The songs on Willi Carlisle's new album are full of cowboys, dreamers, weirdos and misfits. There's also a donkey, after whom the album is named.
On Winged Victory, the Kansas native employs more than half a dozen instruments, addresses issues of class and pulls from both childhood memories as well as Shakespeare's Macbeth.
The 11 tracks on the album are a mix of originals and cover songs — drawing from traditional, uncredited folk songs ("We Have Fed You All for 1000 Years") to modern classics from the likes of Richard Thompson ("Beeswing") and American folk singer Mark Ross ("Old Bill Pickett"). Delicate moments can quickly turn toward stream-of-consciousness surrealism.
Carlisle's varied vocal style — which he says "verges from singing like a drag queen at a vaudeville show" to "a delicate whisper" — plays a key role. "I learned to sing by being in choirs in Kansas and in rural Illinois and also by calling square dances," Carlisle explains. "So, I've got a big voice and a little one." And he uses both, to full effect, on Winged Victory.
On the donkey named "Winged Victory"
Carlisle was at the Smithsonian Folklife Festival in Washington, D.C., with a bunch of friends who were representing the Ozarks, playing traditional tunes with "old folks and traditional artists and weavers and cooks," he says.
"I was being a true bad folklorist," Carlisle says. "I was drunk on moonshine, but also was taking copious notes." The group was talking about animals with funny names and one of his notes said: "A donkey named Winged Victory?" He'll never know if that donkey is real or imagined.
"And I just thought it was so funny," laughs Carlisle, "that I had to write a song about it."
On delivering a message through his songs
"I believe that a folk singer should be a dreamer with a long memory," Carlisle says.
Labor struggles and the working class have long been themes in Carlisle's repertoire. The first song on his new album is "We Have Fed You All for 1000 Years." Originally written by an "unknown proletariat," it's a traditional song from the labor movement that dates back to the beginning of the 20th Century.
"It's the first folk song I really fell in love with," says Carlisle. "It comes from ... a time when workers wanted to coexist with other wild leftist movements that were happening around the globe. When Zapatistas and miners might be sharing the same pamphlets."
He was a teenager when he first heard the tune, sung by anarchist folk singer Utah Phillips. And it stuck with him.
"It kind of started me down a pathway of learning about these working class folk songs," Carlisle says. "And in a world of big cowboy hats and bad politics, learning about people that were about kindness, unification and equity."
On his range of instruments
Carlisle plays — and tours with — a number of instruments: guitar, fiddle, harmonica, banjo, accordion, concertina, bouzouki and rhythm bones. So how does he choose?
"I try to let the instrument do the work," Carlisle says. "There's no money past the fifth fret."
By which he means, he tries to keep it simple at all times.
"I have kind of come to believe that simple is hard, simple is good," he says. "I play a lot of instruments but I would never claim to be an expert in any of them."
On "Wildflowers Growin,'" Carlisle let the bouzouki take the lead. "In this case, I was using one of my quietest voices," he explains, "and so a sweet, double course lute — it sounds like a big mandolin — was the right choice."
On giving a nod to Shakespeare
In Shakespeare's Macbeth, the title character, upon learning of his wife's death, says: "It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing."
Carlisle says he always thought about that line. "What if it's signifying nothing and it's great? What if it means nothing and that's wonderful?"
He wrote "Sound and Fury" as a four-part bluegrass gospel-style song.
"If you're going to try to make something new out of something old," Carlisle explains, "why not use the old good stuff, right?"
His philosophy? Take the best parts of bluegrass, slap some Shakespeare on it and have fun being an idiot about it all. "Try to find joy in what sometimes feels stodgy," Willi Carlisle says. "Even if it's beautiful."
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