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| Photo: Andy Goodwin |
Upland Stories
by Matt Chrystal
Matt Chrystal talks to Robbie Fulks about his new record Upland Stories, stealing from books, his current playlist, on letting Tina Fey make the next move, fighting talk show hosts and more.
If you look up "alt-country" you will probably read something about musicians that have styles that are on the fringe of mainstream country music. There will probably be something about how "alt-country" is an approach to songwriting that is more heartfelt and less cliché and more inclusive than exclusive when it comes to incorporating other genres or influences. But maybe, instead of all that, there should just be a picture of Robbie Fulks.
Fulks is a country music troubadour who, over the course of a storied twenty year career, evolved from a country-punk into the esteemed statesmen of American folk music.
"I'll just do this until I die or at least for a good long while," is what Robbie Fulks has to say about the enjoyment he found while playing the tunes that make up his recent album, Upland Stories.
Upland Stories finds Fulks in a serious mood, brought back to his roots of folk and bluegrass. The album was inspired, in part, by a few of his favorite literary works. Fulks's intimate storytelling runs parallel to author James Agee's Let Us Now Praise Famous Men as he reflects on the hardships and challenges of everyday and not-so-everyday American life.
I recently got to have a lengthy chat with Mr. Fulks about his experiences with making his new record, what albums he is currently listening to, his thoughts on country music today, letting Tina Fey make the next move, and about fighting talk show hosts…
CoolMattyC: Many of your previous releases had you playing country songs with your tongue placed firmly in cheek and showcased your dark humor (She Took A Lot Of Pills…, Let's Kill Saturday Night). However, in recent years your storytelling has become a bit more serious. 2016's Upland Stories consists of folk songs where tracks like "Never Come Home" and "Needed" paint bleak portraits of life events…
Robbie Fulks: That all sounds about right.
CMC: Can you talk a little about your songwriting process for Upland Stories?
RF: The main incentive for me was that I started enjoying playing acoustic music again in about 2008. I decided I wanted to make a little shift and play that way. I did some 1950s songs on a digital release around 2009 and my favorite songs that I thought came off the best were the ones that were a little bit softer and the ones that were played on acoustic instruments. I thought that seemed like a good way for me to do a record and that clicked for me. The way people responded to my last record [Gone Away Backward] felt like it went over well. I thought, I'll just do this until I die or at least for a good long while. This music seems more like what I was doing when I was seven or eight years old. It feels comfortable to me.
CMC: How about when it gets uncomfortable? Do you have any tricks that you fall back on during the songwriting process?
RF: Just to keep at it. When something isn't working for me, I find that moving on to another song is often useful. I can always come back. I tend to really dig in and have to remind myself that I can shift to another gear and work on another song. Another trick for me is like something that Hemingway said where you can just get away from the desk. Even though you are not aware of it, you are still working on it. There's something I had been working on where I took a twenty hour break from it. I think that my brain was working on it in my sleep and during all the other hours away from it. I tend to find that useful. That and encouragement, because sometimes you just need some encouragement when you are writing and find yourself stuck in the weeds.
CMC: I read that some of the tracks on the new album were inspired by the writings of several authors including James Agee. What is it about Agee's writings that spoke to you and can you recommend any literary works that you are into these days?
RF: Agee came from Knoxville, he was a southerner who went to an elitist school in the northeast. So I kinda identified with that. More than the identification, I enjoy his sense of phrase and sentence. He has a good musical ear.
For his choice of subject matter for Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, he wrote about some of the most desperate people in the Depression in Alabama. That is sorta inherently interesting subject matter and study. Not a study like a sociological act but in terms of a literary approach to human suffering. It was interesting, gloomy and fascinating project. He had various skills and talents. He wrote movies and poetry. He won a Pulitzer Prize for a novel and he wrote essays too. There was a wide scope to his work that I admired.
