My Top 20 Robbie Fulks Songs: Goodbye, Virginia (#13)
By Four Walls
@FourWalls (86918)
United States
June 24, 2016 10:02pm CST
I'm resting up in London! Glad they're out of the EU!! Oh, wait, it's London Kentucky that I'm in. I'm on my way to Knoxville for a Dale Watson concert that I'm really stoked about -- Southern Culture on the Skids are opening!!! Meanwhile, here's the next song in my list of 20 favorites by the king of alt-country, Robbie Fulks.
#13: Goodbye, Virginia
I spent two and a half years in Norfolk when I was in the Navy. In 2014 Robbie got me back to Virginia (I was on a road trip, and I saw him in Richmond) for the first time since I saw the BoDeans in Norfolk in 1991 (nah, this road tripping thing I'm doing now isn't my first rodeo 
). When I crossed the state line into Virginia I was playing the late Robbin Thompson's "Sweet Virginia Breeze," which was named the "official popular [or modern] state song" of Virginia about four months before Thompson died of stomach cancer. (I used to see him all the time when I was stationed in Norfolk, so his death hit me rather hard). I realized how much of Virginia was still in my soul on that trip, and I thanked Robbie for getting me back to the commonwealth for the first time in 23 years.
When I drove out of the state, I was playing "Goodbye, Virginia." Tears were running down my face. Unlike the protagonist of the song, I will be back again.
You can't go home again, they say. Fulks makes that clear in one of the final lines of this marvelous song: "No more I'll return to the land of my youth. Twenty years of hard country's too much of the truth." (A quick aside: the line about "too much of the truth" is a reference to Harlan Howard's famous quote that country music can best be described as "three chords and the truth."). The narrator who has failed as a country singer, so he opts for any other type of job ("give me paper and I'll push it, a truck and I'll drive") that will get him a "straight 9-to-5" job and out of the state and his failed career. It's a great heartbreak song -- not about a lost love, but a lost dream.
Goodbye, Virginia
Written by Robbie Fulks
From 50 Vc. Doberman, 2010
Robbie and Robbie (Fulks and Gjersoe, the latter on resonator guitar):
). When I crossed the state line into Virginia I was playing the late Robbin Thompson's "Sweet Virginia Breeze," which was named the "official popular [or modern] state song" of Virginia about four months before Thompson died of stomach cancer. (I used to see him all the time when I was stationed in Norfolk, so his death hit me rather hard). I realized how much of Virginia was still in my soul on that trip, and I thanked Robbie for getting me back to the commonwealth for the first time in 23 years.
When I drove out of the state, I was playing "Goodbye, Virginia." Tears were running down my face. Unlike the protagonist of the song, I will be back again.
You can't go home again, they say. Fulks makes that clear in one of the final lines of this marvelous song: "No more I'll return to the land of my youth. Twenty years of hard country's too much of the truth." (A quick aside: the line about "too much of the truth" is a reference to Harlan Howard's famous quote that country music can best be described as "three chords and the truth."). The narrator who has failed as a country singer, so he opts for any other type of job ("give me paper and I'll push it, a truck and I'll drive") that will get him a "straight 9-to-5" job and out of the state and his failed career. It's a great heartbreak song -- not about a lost love, but a lost dream.
Goodbye, Virginia
Written by Robbie Fulks
From 50 Vc. Doberman, 2010
Robbie and Robbie (Fulks and Gjersoe, the latter on resonator guitar):
Robbie Fulks and Robbie Gjersoe Goodbye Virginia Southland Ballroom Raleigh, NC 2-9-14
3 people like this
1 response
@teamfreak16 (43678)
• Denver, Colorado
25 Jun 16
I even gave the video a thumbs up (I think I'm #5) as I watched.
1 person likes this
