs of his beloved instruments such as the warworn 1976 Telecaster gifted by the family of a late friend).

This conversation, an excerpt from the Fretboard Journal’s forthcoming 55^th edition, takes many other turns, including his upbringing in Columbus, Georgia amidst two folklorist parents and a colorful list of musical mentors.

For now, sit back and have a listen to When I’m Called on your preferred streaming platform and purchase a few physical copies for you and your friends.  

Cameron Knowler: The title cut from your new record, “When I’m Called,” reimagines a tidbit from a scrap of paper written by a child, and I was wondering about that. There’s a line about not break dancing in the hall and I thought—the way you interpreted that title—it’s almost like a disciplinary thing for a Bart Simpson-type personality.

Jake Xerxes Fussell: What do they call that? There’s a word for it, disciplinary writing, over and over.

That came from my friend Chris Sullivan, an artist from California who now lives in New Orleans. I knew him when I lived in California in the early 2000s, and he collected all sorts of things, scraps of paper and things like that. He had for a while, this publication called The Journal of the Public Domain, that was just a self-published thing of scraps of paper that he and other people he knew had collected, compiled them thematically. An interesting conceptual art piece. I think I was singing it from my misremembering, but the line is: “I will come when I am called. I will not break dance in the hall. I will not laugh when the teacher calls my name.” He had committed it to memory, and he used to say it every now and then.

CK: That’s a great prompt to play off.

JXF:I had this song that I was kicking around with some traditional lyrics, like, “Look up and look down that Lonesome Road,” from the Lonesome Road Blues family of songs. That just came to mind, and so I just kept it there. When I went in to record it, I thought, “I wish I’d written it down.” It’s not precise, though I think it’s fun to have the essence of something, even if it’s a little bit misremembered.

CK: How it impacted you?

JXF: I think that’s a big part of folk tradition, as you know…people misremembering lyrics, so they’re all jumbled up over the years and in different form. That’s why all these versions of things are different. I think a lot of it is misremembering.

Stuff sticks with you, and then you can’t shake it. That’s where I come from. You just have stuff that rattles around in your head and then it comes out in song. It doesn’t mean that everything should, but some things suit themselves to being a part of a song. That tends to happen as I’m playing out. Things collide with what you might call traditional with a capital T songs or tunes or whatever.

CK: Changing gears, let’s talk about the nuts and bolts of your newest record. Who engineered and mixed this record?

JXF: Jason Richmond recorded it and Tucker Martine mixed it. Jason is here in North Carolina, and Tucker is in Portland, Oregon. He’s mixed quite a few records that I really like, including Bill Frisell. Those records are always kind of a model for what I do.

We recorded it at Fidelitorium, a studio in Kernersville that’s run by Mitch Easter. I knew I wanted to work with Jason [Richmond], and he was like, “Well, here’s the three or four places where I like to work in.” I knew I wanted to record in North Carolina. I don’t love the idea of picking up and going somewhere way far away, and then being on the spot. You’re on the spot no matter what, but it feels better to be close to home and then have people come to you if they need to.

CK: Could you talk a bit about your old Telecaster?

JXF: Yeah, this is the Telecaster, which is due for a trip to the shop. [laughter] It’s a 1976 with an Ash body and I’ve been playing it for, gosh, 10, 11 years, something like that. Maybe 12.

CK: You’ve obviously played the shit out of it… it even looks like it could’ve been in a fire.

JXF: Yeah, I don’t know. The guy who had it before me played the hell out of it. It was a gift from JD Mark’s family when he died. We played country music together and stuff when we lived in Mississippi. His family gave several of his guitars away to friends who played music with him. I got one and I think Jack Yarber of The Oblivians got another.

Look for the complete Jake Xerxes Fussell interview in our forthcoming 55^th issue later this Summer.