On almost every track of Jake Xerxes Fussellās fifth studio album When Iām Called, there is a stringent and plangent tone which is reminiscent of Van Morrison and the Astral Weeks closer āSlim Slow Sliderā, a song about a sad departure, two trains passing in the night or drifting into the looming spectre of the vast beyond.
That sort of sensibility, an astringency which permeates his folk reckonings and cuts through the waves of patient and softly-strummed guitar, is felt especially on the opening song āAndyā, which is by Gerry Gaxiola from the documentary on the self-styled āMaestroā by Les Blank, and finds Gaxiola elaborating his one-sided feud with Andy Warhol in the form a twelve-bar blues which is redolent of āShe Belongs To Meā by Bob Dylan, moving with the same genteel shimmy and a similar though sublimated caustic snap. It is also present in the opening moments of āCuckoo!ā by the composer Benjamin Britten and poet Jane Taylor, which brings a full ensemble headed by James Elkington into view, and on the plaintive āLeaving Here, Donāt Know Where Iām Goingā which slips further into waltz time and is the first of several tracks on the record to offer a piecemeal evocation of Art Rosenbaum, the artist and musician, professor and longstanding folklorist.
A fellow Georgia native, Rosenbaum was a source of education and encouragement as the young Fussell was learning his chops, with āFeeing Dayā from a set of hitherto unreleased field recordings which Rosenbaum made in the north of Scotland, burnished at the end by Anna Jacobson on the French horn, while āOne Morning In Mayā is one of two songs to interpolate lyrics from the chintzy and oft-parodied Appalachian ballad āOn Top of Old Smokeyā, with Fussell attributing the freewheeling tenor of his rendition of the English folk tune to a Rosenbaum recording of the Bean Blossom, Indiana bluegrass couple Shorty and Juanita Sheehan. On these songs the road looms large and sometimes the alehouse too, even if curbside or railside the singer clasps more fondly to his bosom that old blues staple, a bottle of sweet cherry wine, withĀ Fussell reflecting on the narrative threads and tangents of his album before describing When Iām Called as āsort of an Art Rosenbaum recordā.
Rosenbaum is still one voice among many as Fussell continues his practice of reworking continent-spanning traditionals and closer to home, distinctly American takes on the folk repertoire. āGone to Hiloā is another case in point, a sea shanty stranded somewhere between Hawaii and the copper mines of the port city of Ilo in southern Peru, which Fussell relates by way of the folk revivalist and early Dylan mentor Paul Clayton, whose brief and ill-fated stint in Greenwich Village was preceded by his discovery of the Piedmont blues guitarist Etta Baker among other older-timers and blues stalwarts. Over a shifting bed of percussion, Fussellās dolorous sighs of āJohnnyās goneā and āWhat shall I do?ā on āGone to Hiloā are accompanied by swirling strings, twangs of guitar and the babbling voice of the avant-garde singer and Bill Frisell and Wayne Horvitz collaborator Robin Holcomb.
Yet as Fussell pores over the past and pulls equally from broadsides and field recordings, the centrepiece and title track of When Iām Called stems from a more contemporary scrap. Probably the most striking piece on the album, the lyrics for the song were committed to memory by his friend Chris Sullivan, an artist with a penchant for found poetry who once published a zine called The Journal of the Public Domain. Culled from a gallery exhibit or some other collection, Fussell remembered his friendās ditty, which originally went āI will come when I am called, I will not breakdance in the hall, I will not laugh when the teacher calls my nameā, and began to use it as a placeholder as he worked up a song with the title āLook Up, Look Down That Lonesome Roadā, the lines standing in during live performances for what Fussell thought would eventually emerge as a first verse.
Instead the singer grew accustomed to the lyrics, which deepened the more that he sang, making āWhen Iām Calledā a strangely resonant hybrid, where a schoolhouse pledge which seems to echo with a certain shame and wistfulness gives way to the countryfied evocation of a ālong lonesome roadā and a mournful denouement. But the song is plenty more than nostalgic or forlorn, playing out like a cosmic balm even as it bristles with a whole world of sensation.
Themes and references come to a head on the album closer, another piece which Fussell first learned from Rosenbaum, who died in the autumn of 2022 at the age of 83 years old. Interpolating more lines from āOn Top of Old Smokeyā, carrying both the breadth of the British folk song āThe Water Is Wideā or āWaly, Walyā and the swing of Gladys Knightās companionly āMidnight Trainā, on āGoing to Georgiaā words of warning over the deceits and infidelities of men ā with that wonderful simile about the telling of āmore lies than the crossties in the railwayā, and whose irresoluteness is compared to that of a āgreen growing treeā ā segue into a gesture of resolution, for all of that wandering and meandering or toing and froing at least circling, like sparks and embers spitting about a hearth, around the idea of a place to call home.