1. Robert William "Robbie" Fulks was born on March 25,1963 and is an American alternative country singer-songwriter, instrumentalist and long-time resident of Chicago, Illinois.
29 Facts About Robbie Fulks
1. 2.
Robbie Fulks has released 15 albums over a career spanning more than 30 years.
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Robbie Fulks grew up in small towns in southeastern Pennsylvania, the Blue Ridge Mountains area of Virginia, and the Piedmont region of North Carolina.
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Robbie Fulks's family moved often when he was young, eventually settling in North Carolina when he was 12, and Robbie Fulks considers North Carolina his childhood home.
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Robbie Fulks was exposed to music through his family in which everyone played a different musical instrument, from his Aunt Stella on banjo, his Aunt Mildred on violin and his mother on autoharp, to his father playing guitar.
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Robbie Fulks picked up his aunt's banjo when he was six and started playing guitar at age 11.
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Robbie Fulks graduated from Carolina Friends School in 1980 at the age of 17 and moved to New York City, where he attended Columbia College, Columbia University with the class of 1984.
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Robbie Fulks performed on campus in places such as the Postcrypt Coffeehouse.
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Robbie Fulks eventually dropped out of college after two years to pursue music full time.
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Robbie Fulks moved to Chicago in 1983 and started teaching at Chicago's Old Town School of Folk Music.
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Robbie Fulks recorded it during the spring of 1998 in Nashville with producer Rick Will, and the album included performances by Lucinda Williams, Sam Bush, Bill Lloyd, and Al Anderson, as well as guitarist Rob Gjersoe, bassist Lorne Rall, and drummer Dan Massey.
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Also in 2001, Robbie Fulks was an inaugural member of the judging panel for the Independent Music Awards, which supported independent artists.
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Robbie Fulks released a novelty single called "Fountains of Wayne Hotline," in which he imagined the power pop band Fountains of Wayne having a hotline that struggling songwriters could call for help with their song structure.
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In 2009, Robbie Fulks released an alphabetically organized collection of 50 songs via his website, a compilation called 50-Vc.
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Robbie Fulks noted that this method, and electronic-only release in general, was not typical of musicians who worked in his genre.
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In 2010, Fulks released his next album, Happy: Robbie Fulks Plays the Music of Michael Jackson, on Yep Roc Records, in which he covered some of Jackson's songs as a tribute.
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Robbie Fulks had been working on the album since 2005.
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In 2013, Robbie Fulks released Gone Away Backward, an acoustic album recorded and mixed by Steve Albini and released on Bloodshot Records.
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Robbie Fulks said one of the songs, "That's Where I'm From", was autobiographical.
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Robbie Fulks said that Gone Away Backward went back to his roots as a musician.
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In 2014, Robbie Fulks joined members of The Mekons, dubbed "mini-Mekons", on a trip to write and record on the island of Jura in Scotland.
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Robbie Fulks's music is widely described as either alternative country or folk.
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Robbie Fulks has an encyclopedic knowledge of country and pop music and has produced a critically lauded tribute to Johnny Paycheck called Touch My Heart: A Tribute to Johnny Paycheck, which was released by Sugar Hill Records in 2004.
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Robbie Fulks considers himself adventurous, and is always willing to try new things and experiment.
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Robbie Fulks often plays at The Hideout, a bar and club in Chicago, and has worked long-term residencies there, performing anything from current popular hits to jazz to obscure country masterpieces.
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Robbie Fulks says he rarely performs his own compositions at these shows, preferring to explore other contemporary music that has caught his attention.
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Robbie Fulks has co-written with Dallas Wayne and NRBQ's Al Anderson and others.
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Robbie Fulks has a long-time association with engineer Steve Albini.
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Robbie Fulks has three children, sons Nicolas, Preston, and Tennessee; and two grandsons, Logan and Miles.