John Fullbright, native Oklahoman hailing from Woody Guthrie’s territory in Okfuskee County, is one of the most gifted talents produced here in the last several years. In fact he has been hailed by one influential source as the most significant songwriter/performer to come out of Oklahoma in the last 20 years. If he looks like a youthful farmboy, typical of one you’d meet at the livestock auction or in the seat of a tractor plowing the north forty that’s because he is. But his musical and lyrical abilities have added other dimensions to this young man’s surroundings, no doubt to his future.
He began playing piano before he was three years old and today his musical arsenal incudes, piano, guitar, banjo, mandolin, pedal steel ,slide guitar, harmonica, pump organ, percussion and anything else that can make a musical sound. His songs are well crafted and match the best in the business. His voice is distinctively powerful and his musicianship, uncanny. He also has hundreds of songs by other writers handily at the ready in his mental repertoire. Townes Van Zandt, Steve Earle, Robert Earl Keen, Stephen Foster, are some of his heavier influences and he cites them frequently.
He has served as opening act for Oklahoma’s most successful songwriter Jimmy Webb (‘Up, Up and Away’ , ‘MacArthur Park’, ‘By the Time I Get to Phoenix, etc,.) as well as for Gretchen Peters- (‘Independence Day’) one of the most gifted female songwriters the nation has produced- and he’s shared the stage with almost all of the current Red Dirt acts among them Stoney Larue. He has long been associated with the legendary Tom Skinner (perhaps the state’s most gifted and least appreciated artist). Tom and his brothers began the Skinner Brothers Band many years ago and, at what many consider their height, counted Garth Brooks as a band member.
Fullbright has played on many, many recordings by a variety of Texas and Oklahoma bands, has played Cain’s Ballroom with the Red Dirt Rangers, toured the southwest with the Mike McClure Band, showcased at the National Folk Alliance Conference in Memphis, Tennessee and has often performed with the Turnpike Troubadors as well as with the Buffalo Family Band. He shared the stage recently with Jimmy LaFave in Austin, Texas, has performed at the Mucky Duck Irish Tavern in Houston, and hundreds of other venues on his way to his 22nd birthday.
You can check his MySpace website and many postings of his live performances can be seen on YouTube.
Fullbright’s first recording, a live CD titled ‘John Fullbright- Live at the Blue Door’ was recorded earlier this year at the venerable ‘Blue Door’ listening room in Oklahoma City.
It can be purchased on I-tunes or on CD Baby or at John’s live performances.
John will be performing this Saturday, October 10, from 1 pm to 2 pm at Cushing’s 21st Annual Festival In the Park.
****
