There’s a misconception that folk music is about preserving the past, but look at any worthwhile artists in the genre and you’ll see it’s about storytelling. Just like the classics, these songs are there to be adapted, and reshaped as each storyteller – or songwriter – sees fit. Folk music is really transformation, and Jake Xerxes Fussell is part guitarist, part alchemist.
He draws on an encyclopedic knowledge of folk and blues, polishes off the useless crud and carefully transforms it. What might start life as a sea shanty or Irish folk ballad somehow appears, through his glistening guitar work, newly minted and fit for purpose in 2026.
“Early on I realized something – and I think this had to do with watching other people play – but I really liked it when songs felt like they were a part of the person,” he tells Guitar World.
“That the person's playing was an extension of themselves. [It was the] transformative moments that really moved me – not a literal application of an idea.”
Fussell grew up in Georgia with folklorist parents and was immersed in the music from day one. His father would frequently take trips around the state to record blues and folk performers. One of those musicians, country blues and gospel musician Precious Bryant, became a family friend and an early mentor.
“She lived 25 minutes down the road in Thomson and she was a great guitar player,” recalls Fussell. “By the time I got to be in high school and I could drive, I drove out to her place a bunch and would sit with her and play and try to learn from her.
“When I was really young, 10 or 11, she said, ‘If you want to learn how to play chords, it might be easier on a ukulele.’ So that's the way that I taught myself chords. I just tuned the ukulele to the top four strings [guitar style].”
The move from four strings to six became a natural progression. “Nobody in my family played guitar,” says Fussell. “But my dad would keep one around in case he was going to visit somebody. A lot of these older blues guys, they would pawn their guitar, and so he would always have a cheap guitar hanging on a nail in the hallway.”
Fussell graduated to his own instrument, and soon the adventures with his father turned into solo excursions. Along the way, he met and learned – mostly, he says, through observation – from a huge variety of blues and folk performers, among them the likes of JW Warren, John Lee Ziegler, Robert Thomas and George Daniel.
He admits his recollections of the period are somewhat hazy, but there’s a “sense memory” tied to that time.
“It's hard to disentangle your feelings about the environment, or where you are, from the songs themselves,” he reflects.
“I remember the way that the interiors of people's homes felt, or I remember, a lot of these older guys smoked cheap cigarettes – that smell was always around – and there was whiskey and things like that. But also those environmental things, being in a rural area that's very different from where I live now.”
After leaving home, Fussell moved all over, with stints in Mississippi, and the West Coast and more encounters along the way. “I feel so fortunate,” he says, of his meandering guitar spirit quest.
“I learned some unusual things, different tunings, and it gave me a different respect for gear. A lot of those guys, growing up, none of them had money, so they would play whatever guitar they could get a hold of. But they would develop real closeness or fondness for certain instruments that worked for them, even though they weren't high-end gear.
Mississippi is a very talkative place. You need to be loud or you're gonna be ignored!
“People would gift Precious Bryant really old parlor guitars that were valuable – and she had no interest in those. She liked really big cheap Japanese guitars from the ’80s. George Daniel actually played a Goldtop Les Paul that he had bought in the ’50s, which is amazing, but then a lot of those guys would play Silvertones.”
Like the players he learned from, Fussell has an agnostic approach, flowing easily between electric and acoustic – but mostly playing fingerstyle through his go-to Telecaster and a vintage Fender combo. Playing quietly through a loud amp means he can knock you down with a feather, with a clean sound that captures all the intricacies of his rhythm hand.
It’s a move he says was born out of practicality, during his time gigging in Oxford, MS. “Mississippi is a very talkative place,” he laughs. “You need to be loud or you're gonna be ignored!” However, he notes the connection was really cemented when he inherited his Telecaster from his friend J.D. Mark, who passed away suddenly in 2013.
“When he died, his family gave his guitars to his music friends, which is a very sweet gesture,” says Fussell. “So I had this Telecaster. I kept it around just to think of him, but the more I was playing around town, [the more] I realized it was the perfect guitar for what I was trying to do. Now it's actually the only electric guitar I own – so I can thank Jim Mark for that.”
- Jake Xerses Fussell’s new album, The Old Beloved Path, is out now on Fat Possum Records. He tours the US and Europe in November and December.
