Every once in a while, I want to slow down. Stop the steady stream of flickering images, words, and noise (internal and external) and pay attention to slower quieter things.
Jake Xerxes Fussell’s Good and Green Again is a wonderfully slow somber and quiet record. Vocals, guitar played in traditional blues style with real flair almost as if Mississippi were part of his name, pedal steel, violin, viola, fiddle (there’s a difference), horns, bass, drums and more, this is down home music with a heavy tinge of melancholy, like honey in tears.
If someone said to me, “Hey you’ve got to hear this new blues album!” I would typically look in any other direction because contemporary blues can mean, in my limited experience, noodling around three chords with frenetic finger work, as if the sheer number of notes played per moment make up for a lack of originality. Leaves me cold. So I would not call Good and Green Again a blues album or a country album or a folk album. I like to think of it as roots music, story telling in song, a tradition as old as history.
Good and Green Again offers a clear running stream view on life’s shifting tides, told with real beauty and quiet power.