Jake Xerxes Fussell has been called “maybe the leading interpreter of American folk music right now” by NPR, and on July 22, he performed at the legendary Caffe Lena in Saratoga Springs. NYC-based Christian and Cole (whose Cole Quest is Woody Guthrie’s grandson) opened the show.

Review and Photos by Ross Marvin for NYS Music

Jake Xerxes Fussell at Caffe Lena (July 22, 2025) – photo by Ross Marvin for NYS Music

But it was in “Have You Ever Seen Peaches Growing on a Sweet Potato Vine?” that Fussell best delivered the elements of his own signature style. There’s the homage to his native Georgia (the tune is connected to folk-blues guitarist Jimmy Lee Williams, a farmer from Worth County, Georgia); there’s the circuitous, meditative, and original guitar arrangement (and his best one at that); there’s also that Michael Hurley-esque falsetto (and food references that set the song in a real agricultural, rural America). 

– Ross Marvin for NYS Music