Thursday To-Do: Robbie Fulks
"Cigarette State"
ROBBIE FULKS
8 p.m., Sticky Fingerz. $10-$12.
The words the music press (me, regretfully, included) uses to describe nontradtitional country music get silly pretty quickly. Alt-country, Americana, no depression, y'allternative. But when you're talking about singer/songwriter Robbie Fulks, one of those usually meaningless synonyms sounds about right: insurgent country. Born in Raleigh, N.C., and raised there and in Virginia and Pennsylvania, Fulks launched his musical career in Chicago in the mid-'90s on Bloodshot Records with a cheeky ode to his birthplace, “Cigarette State,” and a tribute to a silver-screen flameout, “She Took a Lot of Pills (And Died).” The humor and irreverence in those songs predicted the rich career that's followed. Fulks has always been at odds with contemporary country music — sometimes reaching back to the countrypolitan days of the likes of Bill Anderson, sometimes mixing the genre with a hearty dose of R&B or pop and sometimes going at Nashville head-on, like with his famously acerbic “Fuck This Town.” Fulks comes to Sticky Fingerz solo, armed with a guitar and six albums worth of material. Anything could happen.
