A Conversation with Robbie Fulks (continued)

PM: On top of your being an incredible songwriter, what really made me sure that I wanted to do this interview was your prose. I was so impressed--moved, really--by that amazing bio you wrote on Buddy Miller.

RF: Oh, yeah, thanks a lot.

PM: Because as a webzine editor, I mean, I'm seeing bios all the time, and from all levels of the business. And I was in the middle of that one thinking, "Damn, this is the best bio I ever read. Who wrote this?" And I get to the bottom and thought, "Wow, another artist wrote it. Look at that."

RF: I think people who make music should write more about it. And maybe you agree with that notion--

PM: I do, indeed.

RF: I think it makes a big difference being inside it. It's got the inherent problem of using one art form to spread information about another art form. But then with music, it's just so open to nonsensical claims, unverifiable assertions, and so forth. And then when you get somebody who has never really done it and doesn't have any musical knowledge, what results is basically the rewriting of press kits.

PM: Right.

RF: You can do compelling sentences that suck people in and zippy writing and the rest of it, but I think the accuracy problem is just really deep in music writing.

PM: Yeah, and I think people read through it. I mean, we don't have anyone writing for Puremusic that isn't a really good songwriter or a really good musician. Otherwise, it just seems like, "Well, what are you talking about? You don't understand the subject."

RF: I need to check out this webzine, obviously.

PM: On the cover this month, it's Al Anderson, Buddy Miller, and Lori McKenna.

RF: I'll definitely check that out. Who's Lori McKenna?

PM: She is a great folk artist out of the Boston area who signed a publishing deal with Melanie Howard, who got her a handful of huge cuts.

RF: Wow. I want to go to that publishing house.

[laughter]

PM: She's a mother of five. Her husband is a plumber.

RF: That's who ought to be writing country music, plumber's wives. Terrific.

PM: But I digress. So that bio you wrote on Buddy, like I said, really knocked me out. And then I read another one that you wrote, and couldn't remember later who it was. Have you been doing much of that bio-type writing?

RF: Well, a couple of friends have called me, nobody that I don't know pretty well. But I did Buddy's and Danny Barnes' and Chris Scruggs'. I did those three this year.

PM: Wow. It might have been the Danny Barnes one that I read, because I'm such a fan of his.

RF: Yeah, maybe so. He likes big words and big ideas, and so that was a little bit more idea-centered than some of them that I've written. But I think basically my approach has been the same, just to listen as a fan and try to figure out what makes the music really come together for me, and then express it.

PM: When I was interviewing Buddy, I ran four or five of the twenty-five-cent words you used in his bio by him. And he was just laughing, and he said, "Yeah, he used a lot of words I didn't understand, but I think we knew what he was talking about."

[laughter]

RF: Fantastic.

PM: Oh, he's so funny. So is the bio thing, do you just do it for buddies, or is it like mastering is for Buddy, becoming kind of a decent little sideline?

RF: Well, I'll tell you, if I got a call a month, it would be a decent sideline. But so far it's just kind of picking up the phone, and if it's somebody's music I really dig, then I say yes to it in a heartbeat. It's not tons of money or anything. But I think it's good for me, because I can really sit and listen and think about what makes something good--and it's actually so hard to figure out.

I mean, you look on an Amazon.com page of musical recommendations, "If you like this one, you'll like this." If you were to bring up Buddy Miller on this page, and then look at the other names, I think you would see five names that all had a lot of surface qualities in common, and people that get written up in the same magazines as Buddy. But to me, none of that would exist really in the same category, just because I think people who play music think a lot more in terms of levels of quality. There's good music, and there's bad music, and there's in between music. But the superficial stylistic things, I think those are really overrated.

PM: Yeah, and the sense of history the people incorporate and the depth that they're bringing to the table, these are the things that really tie artists together, not who they, as you say, seem to resemble on the surface.

RF: I think so. And it's really hard to get at that quality of musicality, and figure out why one thing is musical and another one isn't. I mean, there are obviously a lot of technical reasons why Buddy Miller hits the notes right and makes good sounds come out of instruments and microphones. But beyond that, there's just something else. I think it's having something to express, in the first place, so that you're not just making records for the musicians to listen to, and making cool sounds, as in a Jon Brion record, or something. There's an example of a guy who really, really knows what he's doing, but when it comes to his own records, you don't get the sense that there's anything in particular that he's just dying to express. Whereas in Buddy's case, I think there's something really important that he's expressing in his records.

PM: Absolutely, no question about it.

RF: He's making records that nobody else would be making, I think.

PM: Yeah. And--part of being Buddy Miller is being married to Julie, right?

RF: Yeah, right.   continue

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