Jake Xerxes Fussell - The Old Beloved Path (Vinyl)

Black Vinyl LP

The Old Beloved Path is Jake Xerxes Fussell's sixth studio album, following When I'm Called, his 2024 debut for Fat Possum Records. Eight of its nine songs are traditional pieces arranged by Fussell; the opener, "No 1," is his own composition.

It was recorded by Alli Rogers at Betty's in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, produced and mixed by Ben Whiteley at Casa Wroxton, and mastered by Steve Fallone at Sterling Sound. The album's announcement describes a deliberately simple studio approach, aimed at capturing the musicians playing live together in one room.

Ben Whiteley plays upright and electric bass, reed organ, mandolin, guitar and synthesizer. Isa Burke adds fiddle, piano, guitar, mandolin and harmony vocals, and Dominic Billett plays drums, percussion, piano, reed organ and synthesizer and sings harmony. Wayne Horvitz sits in on harmonica and Ken Whiteley on bass harmonica.

The railroad song "Rock Island Line" was the lead single. Fussell has said that simply singing its verses was not working for him, and after hearing a Lonnie Donegan recording he joined the song to an old English nursery rhyme, "Intry Mintry." The album's press notes call "Boney" a traditional tune rarely played, let alone recorded, and "Boll Weevil" a traditional American classic. "Every Time I Go to Town" is also known as "They Gotta Quit Kickin' My Dog Around."

"Traditional music gets more intense the older I get," Fussell said of the record. "The way that I see the world is through these songs."

The front cover is a photograph by his father, the folklorist and photographer Fred C. Fussell, of the Ace-Hi Inn on 10th Street in Columbus, Georgia, taken in the early 1980s. Columbus is where Fussell grew up; as a teenager he apprenticed with the Piedmont blues guitarist Precious Bryant.

Tracklist

1. No 1
2. Rock Island Line
3. Every Time I Go to Town
4. Rosin Some
5. Boney
6. Early Early in the Spring
7. Boll Weevil
8. Sandy Land
9. Of All the Beast-es in the World