Robbie Fulks, One of America’s Great Singer-Songwriters, Mashes Up the Past and Present Tense With ‘Now Then’

Robbie Fulks is one of the funniest singer-songwriters in America, or one of the most sobering, depending on which mindset you find him or yourself in. His sensitivity, wryness and all-around musical dexterity are again on superlative view in a mostly contemplative and occasionally rowdy new album, “Now Then.” It’s Fulks’ second album for the Compass label and his 14th or 15th or 17th overall (depending on how you count side projects or USB-drive-only releases). He’s one of America’s great song craftsmen, again at the peak of his form.

Variety caught up with Fulks as he was on the verge of leaving for a couple of dates playing guitar on a Steve Martin/Martin Short tour before going out on his own for the rest of the year. (The following interview has been edited for length and clarity.)

You’ve done a few appearances with Steve Martin, playing guitar with his band on “The Tonight Show” and at the Hollywood Bowl and a couple dates this month. Has that been a fun detour?

Oh, yeah, it’s a real… I was gonna say “highlight of the summer,” but it’s highlight of the life, probably. … It was real meaningful for me, in the ‘70s, to see a comedian with a banjo that played well; I played the banjo, but there was kind of a stigma, so Steve being good and cool and funny with it was kind of legitimizing. And like a lot of people, I just admire him so much. If I didn’t play bluegrass, life would’ve worked out differently, but it’s a nice little tool in the kit that lets me almost pay some of these people back. Like, he needs that (guitar playing) done for him, and I’m there to sort of honor him with that specific skill.

Speaking of bluegrass, your previous album, “Bluegrass Vacation,” leaned into that style and instrumentation, obviously from the title forward. But the new one, “Now Then,” is not that at all. You did an interview when you were making it last year where you called the style of the current project “post-stylistic.” Is that how you would say it ended up?

I am not sure. I mean, I heard that word a long time ago and I liked it, as just like a “let’s stop talking about these words” kind of an idea. I like to try to appreciate everything. If I don’t understand it musically, I think: What am I not getting here? What is it about trap and drill that I’m not getting, or whatever the style is? I think I’m not crazy about the word Americana for a couple different reasons, but I think it applies to the record. It’s an old white guy moaning the blues, and it’s performances that are recorded pretty honestly, with not a ton of artifice or editing, so I think that all clicks with Americana.

What’s your hesitation about the term, even though you’re willing to allow that it does kind of fit what you’re doing?

To me it’s always sounded like Wilford Brimley on a rocking chair at a Cracker Barrel or something. And some of it is a little outdated view, probably, because (the Americana genre) has embraced Black people a lot more in the last five, six, seven years, deliberately. Because before that, it was like, , what’s James Brown, if not Americana? — but that somehow wasn’t included in the thing. From my view, it was more like ‘70s mainstream rock was the basis of the thing, with a little nod to the Old Weird America stuff and the Harry Smith stuff. So, I mean, not even a racism complaint with it as much as: Are we really gonna celebrate a style that leaves the best music there is out of it? But now it’s different. Like I say, I’ve got maybe an antiquated view of it; it still sounds a little old fogeyish. But with that said, I mean, I’m old and I’m in it. And if your touchstones are Bob Dylan and the Beatles, then you’re probably Americana.

I think “singer-songwriter” is good for it. I’ve probably said the words old guy more than the label would like me to have said them by now. But throughout most of the last 30 years, I’ve thought of myself as a country artist, mostly, and it’s bugged me a little bit that that term doesn’t seem to be applied to me; I just apply it to myself. But with this new one, the country thing — the sound of the fiddle and the twang in the voice — is kind of restrained and folded into a broader musical vision.

That form does not fit into the function of a genre-specific album. Two years ago, he released “Bluegrass Vacation,” which delved back into the instrumentation of his youth growing up as an aficionado of hippie bluegrassers in the ‘70s. “Now Then” is more in a folk-rock vein, with punky or countryish asides amid what otherwise stands as something that is acoustic-oriented and gentle on your mind, however troubled it may be by the passing of time.

You also previously described the new album as mostly being from the point of view of a guy — I can’t remember if you said “old guy” or just guy —who’s alive and thinking of old times. There are a lot of different kinds of reminiscing on here, humorous and serious. Did you feel it coming together with any particular retrospective set of themes?

