New Haven Register (Sunday) (New Haven, CT)
Robbie Fulks brings ‘real country’ to mActivity
NEW HAVEN — Highly regarded alt-country singersongwriter Robbie Fulks will perform Saturday in the latest installment of Fernando Pinto’s East Rock Concert Series at mActivity Coffee Bar (285 Nicoll St.).
Showtime is 7 p.m. Scottish duo The Jellyman’s Daughter will open. Tickets are $20 in advance, available at fernandopintopresents.com or mactivity.com, or $25 at the door.
People who haven’t heard Fulks’ music — and particularly those who haven’t seen him perform it live — sometimes wonder what all the fuss is about.
But once you see him, you’re likely to understand why he’s practically the poster child for the sentiment among some in the roots music community that REAL country music isn’t always what you hear on Country Music Television or see on TV award shows.
Fulks plays real country music.
And while you may not have heard of him, he was nominated for two 2017 Grammy Awards, Best Folk Album for his “Upland Stories,” as well as Best American Roots Song for “Alabama at Night.”
Originally from York, Pa., Fulks has been doing his thing from Chicago — purposely NOT from Nashville — for many years now, releasing 13 or so albums over the past 20-some-odd years.
Now 55, he’s not exactly new to the scene anymore.
But his music is full of fine picking and fresh stories and three-dimensional characters even if it’s now also shaped by marriage, fatherhood and middle age — and it’s as listenable as ever. If you’re into roots music and never previously discovered Fulks, now is as good a time as any.
In addition to being a fine musician, Fulks is a wonderful storyteller — like fellow Southern-raised Chicago product John Prine, Fred Eaglesmith, Bill Miller, Willie Nelson or Arlo Guthrie, to name a few.
While clearly outside the country mainstream, when Fulks performs, pure country comes flowing out, often with a sharp wit and a tongue-in-cheek sense of humor.
One of his many fans, modern-day bluegrass icon Tim O’Brien, called what Fulks does “soul bluegrass for the modern day hillbilly. No polite cabin worship or pro-tooled pretending here,” he said. “Robbie’s songs tell true workingman’s stories with all the punch of the Stanley Brothers or George Jones,” O’Brien said.
Fulks grew up in small towns in southeast Pennsylvania, the North Carolina Piedmon and the Blue Ridge area of Virginia, learning guitar from his father and banjo off of Earl Scruggs and John Hartford records. He headed for Columbia University and New York City in 1980, but dropped out in 1982 to focus on the Greenwich Village songwriter scene.
He moved to Chicago in the mid-1980s, where he joined Greg Cahill’s Special Consensus Bluegrass Band.
He worked as a staff instructor in guitar and ensemble at Old Town School of Folk Music from 1984 to 1996, also working on Nashville’s Music Row as a staff songwriter for Songwriters Ink (Joe Diffie, Tim McGraw, Ty Herndon) from 1993 to 1998. His songs have been covered over the years by Sam Bush, Kelly Hogan, Sally Timms, Rosie Flores, John Cowan and Old 97’s, among others.
The Jellyman’s Daughter “lands squarely in the middle of a strange crossroads between bluegrass, post-rock, folk and soul,” according to the duo’s bio.