Archival folk songs reinterpreted and arranged for a contemporary audience.
“When I’m Called” is a collection of songs and shanties played and sung in a modern style by an expert in the field of traditional music. Culled from archives such as the Folkways series of recordings and the Library of Congress, they bring to life an oral culture that, for this artist, is not to be confined to the storeroom but comprises music that lives and breathes.
Jake Xerxes Fussell is a man on a mission. With parents who, though not musicians themselves, had invested deeply in this legacy of folk and traditional music, his upbringing in Georgia was imbued with the arts and crafts. And with his father being a collector and archivist of this music, it’s no surprise that Fussell’s live set includes a song such as the delightfully titled ‘Have You Ever Seen Peaches Growing on a Sweet Potato Vine’.
A quietly spoken academic himself, Fussell is aware of the legacy he has inherited. With his fifth album, his contribution is to curate a selection of these timeless songs and make them sound new. His mellow voice and delicate guitar-picking are supported by arrangements that feature an array of horns, strings, woodwinds, keys, upright bass and pedal steel. Together with producer James Elkington, who also plays many of the instruments himself, Fussell has fashioned a record that takes songs from the distant past and reminds us that they are not museum pieces or tales in aspic but living organisms describing the joy of a cuckoo’s song or a soldier’s love for his lady. The word ‘reimagined’ is overused these days but exactly describes what Fussell has done with these songs.
Lyrically, the songs resonate, drawing as they do on folk, shanty and nursery rhyme although ‘Andy’ is a 1980’s tune by multi-media artist Maestro Gaxiola as a comment on his artistic rivalry with Andy Warhol.
‘Cuckoo’ is the song of a bird set to orchestral strings and ‘Leaving Here, Don’t Know Where I’m Going’ seems like the lament of a freight-train rider in the days of the depression. Fussell swaps to a 12-string here, with Ben Whiteley on double bass, Hunter Diamond on woodwind and Elkington on piano and harmonica.
‘Feeing Day’ contains the essence of what Fussell does. The song was inspired by Art Rosenbaum’s 1971 Scotland field recordings and describes a day out at Glasgow Fair where rain and a shared umbrella lead to a day’s drinking and perhaps a romantic liaison. It’s like a folk version of The Hollies’ ‘Bus Stop’ and ends with a delightful brass coda.
Title track ‘When I’m Called’ takes its time, establishing the mood with delicate guitar picking before gathering rhythm with shuffling drums and double bass. Dealing with the final reckoning, there’s a neat updating of the lyric here too.
‘One Morning In May’ is a 17th century English traditional telling of a soldier’s unsuccessful proposal of marriage while another of the album’s travelling songs, ‘Gone to Hilo’ is the story of a jilted lover.
‘Who Killed Poor Robin’ gives a child’s nursery rhyme a delicate soufflé of an arrangement before ‘Going to Georgia’ closes with a tale of fecklessness.
These nine songs cover the passage of all human existence, the love and hurt, the delight and the fury, all the while Fussell picking his Telecaster and singing in an untroubled way like he’s on the front porch of his North Carolina home. With some very talented musicians, he’s put together a record that brings traditional music to a modern audience.
