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Willi Carlisle's 'Peculiar' celebration of queer culture and Missouri's flyover country

Willi Carlisle is worth seeking out, Roger Catlin wrote for The Washington Post in 2017; "Carlisle has a poetry in describing songs passed down through generations as a most precious cultural commodity, and a passion and immediacy in performing them."
Scott Rohr
Willi Carlisle is worth seeking out, Roger Catlin wrote for The Washington Post in 2017; "Carlisle has a poetry in describing songs passed down through generations as a most precious cultural commodity, and a passion and immediacy in performing them."

The outsider troubadour, who’s based in the Ozarks, has steadily gained a following in Kansas City and abroad. His songs about Wal Mart and small-town America are bringing new themes into the folk music tradition.

More than 200 people paid $15 to hear Willi Carlisle play a solo show at Knuckleheads on what’s usually a slow Sunday night in April. That’s an impressive turnout for the outsider artist, who didn’t disappoint.

It was the biggest audience the Ozarks-based musician has attracted in Kansas City. The support reflects the attention Carlisle is receiving internationally for his uncommon approach to folk music.

“I was born and raised in Kansas,” Carlisle says. “I got to Arkansas maybe 12 years ago.”

Carlisle’s uncle Dr. Ralph W. Hall remembers his nephew stood out as an imposing teen athlete.

“He’s a big guy,” Hall says. “He took to football very well — because he did like to hit people.”

That physicality didn’t translate to his initial path in poetry. And Carlisle says his true love was always music.

The neophyte troubadour began commuting to Kansas City ten years ago.

“The Westport Saloon was an incredibly important place,” Carlisle recalls. “They allowed me to play on Monday nights for next-to-nobody. That was a place that was like a proving ground. I didn't have the right gear. I didn't know what I was doing.”

The opportunity changed his life.

“I was able in Kansas City to tell myself for the first time, ‘look: I can drive four hours away from where I currently lay my head, sleep above a dirty bar room and sing for my supper,’” Carlisle marvels.

Carlisle gradually developed a following as he honed his songwriting and became proficient on guitar, fiddle, accordion, banjo and harmonica.

“I was telling myself a couple years ago I’m really proud to be a journeyman, and what I want to do is I want to be a master at it,” he insists.

The self-talk could be considered self-deprecation.

At Knuckleheads in April, he told fans he’s at the vanguard of “a weird little revolution in folk music.”

The title track of his 2022 album, “Peculiar, Missouri,” is about an existential crisis in a big box retailer.

“The song teases small-town America a little bit,” he says. “It also talks about a Walmart that is not actually in Peculiar, Missouri, but is about 15 minutes away. That song is about the sacredness of our flyover spaces, of the places that you might not think you could belong.”

The composition has an alternate pronunciation, too, Carlisle says.

“I started hearing people talking about queer joy and, as a queer person, I was kind of like, ‘What is queer joy and how do I get some of it?’” he elaborates. “I thought if I was making a record that was both codedly and directly queer in some ways, then it was not about queer joy at all, but it was about ‘peculiar misery.’”

Willi Carlisle's 2022 release, "Peculiar, Missouri," was produced by Grammy-winning engineer and Cajun musician Joel Savoy in rural Louisiana.
Free Dirt Records
Willi Carlisle's 2022 release, "Peculiar, Missouri," was produced by Grammy-winning engineer and Cajun musician Joel Savoy in rural Louisiana.

Carlisle’s boldness contributed to rapturous reviews for the album. Proclaiming it as “one of the finest albums of the year,” a critic for the website Americana UK suggests “Peculiar, Missouri” is “bravely challenging the stereotypical image of the cowboy singer songwriter.” Steven Wine wrote for the Associated Press that “Carlisle’s sharp satire and literary bent separate him from the populist pack.”

John Wade shares that enthusiasm. The concert at Knuckleheads was the latest in a long string of Carlisle shows he and his wife have attended. The Kansas City area resident says “any time he’s within a three-, four-hour drive we go see him.”

He thinks Carlisle is part “a newer movement of country and folk singers. … They’re singing about different lifestyles and open sexuality and some of these other things that really resonate with me.”

For fans like Wade, Carlisle provides commonplace joy, not peculiar misery.

A relentless tour schedule helps Carlisle spread his message. He’s barnstorming Europe in June and is featured at the Newport Folk Festival in July, a potentially career-changing show.

Still, his goals are modest.

“I would like to have enough money to pay for an emergency,” Carlisle admits. “And I would like to maybe just pinch the butt of the middle class — just like a little bit, eventually.”

There’s nothing peculiar about that.

KCUR contributor Bill Brownlee blogs about Kansas City's jazz scene at plasticsax.com.
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