Fulson grew up and still lives in the Cumberland Gap area that borders Tennessee and Kentucky, playing in bands that haunted smoky bars. He's just as likely to write about crystal meth and small town religious hypocrisy as the 'traditional values' and pick-up truck paradise depicted on commercial country radio.
'It's not that I want to glamorize the dark side,' he says. 'I just want to represent the real life.'
Fulson's sound is a throwback to the 'outlaw' country movement of the 1970s and the modern Southern rock of the Drive-By Truckers. He says the Truckers became a particular inspiration after a man named Gary Lee came up to him after a show and told Fulson his songs sounded like the Truckers. Fulson checked out the band online and they became a favorite.
'I was working at a cookie factory, literally just moving boxes of Oreos all day,' says Fulson. 'By the end of the day I just had to do something, so I went to the beer store across the border and I'd crank the Truckers up. I think the music did me a lot more good than the beer.'
Not only did the comment introduce Fulson to the Truckers, but Lee became a friend and song collaborator with Fulson, co-writing some of his most popular songs, including 'Three Dollar Wine' and 'Zombie Town.'
The dramatic 'Middlesborough 1974' (which uses the town's original spelling) comes from a story Fulson's father told him when they were driving back to Cumberland Gap from Knoxville after a show at the Corn Pone Inn on Clinton Highway.
'Back in the mid-'70s he was going through a divorce and was really down and out and him and a cousin went out driving around drinking. Then a deputy got behind them and the deputy was guy my dad went to high school with and couldn't stand. When the guy hit the blue lights, my dad just floored it and they went up Cumberland Avenue in Middlesboro into this area called Hignite and there are really sharp curves.'
The cousin began screaming for Fulson's out-of-control dad to slow down.
'He said, 'You'll never make this curve! You're gonna kill both of us!' When my dad said that I just immediately sat up in my seat and said, 'Oh, that's a song!' '
Fulson began writing the song just as work on 'Dark Side of the Mountain' was beginning and enlisted buddy and sometime songwriting partner Steve Eisenmenger to help complete the final verse.
'For me, going through a divorce now and hearing his story about it and finding a sort of comical way to say it, I just thought that would be a great place to start a song — two guys about to die!'
Fulson says the new album, recorded at Knoxville's Arbor Studio, is the first time he's felt like he's truly gotten an album the way he wanted it.
'I've always had this sound in my head and I couldn't really capture it. ... It's also the first time I've made a record where I feel like it's finished. Before it was 'Well, it's good enough for now.' But with this one I feel like I really pinned it down.'
Fulson lived in Knoxville for a little over two years, but moved back to Cumberland Gap in 2015 to be closer to family. He regularly makes the drive to Knoxville for performances.
'Some of the songs go over better here than they do back home,' says Fulson. 'Maybe they're just too close to home there. But people who've moved here from small towns will tell me, 'Man, it reminds me so much of where I come from!''
Brandon Fulson CD release show
With: Handsome and the Humbles, Matt Honkonen
When: 8 p.m. Saturday, June 18
Where: Open Chord, 8502 Kingston Pike