Robert Lester Folsom (center) performed at the Rumba Cafe Saturday. Credit: Courtesy of Maren McGuire
Robert Lester Folsom made his long-awaited Columbus debut with indie duo Babehoven Saturday at the Rumba Café.
The show marked Folsom’s second-ever performance in Ohio, following his debut in Lakewood at Mahall’s Friday. Folsom’s 2024 Midwestern and Northeastern tour comes in promotion of his most recent album, “Chunka Chunka,” which was released in February 2024.
The path to fame has hardly been conventional for Robert Lester Folsom, who is known by Lester to his friends. In Folsom’s 1976 self-released LP “Music and Dreams,” the title track details the dreams of sharing music and having it loved by the world. However, following its release, the album “quietly circulated in the Southeast before slipping into obscurity — until crate diggers and reissue labels revived his recordings in the 2010s” — according to his website.
After his LP resurfaced, Folsom was signed to indie record label Mexican Summer and released much of his archival catalogue on the imprint label Anthology Recordings, with “Archives Vol. 3” set for release in 2026.
Now 70-years-old, Folsom said that his recent rise in popularity is especially meaningful.
“Now people like me, and I know they like me because they really appreciate what I’ve done,” Folsom said. “They don’t just like me because I’m really good looking and stuff … they like what I’ve done and that’s really an honor to be liked for that reason.”
Now retired from his house painting job, Folsom’s sole focus has turned to his creative pursuits, with plans to record and tour more in 2026.
Last year’s “Chunka Chunka” is a defiant reference to an onomatopoeic adjective for a common guitar strumming pattern — which Folsom recalls being dismayed to hear used to describe his playing. A freeing statement of creative reclamation, the album’s title track is “a song telling someone, ‘I don’t care what you call my guitar band. I just play guitar.’”
Folsom said his music is “kind of late ’60s, early ’70s, psychedelic funk rock.” He said that some might think of him as a singer-songwriter since he writes on his guitar, but “there’s a little more to it. It’s a little crazier, maybe.”
Folsom revealed one example of how he conjured the “crazy” on his upcoming single, “Sitting on the Moon.” One night when recording with the late Tom Smith of experimental noise group, To Live and Shave in L.A., the two transported their equipment to a hog parlor — a building designed to house pigs — and timed their playing to include vehicles passing on a nearby highway.
“I said, ‘Tommy, see that truck down there? When you see it coming to that light hole right there, start playing,’” Folsom said. “So he did it, and it sounds like a meteor going by a spaceship. It came out in the song really cool.”
Folsom’s sound has drawn comparisons to Todd Rundgren and Led Zeppelin III, also sharing sonic DNA with the likes of The Flaming Lips, Dave Bixby and Mark Fry. He opened his set on Saturday night by walking out to “Bissou Magique” by French dream-pop artist Melody’s Echo Chamber, foreshadowing the lush textures that would follow.
Folsom was joined on stage by band members of Sun Child — Brooke Garwood on backup vocals and xylophone, Jeremy Prince on keyboard, flute and saxophone and Kevin Peacon on electric guitar — and musicians Landon Gay on pedal steel guitar and acoustic guitar, Jeremy Marshall Blanton on bass and John Medico on the drums. Mya Bon and Ryan Albert of Babehoven came out for the last couple songs of the set, playing additional backups and percussion.
The Georgia-native’s songwriting is often reflective of his landscape, with songs like “Heaven on the Beach with You” and “Going to the Ocean” featuring literal references to the landscape. According to his website, the easygoing, “sun-faded AM gold” quality completed the vision, giving the music the quality of a fond memory of a cool vacation.
The set itself felt like a vacation; Folsom took the crowd with him to another place, the show’s relaxed atmosphere pairing with the pleasant weather outside. Audience members put phones away and leaned into the music, and there was no invisible barrier between the performers and the audience. Folsom and Garwood shared a choreographed dance during “Strolling Along,” while Bon and Albert danced among the crowd for several songs.
Folsom left a message for his Columbus fans.
“My dream has come true, and now I’m on a mission to share it – and encourage others,” Folsom said.
