Jake Xerxes Fussell has shared Rock Island Line, the lead single from his forthcoming album The Old Beloved Path, out September 18th via Fat Possum Records.
The track shows how Fussell works a song into being. He had long left Rock Island Line alone, thinking it too commonplace and too well-worn by other folk singers, until a Lonnie Donegan recording caught his ear – something about the incantation of the chorus struck a chord. “The song struck me as very beautiful, but just singing the verses wasn’t working for me. I couldn’t relate,” Fussell says. “So, I wound up putting it together with an old English nursery rhyme that I had been kicking around. ‘Wire, briar, limberlock / How many geese is in our flock?’ and ‘If you want to ride you got to ride it like you’re flyin, get your ticket at the station on the Rock Island Line.’ Marrying those two things, I felt like something worked, it felt like a song to me.”
It’s a method he described to us last year when we spoke about When I’m Called. “Yeah, I’ve been doing more of that in the last few years,” he told us. “Before, I would take an old song and mess with it and rearrange it in my way, draw an interesting element out or add an instrument, and that would make it different by the standards of traditional music. But increasingly in recent years I’ve been messing around with some instrumental motif that I draw a lyric into, which I hadn’t done so much in the past.” Setting a railroad standard against an English nursery rhyme is that same instinct at work.
The Old Beloved Path is Fussell’s second album for Fat Possum, following 2024’s When I’m Called. Recorded in North Carolina, it was produced and mixed by Ben Whiteley of The Weather Station, who has played bass in Fussell’s touring band — a change from James Elkington, who produced the previous two albums. Whiteley steered the sessions towards a live feel, a document of musicians playing together in a room rather than layered atmospherics, with the two of them paring the palette back to essentials. Dominic Billett, Isa Burke, Wayne Horvitz and Ken Whiteley add instrumental parts.
Fussell grew up in Georgia around people documenting traditional culture, and he treats these songs as living material. “For people in the folk music world, songs are their religion,” he says. “But traditional music is not a bee stuck in amber. I tend to think of everyone who plays traditional music as being on a spectrum from conservative to wildly creative. I am somebody who tends to sit on the edge of those two worlds. I don’t always present these songs in a historical context. I have to relate to them personally. I approach these songs through my own worldview.”
That relationship has only deepened. “Traditional music gets more intense the older I get,” he says. “The way that I see the world is through these songs. The world of traditional music has been such a gift to me. If nothing else, a lifelong companion.”
The Old Beloved Path (September 18th) Fat Possum Records
Pre-Order: https://jakexerxesfussell.ffm.to/theoldbelovedpath
Tracklist
- No. 1
- Rock Island Line
- Every Time I Go to Town
- Rosin Some
- Boney
- Early Early in the Spring
- Boll Weevil
- Sandy Land
- Of All The Beast-es in the World
Jake Xerxes Fussell Tour Dates
Sat. Aug. 1 — Lansing, NC @ Fly Around Festival
Sat. Aug. 8 – Sun. Aug. 9 — Edmonton, AB @ Edmonton Folk Festival
Thu. Aug. 20 — Chicago, IL @ Fretboard Summit
Sat. Sept. 12 — Durham, NC @ The Carolina Theater [Eno River Association 60th Anniversary]
Fri. Oct. 2 — Liverpool, UK @ St Michael’s Church *
Sat. Oct. 3 — Manchester, UK @ Hallé St Peter’s *
Mon. Oct. 5 — Leeds, UK @ Brudenell Social Club *
Tue. Oct. 6 — Glasgow, UK @ St Luke’s *
Thu. Oct. 8 — Cork, IE @ Cyprus Avenue
Fri. Oct. 9 — Galway, IE @ Róisín Dubh
Sat. Oct. 10 — Dublin, IE @ Button Factory
Mon. Oct. 12 — Bristol, UK @ St George’s *
Tue. Oct. 13 — Brighton, UK @ Concorde 2 *
Wed. Oct. 14 — London, UK @ Union Chapel *
Sat. Oct. 24 — Buena Vista, GA @ Pasaquan
Tue. Nov. 3 — Salt Lake City, UT @ The State Room +
Wed. Nov. 4 — Boise, ID @ Shrine Social Club +
Thu. Nov. 5 — Portland, OR @ Aladdin Theater +
Fri. Nov. 6 — Centralia, WA @ The Juice Box +
Sat. Nov. 7 — Vancouver, BC @ Biltmore Cabaret +
Sun. Nov. 8 — Seattle, WA @ Tractor Tavern +
Wed. Nov. 11 — San Francisco, CA @ Great American Music Hall +
Thu. Nov. 12 — Felton, CA @ Felton Music Hall +
Fri. Nov. 13 — South Pasadena, CA @ Sid the Cat Auditorium +
Sat. Nov. 14 — Phoenix, AZ @ Valley Bar +
Wed. Dec. 2 — Copenhagen, DK @ Hotel Cecil
Thu. Dec. 3 — Oslo, NO @ Røverstaden
Fri. Dec. 4 — Stockholm, SE @ Nalen Klubb
Sat. Dec. 5 — Gothenburg, SE @ Pustervik
Mon. Dec. 7 — The Hague, NL @ PAARD
Tue. Dec. 8 — Brussels, BE @ Botanique Rotonde
Wed. Dec. 9 — Hamburg, DE @ Nachstasyl
Thu. Dec. 10 — Berlin, DE @ Theater im Delphi
Fri. Dec. 11 — Cologne, DE @ Stadtgarten
Sat. Dec. 12 — Paris, FR @ Le Hasard Ludique
Sun. Dec. 13 — Bruges, BE @ Duyster Festival
* with Naima Bock
+ with Dougie Poole