Honestly, when I write these things, I have this routine of getting alone, and so when I’m alone in a house in a sort of unfamiliar location or a hotel room for three or four days, I don’t tend to write party songs. The frame of mind is a little bit lonely and thoughtful, and it just has a natural way of reverting to past scenes and buried thoughts. Sometimes if you co-write or go about it in a different way, then you don’t get as depressive a view of the world. But, yeah, it just seemed to lead naturally to that. There’s a song on the record, “Nobody Cares,” that’s from the point of view of a divorced old guy living alone, which isn’t me. But in a cabin in Idyllwild after a couple days of being snowbound, I can easily imagine being that guy. And so, like I said, it doesn’t lead you into like a happy, basketball-game, social kind of scene so much as it does a solo, thoughtful scene.

It seems like you are tending more toward autobiographical songs now than character songs, even though it was the characters and story songs that you built more of your career on. Have you felt like that balance has shifted?

Yeah, it has changed. Thee’s a cover and a co-write on the record, and then everything else is pretty autobiographical, although “Poor and Sharp-Witted” and “Nobody Cares.” I’m part of a happy marriage, luckily, but the rest are probably 80% personal memories and my own thoughts and opinions. And, yeah, I don’t know why I avoided that for so many years. Partly because I had less of it to work from, when I was younger. But more because I thought the invitation to do poetry and song lyrics and to expose yourself was somehow like orthogonal to the real project of putting out entertaining music, making people dance and laugh and pushing people’s buttons. I don’t know — it all kind of went against the idea of exposing yourself seriously through your your records. But now, I think it just seems kind of fruitful and natural, at this age and just given my frame of mind. I’m a more serious person than I was when I was 30. Then I noticed when I put this stuff out into the world, it seems to connect with people, so I feel like I’m encouraged to do it.

It’s a constant amazement when you can dredge up these really granular, unique memories and put some detail into it and then find out that it connects with a stranger.  It feels great when that happens, to realize that everybody’s living slightly different versions of the same life. You know, the feeling of connectedness that songs can provide that way is pretty spiritual. And I’m relaxing into this stuff when I’m on stage now and when I’m writing songs in a way that I couldn’t have relaxed before. It’s another function of being older and feeling you have less to prove — and also less to conceal. So if I reveal something about myself in a song or on stage that makes me look weak or foolish, I don’t care. And it might have that benefit of somebody else saying, “Oh yeah, I feel weak and foolish in the same way.”

How do you feel about nostalgia in song, now? One of the best songs on the album is “Ocean City,” which is full of very specific memories of happy childhood trips with your family. There is also a description in the lyrics of dreaming of this time and being with dead family members, in that situation again. What’s your attitude about nostalgia for the past in general and how that filters into what you write?

Well, I think I approach nostalgia with hot tongs or something. I’m wary of succumbing to it. And so in these songs that look back, I think I always try to also provide a little skeptical touch in the song, or a step back to a higher view of the situation than just sinking into the mud of nostalgia.

Thinking about “Ocean City” … the dream life, I think, is a little bit different than just submitting to nostalgia. When you have a dream, it’s a window onto something. You can’t always figure out what, but this dream of close family members now dead and then they’re young, and you’re trying to explain to them that they’re dead — to me, that was such an odd dream. And after my dad died, I started dreaming it more. And then I found out that my wife was having a similar dream about her uncle, after I wrote that song, which was good to hear. It was good to find out also after the song that John Milton wrote a poem about his dead wife and having seen her in a dream and the misery of waking up to the reality that she was dead. And of course, since he was blind, he never had seen her in real life until he saw her in the dream. It’s an incredible poem. It’s just a really specific experience that seems to be widely shared. And examining dreams is real life and it’s present-day. It’s not a drift into the past. It’s what’s on my mind right now: What did I just wake up from?

And songs are a little like dreams, right? When we’re in a social situation, a show, and a performer starts singing a song, it is like entering a dream together, if it’s done right. So, it just occurs to me, that’s another reason to sort of enter the past-dream content and mix it into song content.

Another memory song is “Now Now Now Now Now.” But the tone is very different — it’s funny and also, not incidentally, with Peter Thomas and some other great players on there, it’s the hardest rocking song you’ve done in probably 20 years or more.

Yeah, the first verse is about being young in New York, which I was in the ‘80s. And then the second verse is about having kids, which I did in the ‘90s. Then it’s present-day and the guy’s yelling at his son that he doesn’t know anything.

