Robbie Fulks
March 2002
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Of course, all of that was wrapped around Sept. 11 and its consequences.
So what is Mr. Fulks up to now? Well, another short jaunt along the East Coast, of course, some sporadic recording, and a well-earned rest.
"I'm kind of laying back right now ... I'm not sure what I'm going to do this year," Fulks said in a recent telephone interview before heading out for a brief March tour. "I was out pretty hard last year, with the two records that came out ... the war hit, and it was pretty bad. We were out in the middle of all that."
"I'm [also] working on a Michael Jackson tribute album in dribs and drabs," he added.
Excuse me? A Michael Jackson tribute? Why is a man known for recording such classic honky-tonk rave-ups as "She Took a Lot of Pills and Died" and a not-so pleasant homage to Nashville called "Fuck This Town" working on a tribute to the self-proclaimed King of Pop?
"[About] a year and a half ago, I had to do this [tribute show to him] in Chicago," Fulks said. "For some reason it turned out real fun, just to work up the songs real fresh. I hadn't really thought about those songs of his in a long time, if at all, and so a lot of them were like blank slates to me, something you hear at a supermarket."
But still, Robbie, you sing songs about death, loneliness, lost love, and struggle. Not about saving the world, the whales and the kids.
"[Well,] I found out that some of them were actually good songs, like 'Billy Jean'," he said. "I never really thought about it, but to my way of thinking, ["Billy Jean"] was a sort of spooky set of lyrics and [there was] a real good mood in it."
Fulks said he's already recorded the aforementioned song, as well as a handful of others including "Ben," and "Going Back to Indiana," and he is planning on covering "Rockin' Robin," "Everybody's Somebody's Fool," and "Don't Stop 'Til You Get Enough."
When and if the album will be released is unclear, and Fulks is not sure if he will release it through Bloodshot Records or his own Boondoggle label, which he used for Couples In Trouble.
Either way, it's bound to be quite different from anything he's ever recorded, especially considering his strong country-rock background. Fulks, from York, Pennsylvania, moved to Nashville in the early 1990s to cash in on the songwriting machine that churned out constant hits for Garth Brooks and Travis Tritt, among others.
Fulks said he moved to Nashville after a friend scored a hit for Brooks, and "the next thing you know, he had a new house, a new van, and he had a deal set up with a publisher." For Fulks, the opportunity to strike it rich quick in the capital of country music was more than enough tonic to leave a dull accounting job.
"I just thought, I could do this if these guys can," he said. "It was gold-rush time in the early '90s. It was really exciting for a guy like me that had a dumb day job, a really depressing job."
The songwriting career never took off, as Fulks says he got mixed up with a publishing company more interested in finding the next Garth Brooks instead of real music innovation. "The company I was with was one of those situations where the guy that hires you, [who's] really into what you do ... leaves, and you're stuck in this company with a long-term contract."
Fulks said the Nashville mentality left little freedom, as songwriting had more of an assembly line feel than anything else. "Nashville is the most specialized town in that sense, where everything is pretty specialized and separate," he said. "[There is] no sort of auteurism in the way that there is in rock music."
Fulks' Nashville experience did give him one thing: the ability to make his own records and write his own songs. He released his first record on Bloodshot Records, 1996's Country Love Songs, and his tribute to Music City, "Fuck This Town," found its way onto his second album, 1997's South Mouth.
His first two records were steeped heavily in catchy country goodness, and he took his first big chance on his one and only major-label release in 1998, Let's Kill Saturday Night, released on Geffen Records.
The arrangement with Geffen only lasted one album, as Fulks again desired more freedom to write and record his songs. Growing weary of the "alt.country" label, Fulks said he needed to do something different to keep his music interesting and, most important, relevant.
"[I] try not to get too rigid about the [songwriting] MO," he said. "I try to keep it pretty flexible ... You don't want to get into a rut -- the same thing the same way all the time -- because it starts to sound like the same thing over and over again."
On Couples In Trouble, his latest release, Fulks plows through musical genres with the intensity of a madman, covering Appalachian folk music, the gratuitous three-minute pop song, straight up country, and even obnoxious lounge music. All the while, Fulks tells tales of two people facing challenges in each song (hence the album title).
"[The concept] came up maybe when I was two or three songs into writing the record," he said. "The more I thought about what I wanted the next record to sound like, it was a diverse group of sounds, I wanted to really have no boundaries at all in the music. I wanted to make a record myself, fund it myself and oversee it myself, and not have any rules about where the music might go except where the lyrics directed it to go, not where an A&R guy or anyone else directed it to go ... The problem [was] that [I] had this record of songs that kind of float all over the place and have no connection to each other, and so after the [first] few songs were written, a kind of loose theme emerged, the slightest of themes: pairs of people at odds with each other."
The album was critically acclaimed, which surprised Fulks as he took it out on the road last fall. His website billed the tour as a sort of one-time event, in that the shows were longer to incorporate his new material, but also to promote 13 Hillbilly Giants.
A live wire on stage, Fulks says that being on tour and performing his material is "really the most excited I ever get."
"[Performing is] just really exciting work for me, and I consider it my job to keep people interested when I'm out there," he said.
Speaking from experience, a Robbie Fulks show is truly an event. A charismatic, high-energy lead singer with one of tightest bands around makes for a good show, but the covers of ABBA, PJ Harvey and Michael Jackson tunes certainly add up to an unexpected -- and unforgettable -- element.
"For some reason I don't choose [to do] hillbilly covers as much as pop
covers," he said. "And I think the reason is that it's just obvious and
also, it invites insidious comparisons. If I do a George Jones song, I
probably won't sound nearly as good as he does singing it, [but] if I cover
a PJ Harvey song ... it's not going to sound better or worse than her, it's
just [going to be] so unusual and different that you won't draw as close a
comparison."
JEN APPEL |