Robbie Fulks
When I interviewed Robbie Fulks last year, the Chicago-based singer-songwriter claimed that though his music was based on honky-tonk, he couldn’t “sound the full diapason” as long as he was with Bloodshot Records. And so, after two acclaimed albums on the local “insurgent country” indie–Country Love Songs in 1996 and South Mouth in ’97–Fulks was off to Geffen, where he felt he could broaden his sound as well as his audience.
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Fulks has been working hard ever since to disassociate himself from the myopic No Depression scene–but the man who wrote a song called “Fuck This Town” about his experience as a Nashville songwriting hack isn’t trying to ingratiate himself back in Music City either. He’s toured with articulate acts like Junior Brown and Kim Richey–too distinctive for mainstream country but too typical to be y’alternative–as well as quirky popsters Ben Folds Five. A summer residency at Schubas found him changing the format every week, from bluegrass one Sunday to hard-rockin’ pop the next. But the biggest chunk of evidence for Fulks’s effortless range is his Geffen debut, Let’s Kill Saturday Night, which arrived in stores Tuesday.
Despite his less-than-rosy view of human nature, Fulks has a certain empathy for all his characters, and that comes across onstage. I’ve watched his charms work on all sorts of crowds–reverent folkies, boisterous jocks, alt-country scenesters, rockers, and children–and yet he never really pulls punches for anyone, with the exception of leaving “Fuck This Town” out of the kiddie sets. Even with lines like “There the ape-coiffured ex-viscount” and “Burning the torch at her own auto-da-fe,” he’s a true populist, in a way neither Garth Brooks with his howdy-ma’am pandering nor Whiskeytown with their dull reverence for Uncle Tupelo will ever be.