But I started thinking of that song because I was thinking about Pete Thomas, the drummer (for Elvis Costello & the Attactions and Imposters), who I’d met. It’s sort of an example of how the record reflects my living in Los Angeles, because I was so excited to meet him and some other people who I knew from records and admired but never thought I’d be having a chance to play with. So when I was off writing songs, I thought about Pete’s time feel and the sound of the early Attractions records and how that was kind of interwoven into my own metabolism when I was 18 and hitting the dance clubs and arriving to work exhausted after sleeping on somebody’s couch. I was motivated into that song further by the thought of Pete playing on it, which was a nice thing to look forward to and a nice thing in the actuality. I asked him to quote “Green Shirt” in the song, with a drum lick. It’s a little hard to tell, maybe, because the lick is displaced into a different part of the bar, but it is just a simple lick that means a lot to me. I’m sure you’ll be able to find it once you’re looking for it, if you haven’t already.

Pete Thomas can’t be beat.

He’s something. And so many people have told me that since I started bragging that I’m hanging around Pete, about how much he means to them. He’s really got a heavy footprint in the world. And it’s so interesting to find out that his gig before Elvis Costello was (the folk-rock artist) John Stewart. Did you know that? I did not know that. I told him how, when I latched onto the new wave thing, and onto Elvis Castello in particular, I thought, “Oh, now I have to abandon that older stuff that I thought was cool, because it’s pointedly not cool. So I can’t listen to that other stuff anymore” — John Stewart being sort of the epitome of that other stuff. And Pete was like, “Well, that’s dumb. Like, why would you think that?” But I think a lot of people thought that. Now that you’re older, you realize you don’t have to choose one music over another.

“The 30 Year Marriage” is a song that may resonate with a lot of people in long-term relationships, whether they’ve been married for 30 years or not.  There’s both a real practicality as well as a real romanticism in the song. I love lines like “Some things we tried mapping, most things just happened,” as a way of not overromanticizing the path of life. And yet, by the end of the song, there’s an acknowledgement of having something that other people could be envious of, regardless of whether the marriage came out of any great sense of purpose.

I think the central idea of that part of the song is that it really does blur. You look back and you can’t quite tell what your decisions were that led to this or that, and you can’t quite tell what just unfolded that way, quite apart from your own agency. It’s not necessarily a happy thought, but all’s well that ends well. So if you’re able to keep a marriage together, it seems to people from the outside to be such a fantastic, happy thing, that you seem perfectly content with one another. You meet somebody at a party and it’s like you’ve given them a new lease on life to give them this information. But to be inside that information … It’s happier than unhappy. But it doesn’t vindicate the whole idea of monogamy and marriage, in my view, to have been a part of a long, successful one. And it certainly doesn’t vindicate your own virtue or good judgment. As that song says, which is true about me, it just kind of just fell into place.

And I definitely wasn’t following my frontal cortex when I first started pursuing my wife. So that’s why I presented it in the song as part of a life’s journey that isn’t just a function of personal agency and virtuous commitment. A lot of things help it to come out the way that it did. I think with me, wanting to be married and wanting kids and liking steadiness in life were big parts of the success of it, you know — and those aren’t virtues. Those are just features of my personality that I didn’t exactly design.

Even with its ambiguities, that song is going to be an anniversary favorite of a lot of people.

Well, that’s nice to hear because I’m not sure what songs to do when I go out. So your having said that will encourage me to do that song and see if it’s right. … I’ll get back to you.

You don’t do a lot of covers. So what inspired you to pull out a cover of “Ol’ Folks” here, by Dan Penn and Spooner Oldham?

Well, I would love to do nothing but covers, honestly. I would love to get away from the work of writing and just do songs that I’m very certain are great songs and that I love. Buddy Miller once said that he had to sort of dole ’em out, because there was so much that he wanted to cover, and it’s the same with me. I know that song — I had sung it once on stage with Nora O’Connor, and it just always stuck in my mind as a great song. I’m sure you were hip to it from that Dan and Spooner record a long time ago.

Nope.

That was like an inducement to cover, because I think it’s only been done that once, as far as I know, on a live record that not a lot of people have. And it seemed like the theme of the record was more and more, like, age, you know? And so, that song, it’s not a song I could have written, but it’s about 60-70% of the way to a song I could have written, so it did offer a point of view that was sympathetic to the other songs, but also different.

People may relate to it especially who are on the cusp of being the ones in the song who are advising others to give a call to the lonely old folks, and actually being the lonely old folks.

