Robert Lester Folsom

Robert Lester Folsom released his first studio album, Music and Dreams, in 1976. Although it received some local attention upon its initial release, the record was circulated via private pressings and Folsom was unable to complete a follow-up. It wasn’t until 2010, when the album was reissued by Anthology Recordings, that Folsom’s music reached far beyond the realm of crate diggers and collectors who had long ago assigned Music and Dreams a left-field legend status. The same year, Anthology also launched their ongoing excavation and exploration of the Southern singer, songwriter, and psychedelic serviceman’s bountiful archives, welcoming a whole new generation of young listeners into the generous fold of Folsom’s folk rock wizardry.

Born and raised in Adel, Georgia, the young Folsom exhibited a precocious affinity for music early on. But like many others of his generation, his obsession with songcraft reached cosmic heights after seeing The Beatles’ paradigm-shifting 1964 appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show. Soon after, the young artist began absorbing every morsel of musical output he could find from The Fab Four (and their contemporaries), yet it wasn’t long before observation transformed into a desire to create. A children’s record player bought by his parents as a gift was traded to a neighborhood friend for a stringless, disheveled guitar. As time passed by, Folsom’s innate drive and field of vision broadened as he enlisted neighborhood friends, classmates, and family members to fulfill his small-scale musical dreams.

Over the next several years, while employing ingenious, home brewed over-dubbing techniques with his “love at first sight,” a Sears 3440 two-track reel-to-reel tape recorder, Folsom served as the de facto producer and arranger for any and all scrappy garage bands or aspiring singer-songwriters in the radius of Adel. This period also produced the bounty of Folsom’s self-penned compositions that make up the three archival collections of his music released by Anthology, Ode to a Rainy Day, Sunshine Only Sometimes, and the latest chapter, If You Wanna Laugh, You Gotta Cry Sometimes. 

Recorded between 1972-1975 when Folsom was still in his late teens, these bedroom demos and informal studio sessions, previously unheard for decades, showcase ingenious arrangements and technical skills across his primitive recording equipment, as well as impeccable songwriting across a light folk, downer pop, country-blues, and a colorful array of other front porch experiments that defy easy classification.  

If You Wanna Laugh, You Gotta Cry Sometimes adds its own weight and weft to the rich tapestry of Folsom’s earliest experiments, featuring scuffed-shoe folk love ballads, slacker anthems, slow burning crooners, and a handful of bluegrass instrumentals, all of which are set alight by Folsom’s characteristic downhome warmth, wit, and charisma. This collection further solidifies Folsom’s place in the canon of long lost but eventually found independently spirited, high-flying American folk rock, planting his music in a timeless space primed for perennial rediscovery.