Robbie Fulks knows that certain songs populate his top 10 most-streamed on Spotify.
“It’s all the so-called ‘funny’ songs at the top of that list,” says Fulks, citing his irreverent, back-catalog classics “Fuck This Town” and “She Took A Lot of Pills (And Died).” The latter is the most-played of all his songs, across 30 years and 16 albums, with 1.2 million streams. But sitting at No. 2 is “Long I Ride,” a bluegrass tune that could have been written anytime between yesterday and Del McCoury. It claims 1.18 million listens, and there’s a chance you’ll hear it at The Southern Café & Music Hall on October 1 when Fulks summons his bluegrass and folk background into an Americana-leaning set.
“For a long, long time, probably, I don’t know, over 20 years, I’m trying to find a synthesis of all the stuff that I’m interested in—the styles I’m interested in,” says Fulks, whose 2016 record, Upland Stories, was nominated for the Best Contemporary Folk Album at the 2017 Grammys. The album’s opening track, “Alabama At Night” was nominated for Best American Roots Song.
Fulks came up flatpicking with Special Consensus in the 1980s before doing his part to define early alt-country in the next decade.
“I think where I’m at now, it’s really hard to say,” he says. “Is it country or bluegrass or folk or some poppier, jazzier amalgam of all those things or what is it? And I’m really pleased to think that it’s hard to put a specific, one-word identifier on it. I really like that about what I’m doing.”
The sounds of old-time country fill Fulks’ first two albums, which debut his reliably wry and layered lyrics. His writing is often funny, but not in a joke-song way. In fact, sometimes it’s not even clear if Fulks is trying to be funny. This feeling, something that demands a German word, is why he covered Dan Penn’s “Ol’ Folks” on his newest album, Now Then.
“The only version that Dan did of that is on a live record that he did with Spooner Oldham,” Fulks says. “And he gets to that line about heart attacks and light strokes, and you hear laughter from the crowd, like it’s just a laugh line. And is it a laugh line? You don’t know.”
Like humor, bluegrass gets peppered throughout Fulks’ albums. In 2023, the musician went pure with his Bluegrass Vacation record. There was much rejoicing.
“Would it really be the full-blown bluegrass album from Fulks we’ve been waiting for?” posted a reviewer on the website Saving Country Music. “Yes it is, and one of the great things about this album is the variety of moods and tempos it touches, including quite serious ones.”
Joining Fulks on tour are bassist Missy Raines and fiddler Christian Sedelmyer. Both have been nominated for Grammys, and in 1998, Raines became the first woman to win the International Bluegrass Association’s Bass Player of the Year award. She’s picked up nine more since. Sedelmyer, a full-time member of the Jerry Douglas Band, has played with Billy Strings and Molly Tuttle.
“There’s an element of strong instrumental work,” Fulks says of the group. “Those two guys that are with me, you’ll hear some just unbelievable, modern acoustic violin work from Christian and some really groovy deep bass work from Missy. And for me, I aim pretty high as a player. I’m not as great as those two guys, but I’m a pretty credible bluegrass picker.”
