Interview: Robbie Fulks

The A.V. Club, Madison print edition, May 31, 2007

Click image for full-size print version; an extended version ran online.

Throw Out Those Catalogues

The A.V. Club, Madison print edition, Dec. 21 2006

By now it’s too late to order Christmas gifts from your major mail-order and Internet food vendors and get them shipped on time. The A.V. Club explains, item by item, why you’re better off doing your last-minute shopping here in Madison.

Twelve Coffees of Christmas ($39.95)
Tired of coffee that just tastes like coffee? How about coffees that have been forced to taste like twelve other things, including egg nog, gingerbread, candy cane, and chocolate cherry?
Where To Get It: Harryanddavid.com
Turnoff: By now it’s just too late to enjoy this along the proper timeline. Christmas is ruined! Also, flavored coffees are often disgusting. Maybe these ones aren’t, but you just never know until they’ve already got your money.
Local Alternative: Harry and David’s gift pack offers only about a pound of coffee for a price that could buy you three or four from any number of places around town. If you must have theme with that, Ancora Coffee Roasters’ (various locations, see ancora-coffee.com) Holiday Blend combines Rwandan and Kona coffees, with none of that flavoring nonsense.

Moose Munch Basket ($49.95)
Harry and David has slapped the name “Moose Munch” all over many of its products, including its caramel popcorn, popcorn balls, coffee, and more. The name is supposed to be endearing, but it really sounds like the stuff should come in a feedbag.
Where To Get It: Harryanddavid.com
Turnoff: While moose are majestic creatures, watching them eat is not appetizing.
Local Alternative: Clary’s Gourmet Popcorn (105 State St., 255-2994) is selling its usual popcorn treats with some moderate, non-appetite-disrupting themes (red-and-green popcorn, etc.). If you still crave some moose in your life, Clary’s has tins decorated with the critters.

Any Smithfield Ham (Various prices)
For generations, the ham purveyors of Smithfield, Virginia, have ham-ified the holidays, heaping up all the hulking ham you can stand to cram into your ham-hole. Ham!
Where To Get It: Smithfieldhams.com
Turnoff: Smithfield’s hams look huge, threatening, and often grotesque in the catalogue photos. If you dropped one of them into Starship Troopers, it’d get shot to bits in no time flat.
Local Alternative: The beast in you may awaken from a ham-induced coma for the much-classier bison and ostrich roast options at Artamos Specialty Meats & Deli (714 S. Whitney Way, 442-5929).

Peppermint Martini Tray ($99.95)
Not only does it come with peppermint martini mix, it also includes a “snowflake-themed bar towel,” peppermint truffles, peppermint bark, and a serving tray.
Where To Get It: Harryanddavid.com
Turnoff: Who wants to sip on a peppermint martini after taking the brats to get peppermint ice cream, adjusting the giant plastic candy canes in the front yard, and throwing away friends’ joke gifts of peppermint condoms? (Editor’s Note: The A.V. Club made up peppermint condoms on a whim, only to do an Internet search and find that peppermint condoms do indeed exist.)
Local Alternative: Go to any of Madison’s respectable local bars. Order a martini. Observe the simple flavors that have made the martini a worldwide favorite for decades. Notice how none of them are peppermint. — Scott Gordon

Craig Minowa of Cloud Cult

(A.V. Club, Madison print edition, Nov. 9, 2006)

Minnesota’s Cloud Cult can lurch from childlike to sinister in seconds, switching just as quickly between funky electronic beats and spare acoustic passages. That variety brings out the sweetness and trauma on the band’s 2005 album, Advice From The Happy Hippopotamus. The band recently finished recording its next LP, The Meaning Of 8, due out in late February. Happy Hippo is still a pretty fascinating listen, so The A.V. Club talked with leader Craig Minowa about how it came together and how the band ended up touring with live painters (now a staple of a solid live show that drew a respectable crowd when it last came to Madison in September).

