Jake Xerxes Fussell is a singer, guitarist, and composer based in Durham, NC. His intuitive creative process often draws from traditional music and archival field recordings -incorporating elements of songs from the past into new work.
Fussell’s most recent album When I’m Called was released to critical acclaim by Fat Possum Records in the summer of 2024. The album was produced by James Elkington and features Blake Mills (guitars), Ben Whiteley (bass), and Joe Westerlund (drums), along with additional vocals from Joan Shelley and Robin Holcomb.
Fussell and Elkington also wrote and recorded the music for Rebuilding, a new feature film directed by Max Walker-Silverman that is set to premiere at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival.
“Fussell’s music often comes with complex citations; he is a folksinger in the truest sense, collecting ideas and melodies and lyrics from distant and disparate traditions, looking for the things that unite us in our humanity.” - The New Yorker“
(Fussell) is one of the great magpies of American song, collecting forgotten, tarnished gemswith a folklorist’s zeal... his renditions aren’t so much cover versions as composites...” – TheGuardian
Secular Pets is the project of Murray, Kentucky’s Tim Peyton. A longtime, organizing musical stalwart of the sleepy town’s sound scene and owner of local record store, Wits’ End Records, Peyton has spent the last 20 years playing in a variety of bands with his sweet, dumb friends, while keeping things extra thoughtful all along on the side with Secular Pets. Peyton has recently taken the project out of the shadows of the bedroom and into the studio light, culminating in a lush, colorful LP, produced by renowned songwriter S.G. Goodman, while keeping the “bedroom integrity” intact, due out soon on Slough Water Records. https://secularpets.bandcamp.com/album/temporary-medicinal-quarantine-mini-sampler-stream
