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<\/p>\nLife as a touring musician is an endurance test: An ultramarathon of early-morning van calls and long drives, punctuated by fits of hurry-up-and-wait between load-in and soundcheck, all of which is borne for an hour or so under the stage lights (and, if you\u2019re lucky, in front of an audience of ticket buyers). Boredom is a feature, not a bug. You either fish \u2013 build a tolerance for monotony, sure, but also gas station-cribbed sustenance and a severe lack of personal space. Or you cut bait.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Since the spring of 2025, the musician Robert Lester Folsom and his Jacksonville-based band have pounded the pavement, performing in all corners of North America. In between gigs in iconic venues from New Orleans to Nashville to San Francisco, the multigenerational ensemble has developed strategies for coping with the tedium of tour.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWe like to find good coffee and, if there\u2019s time after a soundcheck, we\u2019ll find a thrift store,\u201d offers Brooke Garwood (27, glockenspiel, background vocals), as members of the septet settle into a high-top table at Strings Brewery in Jacksonville Beach.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWe love to get tacos!\u201d adds Folsom (71, guitar, vocals).\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cIf we have a night off, we might watch a stupid movie like Borat or something,\u201d offers Jeremy Marshall Blanton (40, bass).\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
The band\u2019s enjoying a late summer respite after a run of nearly 30 dates that took them from Pensacola to Vancouver and wrapped in late May. As members of the group share road stories over pints of beer, their collective comfort with discomfort is evident in their ability to tune out \u2013 or at least tolerate \u2013 piercing screeches from a gaggle of unsupervised elementary schoolers running amok around Strings\u2019 outdoor patio. (Missing in action on the evening of our interview are guitarist Kevin Peacon, 26, and L.A.-based hired-gun drummer Owen Barrett, 29.)\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
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\n\u201cI think it takes them back to a time when music was a little bit more loose and raw, not so perfect,\u201d Robert Lester Folsom says of the younger audience his mid-\u201970s music has attracted. | Dustin Miller <\/p>\n
The group describes Folsom as an easygoing bandleader, a characterization that inspires an eyeroll and a hue of pink around the portions of the musician\u2019s face visible between his Georgia Bulldogs ballcap and iconic facial hair: a flowing, Santa-Claus-white beard.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cDude, you\u2019re super flexible,\u201d urges Landon Gay (29, pedal steel guitar).\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cHe wants everybody to have fun,\u201d Blanton adds.<\/p>\n
\u201cLet\u2019s turn that thing off,\u201d Folsom says, smiling as he points to my audio recorder. \u201cWe\u2019ll go off the record for this.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
A band, especially a road tested one, is like a family. And there\u2019s a kindred kind of ease to the group\u2019s interpersonal dynamics, which is complicated only by the small detail that none of the members of Folsom\u2019s current band were alive when he cut Music and Dreams<\/a>, an album of largely homespun cosmic country and psychedelic folk, in 1976. In fact, Folsom was younger than every member of his band when he recorded his magnum opus.\u00a0<\/p>\n Given the age gap, the group regards Folsom with the reverence of a tribal elder. But they also razz him gently, as one would a peer, about a range of topics, including the heavy hand he deploys when strumming his acoustic guitar.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cIt was Brooke that really made me aware that I didn\u2019t need to strum so hard on stage,\u201d Folsom says, before Blanton jumps in: \u201cDude, I gotta call bulls***! People have been telling you not to play so hard for years.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n In between rehearsals for an upcoming tour, the Jacksonville-based members of Folsom\u2019s band have been performing with their side projects and working odd jobs. Gay teaches music lessons and plays folky singer-songwriter fare under the nom de plume Howdy<\/a>. Jeremy Prince (28, keyboards, saxophone) also teaches music, and performs alongside Peacon in Garwood\u2019s band Sun Child<\/a>. Garwood co-founded a cold-pressed juice company, Galaxy Juice. Blanton, a longtime member of locally based retro-country group Dean Winter and the Heat, performs Americana-tinged tunes under his own name<\/a> and bartends a few nights a week.\u00a0<\/p>\n Among the band\u2019s current lineup, Folsom\u2019s actually the only one without a side hustle. After some three decades painting houses, he only recently quit to play music full time, due in large part to a touring schedule that, since he joined up with this group of Jacksonville musicians, has been newly demanding.