A man offers his umbrella to a stranger in a rainstorm. The two have other plans, then decide to spend some time together. Feeing Day has been travelling for a long time before Jake Xerxes Fussell gets to it. The small detour at its centre is still recognisable: you meant to go somewhere, and a person changed the afternoon.
Feeing Day appears on When I’m Called, Fussell’s 2024 album for Fat Possum. His late mentor Art Rosenbaum’s field recordings are an important source. Folk Alley’s Devon Léger traces this song to recordings Rosenbaum made in Scotland and Who Killed Poor Robin? to his recording of Ozarks singer Ollie Gilbert. The album brings material from those different places into one band’s repertoire.
Fussell grew up in Georgia and settled in North Carolina. For When I’m Called, producer James Elkington joins a cast that includes Ben Whiteley and Joe Westerlund; Blake Mills contributes guitar, while Joan Shelley and Robin Holcomb sing. Tucker Martine mixed it. These musicians are working with songs that have already survived plenty of changes, leaving room for another version.
KLOF’s Glenn Kimpton describes Feeing Day opening around acoustic guitar before horns arrive late in the story. His account connects the expanded arrangement to the pair deciding to spend the afternoon together. That gives the musicians a particular moment to respond to, rather than treating an old song as a fixed object that needs preserving unchanged.
Fussell plays Great American Music Hall on November 11. Feeing Day is a good introduction beforehand because its central encounter needs very little historical explanation. Somebody offers shelter, two people change their plans, and the afternoon becomes worth a song. The recordings have helped it survive; that ordinary recognisable decision gives another singer a reason to keep it going.