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SUMMARY:Willi Carlisle - The Universal Bubba Tour
DTSTART:20261105T000000Z
DTEND:20261105T030000Z
DTSTAMP:20260818T205138Z
UID:event-65@paradisecitymusic
DESCRIPTION:With a heavy-duty catalog of new material for a career first d
 ouble album\, The Universal Bubba marks a half dozen releases for folksing
 er Willi Carlisle and reaches new heights with the added accelerant of fir
 st time producer Tyler Childers. In an all-time DIY effort\, Childers and 
 his band convened to a makeshift home studio nestled in the Bywater Distri
 ct of New Orleans for two weeks to cut 17 tracks that expand Carlisle’s 
 sonic scrapbook and capture the off-kilter characters living in his songs.
  “I think this one goes to outer space\,” says Carlisle. “I think th
 is is the widest range of influences that I’ve ever had. It touches on f
 unk\, it touches on Americana\, Cajun\, oldtime\, and experimental music.
 ” With Childers’ band behind him\, Carlisle embraced the freedom to wa
 nder across genres both familiar and new\, testing out instrumentation and
  toying with the surreality of traditions being turned on their head. “I
 t feels like getting drunk at the Civil War reenactment\, or cruising at t
 he cattle auction\, or doing molly at the square dance\,” says Carlisle.
  “It’s the first time I’ve ever used synthesizers and double electri
 c guitars. There’s also more fretless 19th century style banjo on it tha
 n any record I’ve ever made.”Exploration aside\, Carlisle’s mission 
 as a folksinger largely remains the same - documenting the stories and str
 uggles of the people and balancing the humor and hope of existence. “I w
 ant to make a universal folk music. Songs for all kinds of weirdos\,” sa
 ys Carlisle. “With the idea that there is nobody that doesn’t have fol
 k songs and everyone deserves folk songs. I want to write songs that prove
  the old weird America didn’t go anywhere\, that we are living and dying
  for it everyday. I believe there’s noble work to do in that context. Th
 at if we feel despair\, we don’t need to because there’s so much good 
 work to do.”Ever-working and ever-building\, Carlisle’s can-do attitud
 e for crafting songs comes in many forms on this album heavily inspired by
  the DIY ethos.Filled with banjo and fiddle\, album opener “The Mason Ja
 r at the Center of the World” arrived well traveled - being written whil
 e on tour with Childers across six shows in Australia as the whispers of t
 heir collaboration were just beginning. Following a conversation with soon
  to be featured multi-instrumentalist Jesse Wells (affectionately called 
 “The Professor”) about traditional musicians back home\, completion of
  the track was aided by a snort of moonshine in an Australian motel room a
 nd an old poem from Wallace Stevens. “Smash three or four folk songs aga
 inst a poem and add some hard traveling\, you get a song\,” says Carlisl
 e. “Stuff’s intertextual like that.”A top candidate for encapsulatin
 g the energy of The Universal Bubba\, “Gas Station” is a driving recol
 lection of life on the road with a sing-along chorus. Created largely on t
 he fly and beginning with Childers’ joking about getting in a “knife f
 ight at apple day\,” the end result was Carlisle’s only co-write with 
 his producer on the record. “We sat in a circle with pen\, paper\, instr
 uments\,” says Carlisle\, “Tyler suggested\, ‘goodle days’ instead
  of ‘good old days.’ We kept shaping verses\, agreeing that my choruse
 s were working. Suddenly I realized\, this was a co-write! But the red lig
 ht was already on. We were co-writing and recording at the same time. Wild
  as hell.” The first half of The Universal Bubba contains the blistering
  ballad about hard work and hard fought love in “Use Me Up\,” the honk
 y-tonk nighthawk salutation of “Good Morning\, Midnight\,” and the roc
 king of “Hare-Krishnuts” on the absurd and smoky groover “Marlboro V
 inyasa.” “Yoga breathing exercises and cigarettes\,” says Carlisle. 
 “What an American thing\, to find the wheel of samsara in a pint glass!
 ” Just before the flip side lie the anarchist anthem “The Master’s H
 ammer” and superbly sinister “Contact High.” Of the former\, Childer
 s wanted a pure\, essential folk song ringing out with harmonica\, banjo a
 nd three part harmonies. ”I’m trying to boil my ideology down into som
 ething I can sing for my friends\, a kind of reminder of who you’re tryi
 ng to be\,” says Carlisle.Serving as the last gasp before intermission a
 nd first howl into the homestretch of the record\, Carlisle introduces “
 the universal bubba” in two parts: “The Universal Bubba\, Part One” 
 - “for the booty-shakin’ rock and rollers and their pals” and “The
  Universal Bubba\, Part Two” - “for the small town hell raisers\, the 
 unofficial mayors.”“The universal bubba is somebody who can fix anythi
 ng\,” says Carlisle. “Somebody who is good for just about anything. Ev
 erywhere I go I meet these giant people - and what I mean is these men and
  women and folks who can do it all themselves. Something that’s really s
 truck me about traveling around the world is that everywhere you go there 
 are people who are tirelessly working to make things a little bit better w
 ithout succumbing to modernity’s pitfalls. They’re somebody who has en
 ough\, and if it wasn’t enough they would make it enough.”Intended to 
 give glory to the spirited do-it-yourselfers corralling their own cosmos i
 nto being\, the title tracks’ characters are not far off from Carlisle
 ’s accomplishment with this project.“This is the sort of person I want
  to be\, and is the reason I’m a multi-instrumental folk singer with a l
 ot of influences\,” says Carlisle. “On this record I’m playing banjo
 \, guitar\, fiddle\, harmonica. Writing out honky-tonk songs\, proper folk
 s songs\, stuff like that - I want to be able to do it all myself and be i
 n touch with the kind of music that universal bubbas might be interested i
 n.”With plenty of room to stretch across styles\, The Universal Bubba co
 ntinues with songs of great embellishment and somber tales on its latter h
 alf. “She Only Loves Horses” is a comical but forlorn Western about un
 requited affection for a horse-obsessed woman. Sticking to the deepest dep
 ths of his folk roots\, “Ditchdigger’s Song (Dust and the Devil)” is
  Carlisle’s ode to unskilled labor and self-prescribed spirituality. “
 During twelve hour shifts of backbreaking and boring work\, you’d get to
  talking\, and I’d find that a lot of these guys had peculiar ideas\,”
  says Carlisle. “Paganisms. A kind of Kabbalah. Cold beer and the apostl
 es\, pop country and bootstraps. I saw a guy kill a rattlesnake and take i
 t home to eat it and absorb its power. I saw a guy singing to make it rain
 \, and I knew a guy who recited dirty limericks to me daily. I wrote this 
 from their perspective.\nTickets: https://ironhorse.org/shows\nFull listin
 g: https://paradisecitymusic.org/show/65
LOCATION:Iron Horse Music Hall\, 18 Center St.\, Northampton\, MA
URL:https://paradisecitymusic.org/show/65
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