Q/A with Robbie Fulks

The exclusive interview with Bloodshot recording artist Robbie Fulks continues. If you missed last week's installment, check it out first.

You were briefly with Geffen Records, between South Mouth and The Very Best of Robbie Fulks...

It seemed an eternity.

I've read some very positive things you had to say about being with them, about their not leaning on you a lot and leaving you free to make a different kind of record without a lot of pressure.

Mostly true.

But there was a definite break from Country Love Songs and South Mouth to Let's Kill Saturday Night. Was that a conscious decision because you had moved to a big label, or was that something that came naturally in your evolution as a songwriter?

I wanted to do it for a long time. About half of that record was old songs from before Bloodshot Records, that I had written for that songwriter band that I mentioned back in 1995 and that was before the Bloodshot Records deal. And moving from Bloodshot to another label, when I was sending stuff out to different labels, talking to the labels about what kind of record I would make for my third record, I told them all the same thing. I said I've got a lot of different kinds of stuff I do, I don't want to stay in this Bloodshot category of doing 40's and 50's country songs with 90's lyrics. Its time to do something else with the third record, and Geffen was the most open to that, to let me do rock songs elbow-to-elbow with folk and country stuff. They seemed the most broad-minded about that.

You raise the issue of staying in that Bloodshot category, and you strike me as trying consciously to avoid letting anybody pigeonhole you as just country, or just bluegrass, or just rockabilly.

I consider myself a songwriter, a performer. People are always saying they don't want to be pigeonholed, that's pretty cliche by now. But I think anybody that considers themself a good songwriter doesn't want to write the same song over and over again, and that's definitely true of me.

With the music industry the way it is right now, do you think there's a trade-off you make when you do that, that you become much more difficult to market and then you're left out on your own?

Definitely. It's confusing, for labels, artists, everybody.

I want to ask you if you think it's because the labels are pinheads, but I'll put it more gently. Do you think it's because the labels can't figure out what you're doing, or is it because audiences have a hard time finding their way to you?

I read Graham Parker say the other day that labels are no stupider than their audiences, and that's probably true. If there was a way to make a million dollars with my kind of music, I don't think labels would be turning me away. I think they're smart enough to know how to make a lot of money.

Let's move to The Very Best of Robbie Fulks because I think in a lot of ways it's your most interesting album so far, and interesting in a lot of ways. In one sense it feels very much like a return to--and obviously you're back with Bloodshot anyway--but it feels like youve gone back to South Mouth and Country Love Songs. Was that something you wanted to do, something you did for Bloodshot, or is it because it's stuff you've had lying around for a while anyway?

It's mostly older stuff. It's got four or five songs from 1999, and nine or ten from a long time ago. I wasn't thinking about the stylistic thing that much when I put it together. I didn't put it together for Bloodshot, I was going to release it by myself so I didn't have any stylistic boundaries. But in putting it out, it did occur to me that it would be nice to bring back into the fold some of the people that were pissed off by Let's Kill Saturday Night because it's pretty important to me not to lose listeners, I have a pretty small audience as it is. So this will bring a couple of people back into the fold and I don't think it will lose anybody who came to me because of the third record.

The first one of your songs I heard played on the radio was "Let's Kill Saturday Night," so Geffen must have given you a little push for airplay. Do you think you picked up a lot of people through your association with Geffen, or that you pissed off even more people?

Each of my records has sold a little bit more than the last one. So as far as the Geffen record selling a little bit more than the Bloodshot record that preceded it, that says to me that they hardly worked it at all. To me, it's been just a natural progression and, as I say, going out and playing every night. The label got a couple of things together. They got me a "Fresh Air" interview and a couple of other public radio-style things, but no real radio promotion to speak of, no single, no big booking agent promotional pairing-up with Smashmouth or anything like that.

There are a few songs on that album, it seems to me, that they could have picked up and run with. Obviously they tried with "Let's Kill Saturday Night," but something like "Take Me to the Paradise" or "She Must Think That I Like Poetry"--it seems to me they could've done more.

They didn't work "Let's Kill Saturday Night" either. It was in a pile of stuff they sent to radio stations. You know, when you're working radio you beat them with guns and stuff. You don't send them piles of stuff and not say anything about it. So they didn't really work anything, but I agree with you. I think I provided enough fodder for them that they could've gone three or four singles deep on that record, including "Paradise."

What is the process of songwriting for you? Do you start with the words? Do you start with the music? Does it just come to you either way?