The A.V. Club: How is the new album going to be different?
Craig Minowa: We worked with a lot of studio musicians with this, and there are a lot of strings and horns on it. It’s a really thick, layered album. I feel like it’s gonna go over pretty good. My biggest concern with it is trying to figure out how the heck we’re going to play it live [laughs]. There’s probably two or three songs on there that I think we could pull off as a four-piece, and the rest of it, boy, there’s just so much going on [laughs].

AVC: You’re still planning on releasing it on your own label, Earthology, and you’ve turned down some label offers.
CM: Back with the first couple offers that we had, we made it really clear that we had to have the environmentally friendly CD replication as part of any kind of release that we would do. They just weren’t open to that, because it would cost more per unit. Now, the offer that we’re discussing right now, which would end up being ultimately a Warner deal, it looks like they would put out for that. It’s kind of surprising. But it’s also surprising [that] in finding out that they’d put out for that, we realize that we’re still not really interested [laughs].

AVC: You’re constantly referred to as an eco-friendly band, but you don’t do a lot of political or environmental songwriting. Why?
CM: Ninety percent of the time, the songs have nothing directly to do with that. I think that it’s just because there’s a lot to be said about living by your ethics. It takes a lot of energy to operate Cloud Cult the way we want, particularly environmentally ethically, and through our activist work we’re really focused on specific things in politics and whatnot. After doing all that, I’m not necessarily inspired to write lyrics about that.

AVC: How did you start having a painter onstage?
CM: I had a friend from high school and we played in a band together. Our first year in college, we played in this band in Minneapolis, and he was going to art school, and it just kind of seemed like his time focus was more on painting than it was on playing guitar in the band. And I said, “Hey, why don’t you paint on stage? That would be really super-cool.” He was kind of resistant to it at the time. I think he kind of took personal offense to it. “What, you don’t want me to play guitar?” Years later, Cloud Cult started to come together, and after [the band’s 2003 album] They Live On The Sun, it became a live-band thing, and it seemed like the kind of project that required a really elaborate show. So we started bringing painters on board and we rotated whoever we knew who was a painter that was available. Over time, [ex-wife] Connie [Minowa] and Scott [West] proved themselves to be the most long-term dedicated. There are occasions where they haven’t been able to do a show, and the crowd really misses it, especially people that have heard about the painters being there or people that have seen shows in the past, we hear them feeling gypped a little bit.

AVC: Who’s the hippo in the song “Happy Hippo”?
CM: The hippopotamus is something that pops up in my dreams a lot. I would have these dreams with the hippopotamus in them when I was at some sort of transitional time in my life, or there was some type of thing that I needed to understand, and the dreams were always pretty much the same. In the dream, the hippo never actually spoke, but it left impressions or ideas. That song is the introduction of that and you have a lot of transition in it, where it’s a playful sort of situation of crossing sleep with this hippo and moving into this really intense emotional understanding of the preciousness of life.

Calendar Blurbs

(A.V. Club, Madison print edition)

I write and edit preview blurbs on music, comedy, film events, and sometimes other things, for the Madison edition's local concert calendar. Some are written from scratch and some are updates of previous blurbs. I've included ones that I wrote entirely or almost entirely myself. When anything in these blurbs is from another writers' previous work, I've specified, and at most, that's usually only a final sentence or two that fill in factual information. Click on the images for more legible versions.

Shapes And Sizes, Nov. 30, 2006


Pernice Brothers, Nov. 9, 2006



Youngblood Brass Band, Sept. 21, 2006
Madison’s Youngblood Brass Band could beat up your favorite ska band and still have plenty of fiery, experimental jazz to spare. Its nine members play together with all the funk and agility of a jazz quartet, incorporating hip-hop rhythms and punkish aggression while they’re at it. Youngblood continues to make respectable commercial progress as well: It’s fresh off a European tour, and this date marks the start of an American tour that will take the band to both coasts. The band’s most recent studio album, Is That A Riot?, has technically been out since February, but it’s getting a nationwide release next month. YBB’s reputation has a lot more to do with its live shows than with its recordings, but Is That A Riot? succeeds in capturing some of the band’s live fervor. Opening: El Guante, MC Starr, DJ Pain 1.

