Jake Xerxes Fussell

Jake Xerxes Fussell is a singer and guitarist from Georgia. As a teenager Jake began playing and studying with elder musicians in the Chattahoochee Valley, apprenticing with Piedmont blues legend Precious Bryant (“Georgia Buck”). He joined a Phenix City country band; he accompanied Etta Baker in North Carolina; he moved to Berkeley where he hung out with filmmaker Les Blank and learned from Haight folkies like Will Scarlett (Jefferson Airplane, Hot Tuna, Brownie McGhee) and cult fingerstyle guitarist Steve Mann. In 2005 he moved to Oxford, Mississippi, where he enrolled in the University’s Southern Studies department, and recorded and toured with Rev. John Wilkins.

Born in Glastonbury to a Brazilian father and a Greek mother, Naima spent her early childhood in Brazil before eventually returning to England and various homes in South-East London. This heritage combines with more recent pursuits in Naima’s music; from the Brazilian standards that the family would listen to driving to the beach, to the European folk traditions she tapped into on her own, and the pursuits that interest her today – studies in archaeology, work as a gardener, and walking the world’s great trails – Naima’s music draws from family, the earth and the handing down of music through generations.