Eleanor Whitmore sang that as a duet with me and came up with some new lyrics. Those changed the whole flavor of the song and it made it more clear that, to my mind, we’re the grandparent characters on the porch now. We’re the old couple singing “Please write to us,” and it just deepened the song.

Anything to say about the players on the record? “Bluegrass Vacation” had an all-star cast of bluegrass musicians you’d wanted to work with. This new one has a different cast, of people like Pete Thomas and Jay Bellerose.

Yeah, I thought it’d be maybe a little bit of an L.A.-ish record. I think a little more than half of the people I asked to do it live in Los Angeles, so I was excited to make a record with people that I’ve met recently. We moved here (from Chicago) in 2019, and I knew almost nobody in town. So it was a little bit like being 12 again and going to a new school and having to make friends with people. And it was good for my character, I think, because I had to humble myself and make sure I was likeable so I’d get invited back to a session, with players that I wanted to be invited back with. When you get older, you get a little lazier, a little mean-spirited or curmudgeonly, probably, soSo I had to curtail that.

Meeting Pete and Jay and Paul Bryan and people like that… you’re not getting players, you’re getting a river or some kind of a natural monument or something. And it’s incredible to see this thing kind of envelop your song, and it happens without anybody saying very much. The players just know how each other’s minds work. It’s just very gratifying to be part of that, and making new friends and being part of this slightly amazing experience of being in my sixties and living in a new area and meeting new people all of a sudden.

So moving to Los Angeles has been working for you, even though it’s not working for the character in the song “Savannah is a Devilish Girl,” who is in L.A. but just wants to go home.

Yeah. The fires were a bit much, but I love it. The player thing is interesting because, in certain ways, the Nashville scene and those players are impossible to equal anywhere in the world when you’re a country player, or even adjacent to country as I am. So to appreciate the specific thing that L.A. has is interesting because there’s a lot of guys that live there that are good at making records, and they’re good at locking into the brain of somebody else, specifically the singer-songwriter that’s heading the session — how to get to that specific, sympathetic sound as quickly and easily as possible and to be easygoing and sociable at the same time, because you want to be hired for another session. And I think that’s what these Los Angeles players have in spades is that easy sociability, the fast mind and a real versatility with the tools. So it’s a little bit different than these bluegrass Olympiad legends that I had on the last record. It’s a little bit the same, a little bit different.

I think it’s my best record. I hope somebody else thinks that, and we’ll see what happens.

Fulks’ tour dates for 2025:

SEPTEMBER
5 – Grand Rapids, MI – DeVos Performance Hall^
6 – Appleton, WI – Fox Cities Performing Arts Center ^
9 – New York, NY – The Loft at City Winery
10 – Cambridge, MA – Passim
11 – Wayne, PA – 118 North
12 – State College, PA – The State Theatre
13 – Columbia, MD – The Cooper’s House of Oakland Mills
14 – Vienna, VA – Jammin’ Java
19 – Yucca Valley, CA – Mojave Gold
20 – Tehachapi, CA – Fiddler’s Crossing

OCTOBER
5 – Evanston, IL – SPACE ~
11 – Nashville, TN – CMA Theater +
14 – Buffalo, NY – Sportsmens Tavern
15 – Cleveland, OH – Music Box
16 – Pittsburgh, PA – Crafthouse Stage & Grill
17 – Lake Orion, MI – 20 Front Street
18 – Columbus, OH – Natalie’s Grandview
21 – Charlotte, NC – Neighborhood Theatre
22 – Decatur, GA – Eddie’s Attic
23 – Nashville, TN – City Winery
24 – Louisville, KY – The Monarch
25 – Newport, KY – The Southgate House Revival
26 – Chicago, IL – Old Town School of Folk Music

NOVEMBER
6 & 7 – Opelousas, LA – The Whirlybird *
8 – Houston, TX – McGonigel’s Mucky Duck
9 – Fort Worth, TX – Tulips
12 – Los Angeles, CA – Zebulon
13 – Mill Valley, CA – Sweetwater Music Hall
14 – Fort Bragg, CA – Fort Bragg Town Hall
15 – Arcata, CA – Arcata Playhouse
16 – Folsom, CA – Scarlet’s Saloon
18 – Eugene, OR – Tsunami Books
19 – Baker City, OR – Churchill School
20 – Prosser, WA – Brewminatti
21 – Portland, OR – Polaris Hall
22 – Seattle, WA – Tractor Tavern

^ Steve Martin & Martin Short, with Alison Brown and Fair Weather Friends