Bill Engvall, Sept. 21, 2006
Bill Engvall’s most famous routine, “Here’s Your Sign,” proves you don’t have to be brilliant to rag on stupid people. The bit, which Travis Tritt adapted into a tackily boastful junk-country song, begins with Engvall knocking people for stating the obvious to start conversations, but no worries: If Engvall and his Blue Collar TV buddies Ron White and Larry The Cable Guy have taught us anything about the comedy business, it’s that unshakeable cockiness is much more than half the battle, fancy-dancy incisiveness be damned. And shouldn’t noticing stupidity be the minimum for proving one’s intelligence? It’s kind of a shame, because there are hints of a likeable, funny fellow under Engvall’s gloating-jerk-next-door stage demeanor. But redeeming bits, like his riff on the SkyMall catalogue, always come back to Engvall’s exhausted main theme—how big a loser this or that person is.

Raising Arizona, Sept. 21, 2006 (Image coming)
With the colder months upon us, what could be better than cozying up to this sturdy nugget of Southwestern hick charm? The Coen Brothers’ second feature, which helped them break through commercially in 1987, reminds moviegoers of a more innocent time, when they weren’t so damned ambivalent about Nicolas Cage. He gave arguably the best performance of his career as H.I. McDonough, a desperate but good-hearted career criminal who helps his infertile cop wife (an equally wonderful Holly Hunter) steal a baby from an Arizona furniture baron who’s been blessed with quintuplets. Along the way, they encounter a motorcyclin’ bounty hunter from hell, the drudgery of family life, and that masterfully comedic side of John Goodman (as one of H.I.’s escaped-convict friends) that only the Coens can bring out.

Freedy Johnston, Sept. 7, 2006 (Image coming)
It’s brave of Freedy Johnston to stick with his style. He doesn’t dive under the safe umbrellas of muscular rock or overwrought singer-songwriter dirges, but instead plays unabashedly sweet, melodic folk that somehow distinguishes itself from today’s blander troubadours. Maybe it’s the way he manages to balance his sentimental side with his moody side. Or maybe it’s his voice, which is sincere and graceful without being overbearing. Either way, Johnson’s balanced songcraft has carried him through a recording career that began in 1990. He hasn’t released a studio album since Right Between The Promises in 2001; his most recent release, Live At McCabe’s Guitar Shop, captures a 1998 performance.

John Hiatt, Aug. 31, 2006 (Image coming)
On John Hiatt's latest studio album, 2005's Master of Disaster, the quandary of Hiatt the songwriter is all too apparent. The title track matches Tom Petty's best for prickly wordplay, but plonky ditties like "Wintertime Blues" could make a Parrotthead roll his eyes (or at least bolt for another mai tai). The inconsistency doesn't seem to damage Hiatt the performer. He's musician enough that he can keep any song—yep, even a bad one—engaging with just his own piano or guitar, but mostly he's just straightforward and unassuming. Though his falsetto sometimes fails him (hint: watch out for "Have a Little Faith in Me"), he's solid on old and new songs alike. Hiatt refreshingly refuses to feign coolness--he’s often seen wearing dorky dress shoes with creepy white ankle socks. Besides, who could say no to a face like that? Opener: Paul Thorn.

Godhead, Aug. 31, 2006 (Image coming)
Godhead scrappily self-released three albums before joining Marilyn Manson's record label in 2001 and releasing 2000 Years Of Human Error, a decent LP of Nine Inch Nails- and Cure-influenced screeds. Have they grown? Here's a good indicator: 2000 Years' production masked lead singer Jason Miller's voice in a funky, angry blur; "Trapped In Your Lies," the first single from Godhead’s latest album, The Shadow Line, pushes the vocals up in the mix and polishes 'em up like so much leftover Scott Stapp, complete with a simplistic, soaring chorus. So it's appropriate that despite his bald-zombie look and outcast lyrics, Miller's been doing a lot of Jesus posturing lately (at least in recent music videos). This is just an acoustic set (see the full band Saturday at Taste Of Madison), but will a humble chain record store be grand and/or wretched enough for the band's increasingly messianic conviction?

