When: 7.30pm on Saturday 3 October 2026
Where: Hallé St Peter’s, 40 Blossom Street, Ancoats, Manchester, M4 6BF

We’re excited to be working with Jake Xerxes Fussell again – plus special guest Naima Bock!

Singer, guitarist, and folk music interpreter Jake Xerxes Fussell announces his new album, The Old Beloved Path, out 18 September via Fat Possum Records and releases the lead single, Rock Island Line. Over six unique and very personal studio albums, Fussell has found his musical future by reimagining, reorchestrating, and reunifying the past. By combining different traditional music sources in a completely original way, he routinely creates fresh works of art that are at once rooted in history and ingeniously modern.

It’s Fussell’s inspired intuition that remakes a classic American folk song, like today’s Rock Island Line, into something that still rings with inherent wisdom but is completely his own. In the past, Fussell says he might have avoided a song like Rock Island Line because it seemed too commonplace to him – many folk singers had already done it. But after listening to a recording of the song by Lonnie Donegan, something about the incantation of the chorus struck a chord. In typical Fussell fashion, his remarkable ear and intellect took over.

‘The song struck me as very beautiful, but just singing the verses wasn’t working for me. I couldn’t relate,’ Fussell comments. ‘So, I wound up putting it together with an old English nursery rhyme that I had been kicking around. “Wire, briar, limberlock /How many geese is in our flock?” and “If you want to ride you got to ride it like you’re flyin, get your ticket at the station on the Rock Island Line.” Marrying those two things, I felt like something worked, it felt like a song to me.’

The son of two artists and documentarians in their own right, Fussell grew up in Georgia around a community of people who were documenting traditional culture and craftways like storytelling, log cabin building, and basketmaking. Imbued with this deep respect for the past as well as an unquenchable intellectual curiosity, he grew up appreciating the beauty in those supposed lost arts and remains privy to them in a unique way.

‘For people in the folk music world, songs are their religion,’ states Fussell. ‘But traditional music is not a bee stuck in amber. I tend to think of everyone who plays traditional music as being on a spectrum from conservative to wildly creative. I am somebody who tends to sit on the edge of those two worlds. I don’t always present these songs in a historical context. I have to relate to them personally. I approach these songs through my own worldview.’

Recorded in North Carolina, The Old Beloved Path was mixed by producer Ben Whiteley (The Weather Station), who has also played bass on tour with Fussell. Friends Dominic Billett, Isa Burke, Wayne Horvitz and Ken Whiteley add their instrumental voices to Fussell’s singular musical amalgams. As producer, Whiteley fulfilled Fussell’s desire to make an album that was more a document of musicians playing live together in a room, dwelling less in atmospherics and musical elaboration. Working together, they intentionally limited their palette – focusing less on all the things a song could be, and honing in on the essential.

The songs Fussell chose for The Old Beloved Path are songs he has heard for years, but many of them felt newly illuminated – hitting different.

‘Traditional music gets more intense the older I get. The way that I see the world is through these songs. The world of traditional music has been such a gift to me. If nothing else, a lifelong companion.’

‘[Fussell] 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 gems with a folklorist’s zeal’ – the Guardian

‘Maybe the leading interpreter of American folk music right now’ – Ann Powers, NPR

Special guest is Naima Bock. Most of the writing of Naima Bock’s second album, Below A Massive Dark Land (Sub Pop), was a solitary affair. It may not sound it – it’s made up of strong, purposeful arrangements with a huge host of musicians; filled with cradling space and warm light. This will also come as a surprise to anyone who has seen Naima perform in the time since the release of her 2022 debut Giant Palm, undoubtedly a communal experience.

With a band of ten, three, or even just solo, when Naima plays there’s a rare bond between the musicians on stage and the audience. In their interview with her, The Quietus declared “after every song the applause and cheering is immense, so immense in fact that it seems to be coming from a different place than the usual formalities of a live show, a link between performer and artist forged somewhere deeper and more personal.”

This is a 14+ show. Under 16s must be accompanied by an adult.

This is an unreserved seating show.

Book tickets now.

Attend on: Facebook