"I Just Couldn't Leave it There": A Quick Conversation with Willi Carlisle
The folksinger talks about touring, death, and some other things.
By Jonah Covell
Try not to be fooled by the title or the jubilant possum on the cover. Critterland is intense. The ten songs on Willi Carlisle’s 3rd record show the formerly Arkansas-based songwriter covering his trademark themes of violence, healing, family histories, and queerness with a sustained level of focus and precision throughout. I got the chance to ask Carlisle a few quick questions before he headed out touring in support of the album. He’ll be at Mahall’s in Lakewood on February 4th.
I wanted to ask about the role Fayetteville and Northwest Arkansas played in turning you from poet to pro folksinger. Were you hooked on music before you arrived? How influenced by the Fayetteville scene were you?
Poet and folksinger are the same thing, and Arkansas proved that to me. The poets I met, sang with, drank with, and read with were equally inspiring as the musicians I started playing with once weekly. Usually it was folks a lot older than me in both cases. I’d read a book of poetry and go to a couple of jam sessions every week. I owe a lot to the DIY scene of Northwest Arkansas, and the gold-rush of Wally-World Tax-Haven non profit organizations that allowed me to sing and make silly plays.
What's the off-day (no shows, no album in the works) Will Carlisle practice routine?
Well, I always have an album in the works! I’m often playing traditional music at home, though. I can’t bring every instrument on tour, so I spend a lot of time at home revisiting old tunes— breakdowns, polkas, etc. Stuff that might not interest crowds but interests me personally.
How has the rehearsal process been for this tour? Has touring with a full band led to method adjustments?
It’s been incredible. I think we’re going to be one of the best bands in folk music pretty damn quickly. We’ve got a 20 foot backdrop. A little puppet show. Crazy transitions. Should be intense, fun, and hilarious.
How much did your vision for the album change from when you arrived in-studio up till now?
Conceptually? Not at all. I knew “Critterland” was going to be exactly what it turned out to be visually and thematically – I had the vision for the cover a couple of years ago. But sound-wise? A fair bit! I’ve always got more songs than an album can handle, so the process of narrowing them down takes a long time. I think we figured there’d be 12 songs, not 10. Things moved around a little, arrangements changed to create space and allow listeners time for reflection.
Your zine from last fall mentions that you wrote most of these songs in a deadline-induced burst - is that true of the entire record?
Far from it! A couple songs are almost a decade old, which is wild to me. I just enjoy writing and deadlines— I find they pump me up instead of knock me down. So when we had time to work on the record, I knew I had to write the best songs in a month or so. It was so much goddamn fun.
This album is really well sequenced - who was behind those choices and how were they made?
Darrell and I made those choices on the spot! We knew we’d have to sequence carefully for the vinyl. It’s very important to me that albums are fun to listen to in-order, even if most streaming apps don’t give a damn about it.
What was the impetus behind setting the "Two-Headed Calf" to music, and what made you change Gilpin’s calf to a lamb in your version?
“Two Headed Calf” is a marvelous short poem by Laura Gilpin, and my own song “Two Headed Lamb” is a major riff. As I explored Gilpin’s poem with friends and strangers, it’s been no surprise that “Two-Headed Calf” seems well-known in both rural and trans communities and their significant cross-section. And why not? It’s a poem about a creature too beautiful for this world, who’s magisterial dimorphism and tragic death conjures real-world magic. Someone born feeling as if they have no gender, two genders, the wrong gender, might feel this magic themselves. So would someone who’s pulled an ailing calf from the womb of their beloved milk cow with a rope or their bare hands.
When setting the poem to music (truly just in the joy and privacy of my own home, not to play for audiences), I felt like the original poem was missing something: an antagonist, a contrast. There is still very real danger in being different in this world, and the odd or different or disabled are the ones most often culled or taken advantage of by the wolves of the world. I think that Gilpin’s pastoral poem is beautiful in its simplicity, but I couldn’t just leave it there. So, I made the calf into a lamb, the universal sign of innocence, and made it a martyr for the magic in the world, not just a brief miracle.
When you start writing a song do you know how autobiographical it'll end up?
Never. I’m suspicious of my own memory, and try to make sure I don’t rely on my own experiences too much. I try to read novels and talk to folks to supplement my own boring life and thoughts.
After a few listens, it stands out that the first and last songs on the album both deal with characters willingly choosing violent deaths. (“I want my rifle on my shoulder, my lover by my side / I want to be the kind of man that stands his ground and dies”) Why did you choose these (very different) instances of violence to bookend the album?
Death is our only certainty! How we meet it is so often out of our control, even if there are things worth dying for. Both songs have characters ready to sacrifice for their beliefs, but the latter (“The Money Grows on Trees”) character dies an outlaw’s death, and is a victim of his own greed. Both are ready to go down guns blazing. Most of this record deals with death, but this specific rhetoric of violent uprising is one that I’ve heard from both sides of the political spectrum, and I can’t shake it, so I let it bookend the record. In the war that may come, will it be between the haves and the have nots? Or just another partisan affair of greed and bloodshed?
Critterland is out now on Signature Sounds.