Name: Keene ArtWalk 2023
Start: 2023-6-2
End: 2023-6-11

02junAll Day11Keene ArtWalk 2023

07jun7:00 pm10:00 pmJake Xerxes Fussell w/ Sam Moss

Event Details

Singer, guitarist, and folk music interpreter Jake Xerxes Fussell has distinguished himself as one of his generation’s preeminent interpreters of traditional (and not so traditional) “folk” songs, a practice which he approaches with a refreshingly unfussy lack of nostalgia. By recontextualizing ancient vernacular songs and sources of the American South, he allows them to breathe and speak for themselves and for himself; he alternately inhabits them and allows them to inhabit him. In all his work, Fussell humanizes his material with his own curatorial and interpretive gifts, unmooring stories and melodies from their specific eras and origins and setting them adrift in our own waterways.

Fussell’s album Good and Green Again was released Jan 21, 2022 via Paradise of Bachelors. Produced by James Elkington, the record navigates fresh sonic and compositional landscapes and is, perhaps, his most conceptually focused to-date. Fussell and Elkington enlisted a group of formidable players hailing from Durham, North Carolina (where Fussell lives) and elsewhere, including regular bandmembers Casey Toll on upright bass, Libby Rodenbough on strings, and Nathan Golub on pedal steel. They were joined by welcome newcomers Joe Westerlund (Megafaun, Califone) on drums, Joseph Decosimo on fiddle, Anna Jacobson on brass, and Bonnie “Prince” Billy, who contributes additional vocals.

“…Fussell is the rare contemporary to approach folk in its pure form, shunning self-penned compositions about bummer relationships to concentrate on material handed down from bygone, hardened times.” – The New Yorker

“Jake Xerxes Fussell who is, to me, maybe the leading interpreter of American folk music right now…” – Ann Powers (NPR All Songs Considered)

“For (Fussell) a song is no older than the last time it was sung. His fourth album, Good And Green Again is his most thoughtful, his most eloquent, and his most poignant explication of this idea.” – Uncut (Feb ’22 Album of the Month)

“Fussell, who has won admirers including Will Oldham, Wilco and Bill Callahan, is one of the great magpies of American song, collecting forgotten, tarnished gems with a folklorist’s zeal… his renditions aren’t so much cover versions as composites…” – The Guardian

Sam Moss is a songwriter and instrumentalist based in Staunton, Virginia. Shapes (2020) is the latest LP in his wide ranging discography, one which has been acclaimed by publications like The Boston Globe, NPR, The Wire, and Paste. Since 2014 he has been on the road playing hundreds of shows around the country, and occasionally opening for folks like Joan Shelley, Diane Cluck, and Doug Paisley.

"Few fingerstyle guitarists have made the transition to singer-songwriter mode as gracefully as Sam Moss." - NPR

"Marvelous, resonating, magnetic stillness." - The Boston Globe

"Delicately detailed...intricate and endearing" - GoldFlakePaint

Seating is limited and first come first served. All ages. Doors at 7pm, music at 8!

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Time

(Wednesday) 7:00 pm - 10:00 pm

Location

Nova Arts Block/Brewbakers Cafe

48 Emerald Street