Robbie Fulks with Jon Langford (Mekons)

Calling all Americana music fans in New Orleans and beyond!

Join us Wednesday, November 5 @ 7 p.m. at Marigny Studios for a special evening with Americana pioneer, 2X Grammy nominee, and Compass Records recording artist Robbie Fulks in a rare New Orleans performance!

Rounding out the evening is a special set by Jon Langford!

This intimate evening takes place at Marigny Studios, located in the heart of New Orleans' Faubourg Marigny District and home to countless recording sessions by artists like the Afghan Whigs, Galactic, Preservation Hall Jazz Band, Cha Wa, St Vincent, My Morning Jacket, among many others.

A full bar is available. Because this is a listening room show, advanced tickets are strongly recommended. Doors open at 6:30 p.m.

About ROBBIE FULKS:

“To say that Robbie Fulks has been one of the best singer-songwriters in American roots music over the last quarter-century would be correct, and maybe a little reductive, too; he’s one of the best writers in America, period.” —VARIETY

Robbie Fulks has always been more than a conventional singer and songwriter. Over the past three decades, his instrumental virtuosity and powerful songwriting have gained him recognition as a pioneer of today’s Americana movement. Along with his still-evolving solo body of work, Fulks’s adventurous career has seen collaborations with illustrious names like Lucinda Williams, bluegrass pioneers Sam Bush, Jerry Douglas, Alison Brown, and Sierra Hull, singer Kelly Willis, NRBQ’s Al Anderson, steel guitarist Lloyd Green, rockabilly legend Linda Gail Lewis, and punk rock revolutionaries The Mekons, while fellow artists such as Sam Bush, Andrew Bird, John Cowan, The Old 97’s, and Hiss Golden Messenger have covered his songs. Fulks has performed on stages around the world, from the Grand Ole Opry to the All Tomorrow’s Parties festival in the UK.

His TV appearances include Late Night with Conan O’Brien and Jimmy Kimmel Live!, where he joined with Alison Brown and Tim O’Brien to back the great Steve Martin. Shortly after, he took the spotlight to sing during Steve’s set at Los Angeles’s famed Hollywood Bowl as part of Rhiannon Giddens’ “American Tunes,” an all-star celebration of American roots music.

Now Then, his latest album released Sept. 5, is the follow-up to his 2023 critically lauded Compass Records debut, Bluegrass Vacation.

About JON LANGFORD:

There's a jolly absurdity in that one of the most important figures on the independent Americana scene and one of the most prolific figures in Chicago's musical community is a guy from Wales who helped found an enduring U.K. punk outfit. But since the mid-'80s, Jon Langford has been a key figure in the nexus between country and punk rock, as well as a vital collaborator with a wealth of musicians from around the world. Langford's career began in 1976 when he founded the chaotic leftist punk band , and he would continue to record with them for the next four decades, while they detoured into folk (The Mekons Story), electronic music (F.U.N. 90), country rock (Fear & Whiskey), and any number of other styles. In the '80s, he was also part of the guitar-and-drum machine combo , and after relocating to the United States in the '90s, he formed the celebrated alt-country band (best heard on 1997's Cowboy in Flames). From 2000 onward, the prolific Langford recorded with a variety of projects, from the covers-friendly and the R&B-influenced Four Lost Souls to the acoustic/electronic combo Jon Langford & the Bright Shiners. He also established a reputation as a respected visual artist.

Jon Langford was born in Newport, Wales on October 11, 1957. From an early age, he had an artistic bent and an interest in politics, and when he relocated to Leeds, England to study art at the University of Leeds, he fell in with a group of fellow students who had been emboldened by the burgeoning punk/new wave scene. With Tom Greenhalgh, Langford co-founded the band ; Langford was originally the group's drummer, but as various members dropped out and were replaced, he moved to guitar and became one of the group's vocalists and songwriters. Originally a purposefully sloppy punk band fascinated with the politics of daily life, began to expand creatively by the time they released their debut album in 1979, The Quality of Mercy Is Not Strnen, exploring folk and electronic sounds before they went on hiatus in 1982. Langford soon formed a new combo, the guitar-and-drum machine provocateurs , who released seven albums and co-existed with after they returned to duty in 1985, having become involved in the movement to support striking miners in the U.K. Langford's passion for classic country music had caught on with the new lineup, and their next three albums -- Fear and Whiskey (1985), The Edge of the World (1986), and Mekons Honky Tonkin' (1987) -- would fuse raucous roadhouse country with angular rock music and clever, booze-soaked political observations. During this period, developed a cult following in the United States, leading to a short-lived alliance with , and the band's own Sin Records label was bankrolled by a fan in Chicago; not surprisingly, several members of the band relocated to the United States, and in the early '90s, Langford settled in the Windy City.

In 1993, after deals with and a .' alternative subsidiary crashed and burned, struck a deal with , a side label of the venerable Chicago indie imprint , and had a stable stateside label at last, releasing 1993's I (Heart) Mekons as well as a variety of new projects and reissues. The following year, Langford would team up with another Chicago indie, , which specialized in what was called "Insurgent Country." Langford contributed two songs to 's debut release, the 1994 compilation Insurgent Country, Vol. 1: For a Life of Sin, and his latest side project, , cut their debut album, To the Last Dead Cowboy, for the label in 1995. Langford quipped that he'd formed so he and his friends (mostly U.K. expatriates) would have a band that could play for beer in their hometown, but , fusing rowdy rock and high-kicking country with blue-collar leftist lyrics, soon became one of Langford's most popular projects, a potent live draw that racked up respectable sales for albums such as Cowboy in Flames (1997) and Electric Waco Chair (2000).

In 1995, Langford released his first solo album, a collection of covers titled Misery Loves Company, credited to (Langford had previously helped coordinate the 1988 LP 'Til Things Are Brighter: A Tribute to Johnny Cash). Langford would revive the handle for a series of records in which he and a floating crew of players would collaborate with other musicians or pay homage to artists they admired, as on 1998's The Pine Valley Cosmonauts Salute the Majesty of Bob Wills, 2000's Beneath the Country Underdog (with ), and 2013's Stranger in My Land (with , a celebrated Australian Aboriginal country singer). Langford also performed and recorded with Katrin Bornfeld (aka Kat Ex) of the experimental rock band , in a duo called . In 1998, he released the album Skull Orchard, which would lend its name to another loose ensemble that would help him cut 2010's Old Devils. Langford continued to work regularly with , releasing a trio of experimental efforts in the 2010s, Ancient & Modern, Jura, and Existentialism. He took another creative detour in 2017 with the release of Four Lost Souls, an homage to vintage Southern soul and R&B recorded during a busman's holiday in Muscle Shoals, Alabama. Though Langford continued to make music with the (Deserted in 2019) and (Resist, a collection of politically oriented numbers, in 2020 and the studio LP The Men That God Forgot, in 2023), he launched yet another project with Jon Langford & the Bright Shiners. Featuring Tamineh Gueramy on violin, Alice Spencer on keyboards, and John Szymanski on guitar, bass, and loops, the Bright Shiners issued their debut album, Where It Really Starts, in March 2024. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi