Gig review: Jake Xerxes Fussell at Brudenell Social Club, Leeds

“Bill Callahan told me about the pies”, Jake Xerxes Fussell reveals during the early stages of tonight’s spellbinding performance. This reference to the Brudenell’s food offerings suggests that the venue is renowned amongst roots-orientated US musicians for other qualities besides its unbeatable atmosphere and time-worn charm.

It's somehow fitting that Fussell – casually dressed in a rumpled shirt and baseball cap, like a contemporary version of a workman who might populate one of the songs in his repertoire – is playing in a venue with such deep roots tonight.

The majority of the Durham, North Carolina-based guitarist and singer’s five albums to date (with this year’s warmly caressing When I’m Called presenting the pinnacle of Fussell’s musical mission statement so far) is comprised of traditional American folk songs with a lineage that stretches far beyond the Brudenell’s foundation in 1913.

Such a profoundly trend-averse dedication to cultivating shared musical history can easily lead to an overly reverential approach akin to a musty museum exhibition. There is no such risk tonight.

Fussell is certainly serious about his vocation as a collector, preserver and reviver of arcane traditional songs that could otherwise be at risk of going extinct.

At various points during tonight’s performance (accompanied by drummer Will Waghorn, and with excellent support act Sam Moss joining in on fiddle for a few tunes), Fussell recounts his encounters with older musicians with a lived-in experience of particularly precious melodies and lyrics.

One engagingly surreal encounter concerns Fussell chancing upon legendary Kentucky folk musician Jean Ritchie on an early online chat forum dedicated to research and appreciation of Appalachian folk songs.

However, Fussell clearly has no interest in treating the source material like it’s a precious object at risk of being broken if shaken too hard: picking at a battered Telecaster in fluidly gritty tones that suggest the ghosts of long-gone Mississippi Delta guitar wizards and singing with more assertive authority than his albums might suggest, Fussell renders the source material entirely his own, bringing it from frayed history pages to vivid, hugely compelling life in the here and now.

Fussell isn’t a folk purist either. As well as opening tonight’s set with a humid rural funk version of Duke Ellington’s Jump for Joy and stomping through Nick Lowe’s Breaking Glass like it was an olden times drinking song, Fussell – now on acoustic guitar – delivers one of the evening’s highlights with an almost unbearably beautiful solo take on Arthur Russell’s Close My Eyes.

Although it’s the set’s most contemporary entry, Fussell’s deeply moving rendition seems perfectly matched in mood and subject with the traditional soldier’s lament Love Farewell, another deeply moving highlight.

Tinged with resonant melancholy even at their most joyously loose-limbed, the hugely compelling set is welcomed by the audience (whose attention never wavers whilst the music is playing) with the kind of wild enthusiasm that you wouldn’t necessarily expect to experience in what is essentially a folk music performance.

There is even a hearty singalong to the raucous chorus of traditional Donkey Riding.