I try to start from different places. I think it's bad to get into a pattern for songwriting. If there is a pattern that's effective for writing a good song, I haven't found it yet. Sometimes it's a lyrical hook, sometimes it's a melodic hook, sometimes it's a group of chords, sometimes it's an emotion, a story, or a circumstance, or a mood. So I try to keep it various, the point of entry into a song.

Do you approach writing as an eight-hour-a-day job, or do you write as things come to you?

I approach it as work, and my most effective work habit is to go really intense for a couple hours and then do something else for a couple hours and keep coming back. That helps me keep perspective. The perspective thing is the most important thing for me to master when I'm writing a song. You can get really focused on something and take it to the point where nobody else can understand what the hell you're talking about, and you're thinking all along that it's really meaningful, that it's right and exactly what you want to say, and you come back to it the next day to find out its garbage.

"Roots Rock Weirdos."

[Laughs]

Does this come from the experience of playing to crowds that have some fairly well-defined expectations?

Yeah.

That goes back to pigeonholing, and I don't want to cover that ground again so I guess we'll move on. I'm also kind of struck by "White Man's Bourbon."

Thanks.

That song has got one of the naughtiest grooves...

My electric guitar solo? [sings naughty guitar groove]

That's the one. That is pure sex.

[Laughs]

I'm really interested in the liner note that goes with it. You cast a broad net over the history of music to put it into a context. Was that something people were really offended by?

Yeah. I played it live maybe five times, whenever I wrote it, four or five years ago. Very chilly responses. People don't really go for that.

That's so close to being offensive, but I don't think it gets there.

Well, I appreciate it, but some have disagreed.

You've played "Dancing Queen" a couple of times live. You seem to start off playing it for a laugh, but you also give the feeling that you really have an appreciation for it as a song.

As the song goes on, you mean?

Yeah.

I don't know, there's sort of a lot of songs that I feel both ways about. They're funny but there's something cool about them too. I guess I don't take pop music as seriously as I take some other subjects, because I think a song can be kind of dumb and still kind of wonderful, and that's how I feel about that ABBA song. The reason I started doing it is because I did an interview on "Fresh Air" where the host asked me to sing a song that was considered by most people to be square but had some redeeming value, and so I thought of that. A lot of people heard the show and started requesting it, so we started doing it because it's always requested. So doing it spontaneously in the first place was just trying to appreciate a song that's beautiful in a dumb way, and from then on has been trying to meet the popular demand.

The hidden track on The Very Best of Robbie Fulks, the John Denver song, is that in a similar vein?

I did that because I was asked to do it for a John Denver tribute album and I got the impression that it was never going to come out so I put it on my own record.

Do you have a similar appreciation for that?

No, I'm not a John Denver fan at all. I was just asked to do it. In fact, speaking of that song, a lot of people have complimented me on doing a pretty version of it and I've got to tell you, I thought it was really funny. There's nothing serious invested in that song whatsoever.

It has a kind of haunting and almost disturbing quality.

People have said that and that was totally unintended. I don't mean to detract from anybody's reaction, but I intended it as a joke.

Bush or McCain?

Hasn't McCain dropped out?

Yeah, but I'm wondering if you had any strong feelings.

What makes you think I'm a Republican?

I've done some reading.

I couldn't vote for Bush in a million years. I don't think intelligence should be decisive when you're choosing a president, but in Bush's case I'll make an exception. I just think he's embarrassingly vacuous. I think I will not vote in the next election. I would vote for Gore over Bush because I don't think there's a dime's worth of difference between them.

Having written a song like "God Isnt Real," do you have any thoughts on the place religion has taken in the presidential race?

I'm a fairly modern person in my distaste for mixing religion and politics, a modern, cosmopolitan person, and as much as Alan Keyes is a smart guy and an exciting speaker I'm not into the preaching and political thing, whether it's Keyes on the right or Jesse Jackson on the left. I guess that's because I'm an irreligious person partly, but it's also because that kind of messianic political pandering bugs me a lot.

Finally, do you have any favorites among the songs you've written, something that we can listen to and say this is something Robbie Fulks takes a lot of pride in, says something about the kinds of songs he wants to write?

It depends on the time I recorded it because I'm getting better at this all the time. At the time I recorded "Tears Only Run One Way," I listened to it in the car going home from the studio the next day. I was almost in tears, I was so happy with the way the guys played it and the way it came off. I'd never recorded anything on that level before. And while I think I could do it better now, knowing more about how to record and all that stuff, I would never record that again because that's so precious to me, having done that, having that moment happen. About half of the stuff on Saturday Night, I was 100% happy with the way it came out: "Bethelridge," "She Must Think That I Like Poetry," the little mandolin piece, "You Shouldn't Have." I don't think I can really top those songs.