Wide-ranging themes and stoical reflections in an inspiring multi-genre collection.
Robbie Fulks was born in Pennsylvania in 1963 but regards North Carolina as his childhood home. Family members variously played the fiddle, autoharp, banjo, and guitar, and Fulks picked up on the latter two of these from an early age. A couple of years studying at Columbia University in New York brought the chance to follow the well-trodden path to the cafés of Greenwich Village, home of so many folk artists in the 1960s. Tipping his hat to the most celebrated of these, Fulks once released an album reinterpreting the songs from Bob Dylan’s “Street Legal”.
Far from being a follower of trends, however, this is an unconventional artist who sets out to challenge and surprise his audience. He featured several Michael Jackson hits on his 2010 album “Happy”, and he’s even collaborated with British post-punk band The Mekons. His new release “Now Then” opens with a spoken word line – “It’s time to make a change” – and he proceeds to look at life with a mixture of reflection, humour and anger, as he himself describes it. Though still only 62, his perspective is to consider that the time behind is greater than what lies ahead. ‘Workin’ No More Blues’ sets the tone with a series of whimsical notions about the ageing process, and ‘Ocean City’ is a tale told from a child’s eye view, of a family vacation on the East Coast in 1974.
Two contrasting tracks demonstrate Fulks’s range. ‘Now Now Now Now Now’ is a rocker that suggests an eventful lifestyle in New York, sofa-surfing, playing in nightclubs, and attending the birth of his child. Then, Los Angeles provides the background for another reflection. Fulks moved there in 2019 after many years living in Chicago, where he had built a successful career. Again leaning on his own experience, ‘Savannah Is A Devilish Girl’ concerns a 62-year-old feeling marooned in a fire-swept Los Angeles but yearning for his home state and the Spanish moss of Savannah, Georgia. Accompanied by banjo and fiddle, the vocal is embellished with a wistful yodel in a beautiful arrangement.
Dark family secrets are addressed in ‘Your Tormentors’, a tale of child abuse with a suitably sinister melody. Then, possibly the most poetic song in this collection of well-crafted lyrics, ‘That Was Juarez, This Is Alpine’ describes the train journey undertaken by Mexican migrants as they cross the border to Texas. It’s a worthy reminder of Dylan’s ‘I Pity The Poor Immigrant’.
“Now Then” is the first album consisting of songs written by Fulks since his move to California. Finding the local musicians to be very receptive, he has enrolled some of the finest names to be found among album credits; Duke Levine and Kevin Barry on guitar and lap steel, Wayne Horvitz on keys, Jenny Scheinman on fiddle and Pete Thomas on drums are all featured here. Meanwhile, Fulks himself is no slouch on guitar, banjo and requinto, and it’s no surprise that he was invited to play with Steve Martin, holder of five Grammy awards and as good on the banjo as he is on the stage.
There’s a deliberate attempt to shoehorn a whole range of subjects into these twelve songs. Mordant humour abounds in ‘Poor and Sharp-Witted’, a sideways look at the American Dream. With a hoe-down rhythm and a vocal delivered in the style of a wild west show compère, it tells of a rich kid and a farmer’s boy, the former brought low by a party lifestyle and the poor boy earning a six-figure salary because he studied hard, “Sittin’ on a John Deere, flippin’ through Shakespeare”.
Growing old is revisited in ‘The 30-Year Marriage’ as the wedded subjects smile at passing young couples and take stock: “We didn’t fall out of love, we fell into rhythm”.
There’s an appropriate cover too, a jazzy version of Dan Penn and Spooner Oldham’s ‘Ol’ Folks’ featuring Eleanor Whitmore in a duet. It’s a poignant piece, reminiscent of John Prine’s ‘Hello In There’ that will have you fighting back tears. The album closes with a philosophical shrug as Fulks plays front-porch style guitar and sings ‘Nobody Cares’. This album should ensure that many people will.
