Rediscovery Polished New, Robert Lester Folsom Brought Shine To Kansas City
Photographer: Jackie Tanner
RecordBar in Kansas City was in for a treat. Robert Lester Folsom brought nostalgia with a gleaming shine along with fresh tunes. The audience became just as much as a participating member of the band than a witness to the magic.
Robert Lester Folsom
.𖥔 ݁ ˖
Robert Lester Folsom .𖥔 ݁ ˖
On May 25, Robert Lester Folsom brought his soft psychedelic bluegrass sounds to Kansas City for an evening at recordBar performing tracks full of cathartic nostalgia and powerful messages about the power of honoring your dreams. Folsom is currently on tour to promote his most recent selection of archived tracks, If You Wanna Laugh, You Gotta Cry Sometimes: Archives Vol. 3 (1972–1975). The title of this album could not fit Folsom’s discography more. He has a song for nearly every emotion with lyrics that are so deeply relatable and impossible not to connect your own experiences with.
For his performance in Kansas City, Folsom was backed by an accomplished band featuring Kevin Peacon on electric guitar and background vocals, Brooke Garwood on vocals, glockenspiel, and chimes, Jeremy Blanton on bass and background vocals, Jeremy Prince on keys, saxophone, flute, and background vocals, and Landon Gay on pedal steel.
“What Are You Thinking Of” carried a similar sense of wistfulness from Folsom’s acoustic riff and Prince’s work on keys. The performance that stood out to me most from If You Wanna Laugh, You Gotta Cry Sometimes was “One More Song,” a bittersweet song about yearning for someone after the end of a relationship. The song had a much more optimistic and hopeful energy live due to Folsom and Garwood’s harmonies paired with Gay’s pedal steel licks.
Later in the evening before performing “Music and Dreams,” Folsom paused to speak directly to the crowd. He encouraged audience members to follow their dreams no matter what form they take saying, “Whether it’s reading, writing, or arithmetic, anything, do it. Don’t do anything else. Love everybody, love yourself. If you honor your dream, your dream will honor you one day. It did for me.” The speech resonated deeply with the crowd especially considering Folsom’s own story.
Gay also opened the show with an acoustic set under the name ‘Howdy.’ Some highlights from Howdy’s set include “Golden,” “Cowboy Dream,” and “Stay in LA.” One of the many notable aspects of the musician’s performances was their lack of a drummer for this show. Their performances never felt empty or lacking. I honestly believe the audience never seemed to notice the lack of drums because the energy in the room remained extremely engaging. The audience even had a hand, or two, in the performance as a part of the percussion section by clapping along to the beat of particularly groovy tracks.
Folsom’s set drew heavily from his archival releases as well as his 1976 album Music and Dreams. One of the first songs he played from If You Wanna Laugh, You Gotta Cry Sometimes was “I Don’t Know.” “I Don’t Know” featured Garwood playing glockenspiel, further adding to the wistful whimsy of Folsom’s tune.
After releasing Music and Dreams independently in 1976 with not much widespread commercial success, he spent 40 years painting houses and raising a family. Then in the 2010s when reissues and the first archive record Ode to a Rainy Day, his music began to be rediscovered by younger listeners slowly gaining more and more traction for Folsom over the last decade.
However the emotional peak of the night came during “See You Later, I’m Gone,” the song that really reintroduced Folsom to a new generation of listeners. Just about the whole venue was singing along word for word with several audience members shedding tears to the melancholic melodies. Folsom ended the night with “Blues Stay Away,” throughout the entirety of the song the crowd clapped together on tempo keeping the energy high. After an evening filled with such reflective lyrics and storytelling, ending on such an upbeat felt fitting.
You can find Robert Lester Folsom on tour with his band starting in August with dates across the United States. Be sure to grab tickets and witness the magic for yourself. You won’t want to miss it!
Article by: Jackie Tanner
Plug In. Tune Out.
Robert Lester Folsom is an American singer-songwriter and guitarist from Georgia. He is best known for the independently released album Music and Dreams (recorded 1976), later reissued by Mexican Summer in 2010, which brought renewed attention to his 1970s recordings.