revenge! | Every Moment Has A Song

Robbie Fulks: Revenge! (2007)

Countercountry singer/songwriter/wiseass Robbie Fulks is an unconventional guy. And Revenge! is a typically unconventional live album.

The double-length CD package is divided into discs labeled “Standing” and “Sitting”. The first, with opening cut “We’re On the Road” setting up the premise of the live album in amusing fashion, features full electric performances from his long-serving live band, who rival Lyle Lovett’s for tight, high-energy performance and virtuosity.

The “Sitting” disc features a more stripped-down, acoustic set.

In both settings, the musicianship, both of Fulks and bandmates, is evident, as is the humor.

But the humor and the jaw-dropping guitar skills are only half the story: it happens that when it comes to songcraft there are few better, as many previous posts on this blog have shown.

If you learned Robbie Fulks grew up with a guitar-playing dad and an autoharp-playing mum it’d make sense. It’s just a bonus to hear he had an Aunt Mildred who played violin and an Aunt Stella who played banjo. I mean, really?

Young Robbie clearly absorbed plenty.

Fulks has backed Steve Martin on tour and on the Tonight Show. He’s recorded with Tim O’Brian. His bluegrass credentials are undeniable.

But he’s never felt constrained by genre. “Let’s Kill Saturday Night” is more Steve Earle than Bill Monroe. “That Bangle Girl” is hardly a banjo and mandolin workout. Fulks released an album of Michael Jackson/Jackson Five covers in 2010 that’s more pop and R&B than country and bluegrass.

2025’s Now and Then, which Fulks has described as “post-stylistic”, owes little to bluegrass or even traditional country.

And “Fountains of Wayne Hotline” shows his chops in the realm of parody, nailing the sound (and the formula) of that band brilliantly, not to mention being one of the funniest things I’ve ever heard, frankly.

If you like your music neatly categorized and you prefer artists to stay tightly locked in musical boxes, Robbie Fulks may confound you.

But if his mood-swinging, bi-polar, genre-hopping musical excursions keep fans on their toes, his consistently fine writing makes him an artist always worthy of attention.

But hey–enough of my yackin’. What do you say? Let’s Boogie!

Listen to: “We’re On the Road”