Some other writers that I drew from for that record were Flannery O'Connor and Anton Chekhov. It's something I would have been loath to do in earlier years. But if you steal from people like that, then there's a better chance that people won't catch on. Sometimes the people who are listening to country music are not the same people who are also reading Anton Chekhov books. When you steal from books, you can get away with more shit!
CMC: That's one of the aspects I really enjoyed about Upland Stories... Usually when I hear a record, it leads me down the rabbit hole of researching other musicians and albums, either at the local record store or online but this album sent me to the library to discover authors and works that I would not have otherwise looked into…
RF: I think I tend to steal most of my stuff from other musicians and so do a lot of other people. You just tend to stay in the same medium and look for other songs to take ideas from. Stealing from books just freshens it up… to look outside of music. Just as it freshens up my guitar playing to copy saxophone lines, it helps when I'm trying to write lyrics to look at works outside of existing song lyrics, that's for sure.
CMC: Each member of your current band has a pretty impressive resume with members having played alongside the likes of Willie Nelson, Bill Frisell, Steve Earle and Jack White, just to name a few. Can you talk a little bit about how this group came together and what your experience has been like to play with them?
RF: I just asked them all in. Most of my first choices came right through. I won't tell you who was who in fear of offending the people that did say yes. I don't want them to know they were my second choice (laughs). Anyways, Wayne Horvitz is someone that I have loved since the 1980s. I became friendly with him and I finally had a group of songs that sounded like they strongly needed keyboards. I just love everything about his playing. Jenny [Scheinman] and Shad [Cobb] are folks I worked with a lot on the road and I have been friends with for awhile. The same goes for Robbie [Gjersoe]. Fats Kaplin, the multi instrumentalist, is someone that I have been on the road with for a short time but never got to record with. He proved to be invaluable. Most are my friends and some are musicians that I admired from a distance. I was glad that I had something going that seemed right for them.
CMC: Speaking of playing with other musicians, you just did some shows with Old Crow Medicine Show and this tour has some dates where you are on a bill with the Bottle Rockets and Jason Isbell. Is it all just another gig to you at this point, or do you get to enjoy their sets and / or collaborate with the other bands on the bill?
RF: I really enjoy all those guys and enjoy getting to see them play. For sure! But "collaborate" is a big word. I mean I'm only hopping on stage with them to do one song or two. With Old Crow, I did a Merle Haggard tune. Maybe it's not so creative, but it was fun. It's fun to play with other people and to get to play in front of a bigger audience.
CMC: We covered some literary influences and some musicians you have played with but who or what are you listening to these days?
RF: Hmm, lemme see here. Let me check my stack. I've been listening to a lot of Freddy Powers. He just died recently so I’ve been on a Freddy Powers kick. And I have been listening to a record called The Clown by Charles Mingus. Miles Ahead by Miles Davis is another one here.
The Grammy Committee does a first round screening to determine that the songs that are submitted are appropriate for the category. I was with them last week and I got to hear a bunch of new stuff. I made a list while I was listening. Stray Birds are a band that I already knew about, but their record just sounded so great. Charles Bradley sounded great. Anthony Wilson sounded great too. I made a list of about twenty and that is 20 musicians out of 1200. A small minority stood out to me, and I want to investigate them all further.
CMC: You recently performed at City Winery in NYC as part of Skull Juice Live where you provided impromptu themes for a panel of comedians including Stephen Colbert, Andy Dick and Louis C.K. How did you come to be involved in this event?
RF: I got involved with that podcast just because Dino Stamatopoulos [comedy writer and producer] asked me. I was just happy to do it.
CMC: You garnered a lot of attention that evening when you teamed up with Tina Fey to duet on a cover of Loretta Lynne’s "Success." I know you have pretty eclectic tastes when it comes to cover tunes, so how did you two decide on this particular song?
RF: Tina Fey and I had both sung "Success" before and I think it's the only one we had done together before that night. We did it at one of her birthday parties and we did it years and years before that when she was taking my guitar class. That was a song that we could do without having to do much preparing for. She is a huge Loretta Lynn fan; and, of course, I am too. So there was that. Tina is also a big Elvis Costello fan and he had covered that tune. So that song choice was easy. It just made sense.
