Con Fullam has been playing and performing since he was 5 years old. It was at that age that his father died leaving him his ukelele. He was born on a farm in Sydney, Maine population 60 or so people, 600 or so cows and thousands of acres of fields, and woods. There was only one kid around his age within a five mile swathe of the farm and so this left Con with a lot of time on his hands. He spent a lot of that time playing his ukelele and singing songs he learned from his family, all of whom played an instrument. His brother and sister loved folk music, bluegrass and the blues and so he learned the songs of Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger, Cisco Houston, The Weavers, Flatt and Scruggs, Ralph Stanley, The Carter Family, Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee, Josh White Sr., Hudie Ledbetter and Lightnin’ Hopkins to name a few.
His mother was a pianist whose taste ran towards Classical music and Broadway. And so he learned to love Bach, Beethoven and Scarlatti, The Pirates of Penzance, My fair Lady and Oklahoma.
Con was a shy lad who early on learned that confidence came a lot easier when there was a guitar in his hand and so it went with him pretty much everywhere he went and was a large part of his identity. He began “playing out” when he was six at church functions and school and by the time he was ten he was a regular on his brothers radio show each Saturday on WTVL in Waterville, Maine. Con’s high school days were filled with a lot of music and a little study and he spent a lot of time in the Headmaster’s office trying to explain why he wasn’t performing academically to the levels that everyone felt he was capable of. Truth of the matter was he just plain wasn’t interested in the square root of 9 or the fate of the Roman Empire. He was interested in this young guy Bob Dylan who sounded like his hero Woody Guthrie and the Beatles and Johnny Cash and The Supremes. He was lucky enough to be raised in the time of AM radio when there were no rigid “formats” and you could hear Johnny Cash, Roy Orbison, The Beach Boys and the Supremes played back to back.
In the 8th grade he formed his first band - The Imposters. They wore blue corduroy pants, blue shirts and maroon ties and sports coats. The drummer, Timmy Joler, was chosen because he could play, “Wipe Out’”, and the rest of the band consisted of Con, playing his first electric guitar, Bill Wheeler playing a big Hammond B3 with wurlitzer and Alden Clark playing bass. The band’s PA was constructed by Bill compliments of Radio Shack and one of their first gigs was at a Harvest dance at The Convent School for Catholic girls. The contract stipulated that if they played,” Louie Louie” by the Kingsmen they wouldn’t get payed. They played the, by then ubiquitous, first four notes of the song to test the nuns and the look on the nuns faces made it very clear that were they to continue there would be literal hell to pay.
As was mentioned earlier Con’s academic achievements were dubious at best and so when he applied to colleges the response was less than enthusiastic in fact out of ten schools that he applied to only one accepted him. It was The New Division, a hippie new agey experimental college in Springvale, Maine founded by a behavioral scientist from Harvard by the name of Tom Howard. Within twenty minutes of his arrival at the school he had received at least five offers from his fellow classmates to take a walk in the woods to smoke some really kick ass hash that had come straight from Morocco.The school was full of underachievers many of whom, like Con , continued to underachieve but did so with great enthusiasm and verve. And, to be fair, there were many who truly took advantage of the opportunities that the college presented and excelled. The school was Con’s first introduction to other players and writers who had better
chops and more experience than he had and, being a pretty competitive lad himself, he pushed himself to step up and learn new chords and progressions on the guitar as well as hone his skills at wordsmithing. It was there with a lot of support from his fellow students that he realized that playing and writing were the things that made him the happiest and that it was down that road he would travel. In the forty years that have passed since that first semester he has never looked back.
Although he is published by MCA Universal, Sony/BMG, Warner/Chappell, Acuff Rose, Opryland, and Chrysalis Music and although he has had his songs recorded by major recording artists and although he has produced records that have sold over a half million units, and although he has played with and shared stages with the likes of, Asleep At The Wheel, Joan Armatrading, Aztec Two Step, Razzy Bailey, David Bromberg, Johnny Cash, George Carlin, Bob Dylan, Richie Havens, Emmy Lou Harris with Gram Parsons, Waylon Jennings, Jorma Kaukenon, Willie Nelson, The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee, John Sebastian, Earl Scruggs Review and Tammy Wynette, and although he has been critically acclaimed in many of the music industries most prestigious publications such as Billboard, Music Row, Village Voice, Boston Phoenix, Canadian Country News, Cashbox Magazine, and Nashville Music City News and although he has been nominated for an Emmy and although he has been recognized by The American Society Of Composers Authors And Publishers for his contributions to the world of the performing arts and although he has written the music for and executive produced a multi award winning children’s television series which airs on PBS and although he has co-created a warm and fuzzy cast of characters known as the Wompkees whose first movie he co-produced which is now distributed in over forty countries and although he has two movies in development with two Oscar winning screenwriters, Ernest Thompson(On Golden Pond) and David Saperstein(Cocoon) and although he is largely responsible for this enormous run on sentence he has never released a CD of his own.
Con is aware that he is just a tad behind the curve and so has chosen to work his recording career in the reverse mode by releasing the box set first. For this project he has chosen 65 songs that he has written over the past forty years based on the fact that he could remember most of their lyrics and melodies.
It is hoped that this box set will be successful enough to warrant the release of a regular 10 song CD in his seventies followed by a series of singles in his 80’s.
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