While in the fields of Avalon, lines of sight to Neil Young on the Pyramid Stage are obscured by a forest of colourful flags and the occasional inflatable doll atop a bendy stick – each marking the temporary territory of the gathered clans below – a not entirely dissimilar field colonisation begins on a humid evening in Oklahoma.
As tonight’s band completes their soundcheck, hinting at the jewels to come, settlers begin to appear over the horizon. Each small group of visitors pauses to survey the landscape spread out ahead of them. Moments pass as they carefully pinpoint the patch of real estate on which they will establish their homestead for the evening. Once selected, the boundaries of their grassy plots are meticulously marked with strategically placed coolers, artfully arranged blankets and an impenetrable wall of fold-out lawn chairs. And as with the historic land grabs by their predecessors in this state, once ensconced, these Oklahomans seem just as prepared to defend to the death the place on which they stake their claim on the lush, sloping lawn of Guthrie Green.
Set across the street from the Woody Guthrie Center and the adjacent Bob Dylan Center, Guthrie Green is a 2.6-acre oasis in the heart of downtown Tulsa’s Arts District. With the backing of the George Kaiser Family Foundation, what was once the contaminated site of an old freight yard is now home to a sleek, modern pavilion overlooking a grassy, tree-lined square with a permanent stage. Here, there are no flags, no fences to scale and no overpriced tickets to haggle over – Guthrie Green shows are always free. And the only inflatable items in sight are a brace of birthday balloons bobbing blissfully in the breeze! As a rare summer heatwave prompts warnings from the UK government about the health risks of 30°C temperatures, particularly for the thousands of semi-naked Glastonbury revellers, it’s business as usual for the several hundred Tulsans settling in under a seasonally normal, cloudless 40°C sky.
To many locals, John Fullbright is like that unassuming musician guy next door, known to shun many of the usual music industry norms and pressures. He’s often to be seen playing small local venues, sometimes just for tips, to a few dozen people, like a Happy Hour audience at the Mercury Lounge (a dive-bar housed in a converted gas station that fiercely supports live music), to much larger shows at Cain’s Ballroom or Woodyfest in his hometown of Okemah.
As a fellow Tulsan, I’m slightly ashamed to admit that I first discovered Fullbright not at home but at SXSW 2014 in Austin, Texas. This was a couple of years after the release of his acclaimed studio debut, “From the Ground Up”, and shortly before his sophomore album, “Songs”, dropped. By then, “From the Ground Up” had been Grammy-nominated, Fullbright had taken part in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame’s tribute to Chuck Berry, earned the 2012 ASCAP Harold Adamson Lyric Award and was nominated for Emerging Artist of the Year at the 2013 Americana Music Awards. Yet, despite this impressive résumé, there he was with his band, crammed into the corner of the tiny front bar of The Broken Spoke, where I stumbled upon them entirely by chance. It was brilliant. Great songs, charming, witty, self-effacing banter and a warmth that’s kept me coming back – I’ve probably seen him at least twenty times since. I don’t recollect the band line-up from that Austin show, but tonight he’s backed by a crew of equally ubiquitous Tulsa musicians: Stephen Lee on guitar, Jesse Aycock on bass and Paddy Ryan on drums.
By typical measures, Fullbright’s output isn’t exactly prolific — three 12-track albums in 13 years works out to roughly a song every four months. But this isn’t a shortcoming. On the contrary, it highlights the consistent and enduring quality of his work. No matter how many times I’ve heard them, the songs always sound fresh and contemporary. Much of that freshness comes from the players he surrounds himself with, Stephen Lee especially. Lee is one of those guitarists who never phones it in. Whether delivering an exquisitely crafted solo or adding unexpected licks, he always manages to bring something new to each of Fullbright’s songs.
They kick off with ‘Happy’, the opener from “Songs”. It’s a fine tune, though ironically titled – it wrestles with the cliché that misery fuels creativity. Before switching to keyboards – where Fullbright arguably shines brightest – he remains on guitar for the first several songs, pulling gems from each of his three studio albums: a tight, driving ‘Paranoid Heart’, ‘Unlocked Doors’ that grows from a smoldering start to a soaring finish and the cover of Tom Skinner’s ‘Where We Belong’ which combines a waltz-like rhythm with a bluegrass feel. The band continues to work through excellent interpretations from across Fullbright’s catalogue, with standouts like ‘All the Time in the World’ – featuring a brilliantly understated, effortlessly cool solo from Aycock and great harmonica work from Fullbright – plus a spectacular ‘The Liar’, title track from his 2022 album, in which he confesses, “half of life is looking back on what you’re trying to be.”
Mid-set, Fullbright introduces his guest for the evening, Jared Tyler. My previous exposure to Tyler was limited to ‘The Door’, a track from his 2017 album “Dirt on Your Hands”, which featured the late and much-missed Malcolm Holcombe. Tonight, Tyler joins the band for ‘Fort Gibson Lake’ from that same album, a quaint ode to fishing on a local lake, with superb vocal backing from Fullbright and Aycock. Tyler exits, and the band follows, leaving Fullbright alone for his ‘solo spot’. This includes ‘She Knows’ and ‘High Road’ from “Songs”, the latter telling the sad tale of love in hardship and spousal loss, accentuated by Fullbright’s heartfelt vocal and emotional piano that drifts dreamily through the warm, twilight air. But the evening’s most powerful moment comes with a deeply stirring and timely performance of Woody Guthrie’s ‘Plane Wreck at Los Gatos (Deportee)’. Given the current political climate in the U.S., it’s a deeply poignant choice. Oklahoma is one of the reddest states in the Union (for UK readers, U.S. political colour coding is reversed), but if the audience included any supporters of inhumane immigration policies, they wisely kept quiet or were drowned out by the rousing applause that followed Fullbright’s moving rendition. He has a knack for choosing perfect covers, and this was no exception. The band returned for a final trio of songs – ‘Poster Child’ and ‘When You’re Here’, before wrapping up with the upbeat ‘Moving’ from his debut.
Some might call it a cliché for artists playing in Tulsa to include a Guthrie or Dylan cover in their sets. Personally, I love it. It feels like an ongoing friendly competition: who can pull off the most unexpected deep cut? Memorable for me have been Robyn Hitchcock’s interpretation of ‘Visions of Johanna’ in a local jazz club, or Bedouine covering ‘Oh, Sister’ at Cain’s. For tonight’s encore, Fullbright offers up a rollicking version of Dylan’s ‘It Takes a Lot to Laugh, It Takes a Train to Cry’ – and it chugs along delightfully.
All in all, a highly satisfactory evening.
Did I mention it was free?
Love the Man Fullbright. Such honest songs. Just wish he would come over to the UK
Just listened to Jared Tyler, Thank you for that, another great hones singer & songwriter
I’m not sure why he hasn’t returned to the UK since what I think was his only tour back in 2013. As I mentioned in the review, a week later he and an expanded band popped up In the Mercury Lounge for a 4th of July show.