Music Sessions from Studio C: Robbie Fulks

Like honest-to-goodness country music? The kind that would make your Southern cousins' pride swell and bring tears to your grandfather's eyes? Check out this Download.com Music Session with Chicago singer-songwriter Robbie Fulks, who talks about his music and plays three acoustic songs live in our studios, including a Johnny Paycheck cover and the title track from his 2005 album Georgia Hard. It doesn't get any countrier than this.

The Download.com Music Sessions is a series of exclusive Podcasts with a wide range of artists. Each session features a combination of live songs and interviews with Download.com Music staffmembers. Check back regularly for updates.

"Eighty years ago, when country music was first recorded, it was rude, funny, soulful and political… and not chest-thumping, far-right political, either. Georgia Hard takes us back to those forgotten values, and reintroduces us to the literacy and warped humor of songwriters like Shel Silverstein, Bob McDill and Roger Miller. "It had been six or seven years since I'd written a set of country songs for a record of my own, and in those years I was enjoying and understanding '70s country a lot more," he says. "I can't write about pop stars and cars anymore without being a hypocrite." The result is an album composed of Fulks's empathetically observed cameos of life as it is lived throughout this country. Really lived. But don't get the impression that Robbie Fulks has lost his biting sense of humor. "Countrier than Thou" will dispel that!"
-COLIN ESCOTT