Grammy nominated Robbie Fulks, who grew up in North Carolina, will come to Stag’s Head Music Hall.
Robbie Fulks is beginning to wonder whether he’s relies too much on his childhood memories in the South when it comes to writing songs.
Fulks is one of the architects of the alternative country movement of the 1990s, alongside peers like Uncle Tupelo (“No Depression”) and the Old 97’s (“Fight Songs”), and his songs are tinged with the humor and perceptiveness that he picked up along the way as a child growing up in Virginia and North Carolina.
For the longtime Chicago resident, taking the stage at Stag’s Head Music Hall Oct. 28, there is some worry that the Southern well might run dry before too long. While it has suited him well as a musician – 2016’s “Upland Stories” garnered Fulks two nominations at the 2017 Grammy Awards, for Best Folk Album and Best American Roots Song for “Alabama at Night” – the singer-songwriter asks if the settings of his songs have become a creative crutch.
“I’ve been thinking over the last year that I should try to move away from that, as I think I’ve written plenty about (the South) at this point,” Fulks says during a call between tour stops.
“It’s just that (living in the South) happened at that major window of time, when you’re a teenager, which I think a lot of people know what I’m talking about,” he said. “That period of time, childhood and teenage years, stays so fresh in your mind that it becomes a place in your brain that you keep reverting to. For subject matter that would move you to sing, it’s a natural go-to for me, but there are other topics that carry equal weight – or should – for me, like parenthood and thoughts about love and death. There are various big topics out there, dozens of things to write about, so I often think that it’s time to stop looking back at the distant past and move on.”
Who can blame him, though, when you take into consideration that his family settled in Wake Forest during the years when Fulks first became infatuated with music. Fulks, a graduate of Durham’s Carolina Friends School, was taught as a young boy to play the guitar by his father, pairing it with the banjo he first began picking up at the age of 6.
He was surrounded – and influenced – by the sounds of Piedmont musicians, artists that he didn’t realize until later that his friends may not have viewed as the coolest performers of the time period.
“Everyone I hung out with listened to different kinds of music, like KISS and whatever other crap was popular then,” Fulks laughs. “Years later, I started realizing that all of the little things that seemed minor at the time were unique to being there at that time.”
“They all just seeped into my head, like going to see John Hartford (“Gentle on My Mind”) or Leon Redbone (“Seduced”) at a small music venue like the Cat’s Cradle, or getting to watch the Red Clay Ramblers play in the area,” he said. “If you went 200 miles in any direction, you might find that no one in the town you landed in had ever heard of these guys, but they were basically celebrities in the area at that time. My parents had listened to that music ever since I was a little kid, so I would have been around it no matter where I grew up, but being in the area where that music was born was irreplaceable.”
The singer-songwriter continues.
“The stuff that you hold onto from (an early age), you don’t hold onto it by choice … they’re just part of my DNA at this point. I’ve learned that to learn about music is why I get up every day, what drives me forward, and what makes me happy every day. I’ve been able to continue to do that, from learning about music from my parents when I was a kid, to learning from the musicians I surround myself with to this day.”
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