\u00a0<\/p>\n Band on a run\u00a0<\/p>\n Folsom\u2019s musical career dates back to the early \u201870s in his hometown of Adele, Georgia. But it was reignited in the early aughts, after the reissue<\/a> of Music and Dreams. The album had been slowly amassing cult status, with pressings of the record floating around Japan, and shoutouts from prescient Millennial music bloggers and acclaimed indie artists like Noah Lennox (AKA Panda Bear) of Animal Collective fame. In 2010, the album was reissued by the ultra-hip Brooklyn label Mexican Summer<\/a>\u2019s Anthology imprint, garnering even wider critical acclaim for Folsom, who\u2019d long since relocated to Jacksonville.\u00a0But even after the reissue, opportunities to\u00a0perform his music for a live audience were scattershot and inconsistent.\u00a0<\/p>\n Enter Garwood. <\/p>\n In 2023, Folsom caught a Sun Child set at the Riverside Arts Market and introduced himself. <\/p>\n \u201cHe kept saying, \u2018I\u2019m Robert Lester Folsom,\u2019 and I remember being like, \u2018Why does he keep saying his full name?’\u201d Garwood says to knowing laughs from the group. \u201cI pulled up his music on the way home and was like, \u2018Oh my god, that Robert Lester Folsom!\u2019\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0\u201cI told her she reminded me of myself when I was her age,\u201d Folsom remembers.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n The two struck up a friendship, and, shortly thereafter, when Folsom was asked to play a one-off show in Chicago, he recruited Garwood to sit in on backing vocals and glockenspiel, an instrument she\u2019d never played before. Struck by the audience\u2019s enthusiasm, Garwood says she started needling Folsom about taking the show on the road for a proper tour. She cold called the Troubadour, the storied West Hollywood venue. The talent buyer turned out to be a fan.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThey called me back and were, like, \u2018No way, really?\u2019\u201d Garwood remembers. With the Troubadour as an anchor, a West Coast tour fell into place. Members of Sun Child \u2013 Garwood, Peacon and Prince \u2013 would make up the core of the band, with Gay and Blanton rounding out the local contingent.\u00a0<\/p>\n For Blanton, it was a full circle opportunity. He\u2019s known Folsom since childhood, and his mother and older brother have both been in bands with Folsom. \u201cWe were estranged musically,\u201d Blanton says, smiling at Folsom, who responds: \u201cIf we were estranged, I didn\u2019t know it.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Still, with a tour booked and an ensemble of eager and talented young musicians assembled, Folsom was skeptical an appreciable demand to hear him live existed, let alone whether the group could meet that demand. A local show, a kind of warm-up set for the tour, was poorly attended, Folsom says. <\/p>\n \u201cIt wasn\u2019t until the San Diego show, the first real show of the tour, that I knew we had something,\u201d he says. \u201cThere was nothing like that first time with this band in front of a crowd of people that had come to hear my songs.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n People came to hear the songs again in San Francisco: an audience of 500 at The Chapel. They showed up in Pioneertown when the band played the funky, Joshua Tree-adjacent outpost Pappy & Harriet\u2019s. The band filled rooms in Colorado and Idaho and Seattle, the mostly Millennial audiences listening intently from the opening notes of the instrumental \u201cOde to a Rainy Day<\/a>\u201d to perennial set closer, the uptempo crowd-pleaser \u201cMy Stove\u2019s on Fire<\/a>.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s the sickest audience,\u201d says Gay of Folsom\u2019s fans. Like most members of the band over the course of several tours now, Gay has had the opportunity to perform his own music as an opening act. <\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s a very listening-oriented crowd,\u201d says Blanton, who called the opportunity to open a show \u201cuneasy,\u201d nerve-wracking, given the attentiveness of a Folsom audience. \u201cIt\u2019s not like a drinking crowd, they\u2019re not there waiting on the rock \u2018n\u2019 roll show. They\u2019re really emotionally open.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n \u2018Lesterisms\u2019<\/p>\n As they\u2019ve learned Folsom\u2019s catalog, each band member says they\u2019ve gleaned much about songwriting: Chord changes and lyrical flourishes that the group refers to as \u201cLesterisms.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Folsom\u2019s idiosyncratic doctrine continues to proliferate. In April, Mexican Summer released If You Wanna Laugh, You Gotta Cry Sometimes<\/a>, the third installment in a series of archival excavations of the songwriter\u2019s music. Later this year, they\u2019ll celebrate Folsom\u2019s delayed breakthrough with a remastered 50th anniversary<\/a> reissue of Music and Dreams, which features rare demos and a cover by Millennial dreampop duo Beach House. <\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/RLF3340-1-768x1024.jpg\")
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\n\u201cIt\u2019s the sickest audience,\u201d says Landon Gay (left) of playing in front of Folsom\u2019s fans. Adds Jeremy Marshall Blanton (right): \u201cIt\u2019s a very listening-oriented crowd.\u201d | Dustin Miller <\/p>\n![\"Brooke](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/RLF3323-768x1024.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![\"Jeremy](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/RLF3336-768x1024.jpg\")
\nWhen not on the road with Folsom, Brooke Garwood (left) and Jeremy Prince (right) perform with Garwood\u2019s indie-folk project Sun Child. | Dustin Miller <\/p>\n