In 1993, a songwriter banging around the Chicago club scene with a twangy voice and dangerous sense of humor caught our attention. We started making records with him, and as part of the first-generation Bloodshot roster, Robbie Fulks helped us define “Alternative Country.” In 2013, after two decades of playing music everywhere from the taverns of southern Illinois to the honky-tonks of northern Norway, from Austin City Limits’s soundstage to the historic Grand Ole Opry, he reunited with us for the highly acclaimed Gone Away Backward. Upland Stories continues and — with sprinklings of pedal steel, drums, electric guitar, and keyboards — expands the sound of that acoustic set. Fulks’s richly emotional storytelling is illuminated by his instrumental prowess and emotional voice. At 53, he is philosophically reflective, writing “with clear eyes and a full heart” (Ken Tucker, NPR). Don’t get us wrong, his wit is still as quick as his picking; but it’s reflected through the lens of fatherhood, marriage, middle age, and the literary voices he is drawn to and draws from: Flannery O’Connor, Anton Chekhov, Mary Lavin, Frank O’Connor, Javier Marias, James Agee. Three new songs—“Alabama at Night,” “America Is A Hard Religion,” and “A Miracle” — are meditations inspired by Agee’s 1936 trip to Alabama, the sojourn that fueled his furious polemic on American poverty, Let Us Now Praise Famous Men. Coming of age in the 1960s and 1970s in Virginia and North Carolina, at the edge of the broad “upland” region referenced in the record’s title, also provided depth and detail for Fulks’s songs about the mysteries of memory, the vanishing of cherished things, and the struggles of everyday life. Robbie tries to make songs that offer more than verse-chorus-hook: songs that have space, calmness, unresolved tensions, and the hallmarks of lived experience. This sort of complexity is displayed in “Fare Thee Well, Carolina Gals,” an intimate folk song from the perspective of a man who has let life’s possibilities pass him by, and in “Never Come Home,” in which a sick man returns to spend his last days among an unwelcoming clan of pious, hard-bitten East Tennesseans. Accompanying him is an incredible cast. Todd Phillips emerged in the 1970s as bassist in David Grisman’s and Tony Rice’s classic lineups. Frequent Bill Frisell collaborator Jenny Scheinman played violin, as did Shad Cobb (Osborne Brothers, Steve Earle, Willie Nelson). The two Chicagoans on the record are Flatlanders guitarist Robbie Gjersoe and trad-jazz drummer Alex Hall. The multi-faceted utility string wizard Fats Kaplin (Jack White) and legendary avant-gardist Wayne Horvitz (Naked City, Paul Taylor, Zony Mash) complete the extraordinary ensemble. Steve Albini, who began working with Robbie on Halloween night 1986, recorded the group’s live singing and playing on old German mics using a non-automated Neotek board, creating, as he always does, a provocatively unvarnished and analogically resonant stereo image. Twenty years ago, Robbie’s exuberance for old-school country made a lot of noise. Today, his storytelling through folk and bluegrass music on Upland Stories delivers the quieter, sometimes unsettling truths of humanity. “Some people get where they hope to in this world. Most of us don’t.” – James Agee

Starting out in the strawberry fields of central Florida, with a short stint living in a zoo in Birmingham, Alabama, Janet went on to join her first band in 1982 in Louisville Kentucky. Allowed to play only the tambourine she revolted till she was kicked out 4 months later. So she packed her bags and headed to Chicago where she's been ever since releasing over 25 albums with her bands Eleventh Dream Day and Freakwater on which she plays more than the tamborine.

Steve Dawson is one of the Chicago music scene’s bona fide stars, and, says the St. Louis Riverfront Times’ Roy Kasten, “one of the most underrated songwriters in American music.” Dawson and his wife Diane Christiansen have led local heroes Dolly Varden for over twenty years, and he leads jazz-folk ensemble Funeral Bonsai Wedding as well. In these bands as well as on his solo albums and with Rachel Drew and the Bitter Roots, Dawson combines musicality, craftsmanship, and raw soul in a way that continues to rivet his audiences. Steve teaches guitar and songwriting at the Old Town School of Folk Music, where his skill and generosity have birthed dozens of gifted writers. His most recent accomplishment is a book on songwriting, Take It to the Bridge: Unlocking the Great Songs Inside You, written with Mark Caro and published by GIA.

Josh Caterer is best known as the lead singer of legendary Chicago punk band Smoking Popes. In 2021, he released a pair of lockdown-inspired solo albums, “The Hideout Sessions” and “The SPACE Sessions.” Hailed by fans and critics alike, the Chicago Reader said, “One of the distinctive characteristics of Caterer’s sound has always been the contrast between his choirboy vocals and the crunch of his band, and the allure of that approach has never been stronger.”

Singer-songwriter Naomi Ashley’s songs are intimate, plain-spoken and gorgeously sung, surging with all the contradictory impulses of real, imperfect life. Her 2024 album, “Love Bug” greedily grabs from every corner of Americana – grounding the charm of Naomi’s versatile lyrical style in country, blues, folk and rock. She is a woman of many bands fronting two bands of original music as well as Chicago’s popular Pretenders tribute Real Pretenders. In September of 2025 Naomi & her “Other Band” will release a series of singles recorded live at Reliable Recorders in Chicago.