Robbie Fulks is a singer, recording artist, instrumentalist, composer, and songwriter. His 2017 release, Upland Stories, earned year’s-best recognition from NPR and Rolling Stone among many others, as well as two Grammy nominations, for folk album and American roots song (“Alabama At Night”). Robbie recently released his album Bluegrass Vacation, a joyful, boundary-pushing collection of great variously-bluegrass-styled tracks, all very much in the tradition of his always joyful, boundary-pushing compositions.

Robbie was born in York, Pennsylvania, and grew up in a half-dozen small towns in southeast Pennsylvania, the North Carolina Piedmont, and the Blue Ridge area of Virginia. In 1983 he moved to Chicago and joined Greg Cahill’s Special Consensus Bluegrass Band. He taught music at Old Town School of Folk Music from 1984 to 1996, and worked as a staff songwriter on Music Row in Nashville from 1993 to 1998. His early solo work -- Country Love Songs (1996) and South Mouth (1997) -- helped define the "alternative country" movement of the 1990s. His music from the last several years hews mainly to acoustic instrumentation; it returns him in part to his earlier bluegrass days, and extends the boundaries of that tradition with old-time rambles and sparely orchestrated reflections on love, the slings of time, and the troubles of common people.

Robbie’s writing on music and life have appeared in GQ, Blender, the Chicago Reader, DaCapo Press’s Best Music Writing anthologies for 2001 and 2004,  Amplified: Fiction from Leading Alt-Country, Indie Rock, Blues and Folk Musicians, and A Guitar and A Pen: Stories by Country Music’s Greatest Songwriters. As an instrumentalist, he has accompanied the Irish fiddle master Liz Carroll, the distinguished jazz violinist Jenny Scheinman, and the New Orleans pianist Dr. John. As a producer his credits include Touch My Heart: A Tribute to Johnny Paycheck and Big Thinkin’ by Dallas Wayne. He tours yearlong with various configurations.