CMC: So, again, this performance got a lot of the attention of social media with people clamoring for more… was this a one-off thing or are we in for any more surprises when your tour makes its way back to NYC (Brooklyn's Union Hall) on October 21st?
RF: I don’t know. I hit Tina up not too long ago to do a thing for the New Yorker. We did a little article in there and then we got together for the thing at City Winery for Skull Juice Live. I don’t want to hit her up for too much. I’ll wait for her to make the next move.
CMC: As soon as the video of the performance was posted on your Facebook page, there was almost an immediate outcry from people demanding a full album of duets…
RF: As far as a duet’s record… I'm open to anything. But people just want to hear Tina sing. That's what they want to hear. I think there would be an equal amount of people clamoring, if not more, for Tina Fey Sings the Music of Loretta Lynn Solo on the Ukulele. My presence wouldn’t even be necessary.
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| Photo: Andy Goodwin |
CMC: For a period of time in the 1990s, you were a songwriter in Nashville and wrote songs for the likes of Tim McGraw. Then you famously wrote and recorded your own ballad, "Fuck This Town" and you moved back to Chicago.
That seems like the way it goes with Nashville. It happened with Waylon and Merle, then with you and more recently, Jonny Fritz (formerly Jonny Corndawg) made the statement that he moved to Los Angeles because Nashville had become "too L.A."
With all that said, what are your thoughts on the current state of things in Nashville and the formulaic approach taking place in today’s country music industry?
RF: Nashville was definitely getting more and more like L.A. when I was there, and that was in the early 90s. I noticed that more and more as I would go and pitch music to someone in an office. It was the people in the business [that were becoming more L.A.] not so much the singers and musicians.
Since I moved away, I do not know Nashville the city that well anymore. I just go there once in a while to play a club or visit a friend. I feel like I know almost zero about mainstream county music anymore. As for the town [of Nashville], it seems like the people there now are richer, more hipstery, more wealthy and more diverse. The whole lower Broadway scene that was focused on traditional country music when I was there in the 90s has devolved into a sick, sports-bar, lame-o version of Beale Street or Rush Street in Chicago. Everything down there is different now, and I don't know and I don’t care enough about it to even flip it the bird. I just go there now and enjoy visiting my friends.
Musically, it’s more diverse now. In the old days, there was East Nashville and there was a rebellious streak from musicians that came from dangerous neighborhoods. Nowadays, everything there is more spread out and everything feels too comfortable. There is not as much hard focus on the alternative to the mainstream. That's just my impression of things.
CMC: Speaking of the music industry, even though your albums like Country Love Songs and South Mouth are always included on the lists of top alt-country albums, and your songs have been covered by a wide range of other artists… Spin magazine called you, "The most underappreciated singer-songwriter in America."
Do you find there's truth to that statement? When you hear something like that does it have any effect on you? Does that give you a chip on your shoulder or make you feel you have something to prove?
RF: It’s just another blurb for the ole press kit. It does not depress me or jubilate me… is "jubilate" even a word?
CMC: In 1984, you wrote to David Letterman to let him know that you enjoyed his show but that you also wanted to fight him. Do you still want to fight David Letterman? If not, then who do you want to fight these days?
RF: You have a good celebrity angle going on me! In those days, Dave definitely would have beaten me up. But these days, he is like eighty; so I could probably take him down pretty quick. I was very happy that my letter got read on the Letterman show. It was like my fifth attempt to get on the "Viewer Mail" segment. It was an infinite goal of mine for a long time and then once I finally got on, I almost completely forgot about it.
Nowadays, I really would like to hit Jimmy Fallon right in his face. I think he is going to be my next target.
Robbie Fulks will be performing on a double-bill with the Bottle Rockets at Union Hall in Brooklyn, NY on October 21.
The new album, Upland Stories, is available now on Bloodshot Records.
For more info visit www.robbiefulks.com.
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