Al Rose + Doug Hoekstra, Aug. 31, 2006 (Image coming)
Sometimes it’s pretty much impossible to tell what Al Rose is singing about, which brings en extra layer of interest to songs ranging from the straight-up-country title track of his 2002 LP, Gravity Of Crow, to the subtly ominous soundscape of “Fish Tale Blues,” from 1999’s Pigeon’s Throat. (“We're going flower-pot smoking down at 911, / having snail shell sex in a hot dog bun,” he sings on the latter. Do what?) When the lyrics are decipherable, they reveal a wry thinker behind the cleverness. Doug Hoekstra, meanwhile, is a simple oasis in an ever-bloated singer-songwriter desert. His new EP, Six Songs, showcases what he does best--wistful, narrative lyrics, infectious chord progressions and understated vocals that resort to neither the drowsy whispers or the desperate yelps of lesser singers.

Lisa Lampanelli

(The Onion A.V. Club, Madison print edition, Nov. 30, 2006)

A slightly different version of this piece later ran on The A.V. Club's Web site.

Hope for Lisa Lampanelli’s sake that her current tour of theaters like the Barrymore works out, because she says she’ll end up “Xeroxing my twat at Kinko’s if I ever have to go back to [comedy] clubs again.” Lampanelli has pursued her brand of warm-yet-abrasive comedy for 16 years, but her recent gigs slamming celebrities (most famously Pamela Anderson) on Comedy Central’s roasts have made Lampanelli a go-to insult comic. (Though she’s happily respectful of nearly every other successful comedian out there, from Larry The Cable Guy to Patton Oswalt.) She says she’ll be branching out a little in material from her new Comedy Central special and CD, Dirty Girl, both due out in January. Lampanelli went pretty easy on The A.V. Club for a talk about the finer points of offensive humor and her former career as a journalist.

The A.V. Club: Do people ever think you’re joking when you assert yourself in earnest?

Lisa Lampanelli: Yes! Dude, it happens all the time, which is good in one way because you don’t lose fans. But it’s bad in one way ’cause they don’t respect you. I’m really nice. I sign stuff after the show, every single thing. I will stand there for three hours, how Larry The Cable Guy did it—it really helps your fans feel a connection. And it’s fun, too. I don’t give a fuck. I think it’s fun to sign shit and have people take your picture. But sometimes somebody will be drunk and push too hard and just won’t leave and move along, and I’ll be like, “Move it along, fuckhead.” And they’ll go, “Ha ha ha, great!” And they’ll stand there, and I’m like, “No, you’re a douche-cock and everybody hates you. Die of cancer.” “Aaaah ha ha! She’s so funny.”

AVC: What was your journalism career like?

LL: Right out of college, I was a feature reporter for this newspaper in Connecticut, and they pissed me off, so I quit and said, “I want to work for a magazine that’s interesting and that everybody knows so I can brag about it.” Subconsciously, I’m sure I said that. I worked at Popular Mechanics, and it sounds so gay, but it’s famous, so I said, “Fuck it.” I was a copy editor there, and I got a job as an assistant at Rolling Stone. I didn’t want to stick to it long enough to pay my dues to become a writer at Rolling Stone. I was writing freelance, so I started writing for all these heavy-metal magazines because I love writing about the music business and those longhairs, and it was the ’80s, so I was interviewing heavy-metal bands and Bon Jovi for Hit Parader and all this stuff. I just loved that. And you got all these free records and you could sell ’em the next day. Then I decided my life had no meaning, and I decided to go to Harvard for a publishing-procedures course, where they teach you how to be a hardcore publishing magnate. And I continued to do a little journalism and this and that. But then I was like, “My life’s meaningless again, so why don’t I be a teacher?” I have these weird, emotional decisions I used to make, ’cause I was like, “I need warmth in my life, I’ll teach and touch children’s lives.” And then I went to Columbia for that, and decided I hated kids after half a year of student-teaching. Then somehow, thank God, I decided to do comedy and that’s the one thing that really hit right in my heart.

AVC: The insult-comic thing is working out pretty well for you, but are you trying other kinds of material?

LL: [The new special is] 100 percent different. I was really scared that the audience was gonna say, “Why isn’t she calling us spics and chinks anymore?” I was so angry in the last year, ’cause I had this breakup, and I was so angry with my dates and so angry with how my life was going, except for my career.

AVC: You often pronounce “Arabs” as “A-rabs” and “whore” as “hoo-uh.” Is that natural?

LL: No, I just fuck with words a little bit, and I use bad grammar on purpose because I was a journalist and I had the best copy-editing and English skills in the world. I’m just anal about all that, so I know if you know all the rules, you can break them. I have a joke about a kid being in a car accident, and I go, “Come on, the kid’s one years old, how attached could you really be?” That’s just part of the joke. I say “one years.” I know it’s not “one years,” but it sounds funnier to me.

Where wine is king

The A.V. Club, Madison print edition, Nov. 2 2006

How often do most people get to sample a formidable gauntlet of wines and eat lobster mashed potatoes out of a plastic cup (with a plastic fork that looks like fine silverware) while watching a mild-mannered chef competition from the metal bleachers inside the incongruously drafty Alliant Energy Center’s exhibition hall? The A.V. Club, for one, pounced on the chance to do just that on Friday, Oct. 20, when The Madison Food And Wine Show opened.

The show is like sample day at the supermarket, only bigger, fancier, and with booze—and all the excess and disorientation that implies. Food might be billed first, but wine is king. And even the people who aren’t selling wine here have a shrewd eye toward matching their products with wine. Not sure if you should pair that piece of havarti on a toothpick with that Dixie cup of cab-sav? Check your handy-dandy wine-and-cheese-pairing wheel, courtesy of the Wisconsin Milk Marketing Board.

Food and beverage divination devices aren’t the only swag up for grabs at the show. When visitors first enter the hall, they pick up a commemorative Food And Wine Show wine glass, and sample wine after wine from it throughout the evening. Some people use it for the beer tastings too. (Capital Brewery and Redhook Ale Brewery are here with their fine brews, though the wine options far outnumber the beer options.)

At most of the wine booths, the idea is to keep the line moving and enjoy the stuff without getting too fussy about it. But for wine showoffs, there’s a smelling contest. Entrants sniff at little scented Q-Tips inside wine glasses and match what they smell to a list of flavors for a chance to win a set of glasses. Among the aromas is “cut hay.” Remarking that this is weird, The A.V. Club gets hit with a “gotcha!”—many wines have that aroma. Are the wine world’s many affluent, urban newbies also studying up on farm smells?

If anything, American wineries seem to keep such things at a pleasant distance in the minds of wine drinkers, with names that are often reminiscent of suburban streets—vague, pleasant, perhaps with a dignified nod to nature or history. White Winter Winery, Von Stiehl Winery, Cedar Creek Winery—replace “Winery” with “Lane,” “Circle,” or “Court” and you’ve got yourself a respectable subdivision. There are always exceptions, though, like Modesto, California’s Barefoot Wine. One of the men at Barefoot’s booth tells The A.V. Club that his decidedly unpretentious presentation (which includes fake palm trees) is aimed at just about any wine consumer, but the booth projects a very Jimmy-Buffet-goes-to-Mardi-Gras vibe. Especially when a woman puts on one of the booth’s free plastic beaded necklaces (complete with a Barefoot-logo medallion).

Forsaking the show’s reigning elegance entirely, though, is Oregon’s Bee Barf Honey. “That’s what it is!” one of the women at the Bee Barf booth says matter-of-factly. (“Bee Vomit” was an early candidate, but didn’t have the same alliterative snap.) The A.V. Club asks her if she feels out of place among so many dignified-sounding companies. She admits the atmosphere can get a bit “snooty,” and adds: “But you know what? We drink the wine. We’re not above it.”