BEGIN:VCALENDAR VERSION:2.0 PRODID:-//wp-events-plugin.com//7.4.0.1//EN TZID:America/New_York X-WR-TIMEZONE:America/New_York BEGIN:VEVENT UID:157474@kingstonhappenings.org DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20261108T000000 DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20261108T000000 DTSTAMP:20260716T132114Z URL:https://kingstonhappenings.org/events/willi-carlisle-at-assembly-kings ton-ny/ SUMMARY:Willi Carlisle at Assembly - Kingston\, NY DESCRIPTION:https://www.tixr.com/groups/assembly/events/willi-carlisle-1990 80\n\nWILLI CARLISLE\n\nWith a heavy-duty catalog of new material for a ca reer first double album\, The Universal Bubba marks a half dozen releases for folksinger Willi Carlisle and reaches new heights with the added accel erant of first time producer Tyler Childers. In an all-time DIY effort\, C hilders and his band convened to a makeshift home studio nestled in the By water District of New Orleans for two weeks to cut 17 tracks that expand C arlisle’s sonic scrapbook and capture the off-kilter characters living i n his songs.\n\n“I think this one goes to outer space\,” says Carlisle . “I think this is the widest range of influences that I’ve ever had. It touches on funk\, it touches on Americana\, Cajun\, oldtime\, and exper imental music.” With Childers’ band behind him\, Carlisle embraced the freedom to wander across genres both familiar and new\, testing out instr umentation and toying with the surreality of traditions being turned on th eir head. “It feels like getting drunk at the Civil War reenactment\, or cruising at the cattle auction\, or doing molly at the square dance\,” says Carlisle. “It’s the first time I’ve ever used synthesizers and double electric guitars. There’s also more fretless 19th century style b anjo on it than any record I’ve ever made.”\nExploration aside\, Carli sle’s mission as a folksinger largely remains the same - documenting the stories and struggles of the people and balancing the humor and hope of e xistence. “I want to make a universal folk music. Songs for all kinds of weirdos\,” says Carlisle. “With the idea that there is nobody that do esn’t have folk 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. That if we feel despair\, we don’t need to because there ’s so much good work to do.”\n\nEver-working and ever-building\, Carli sle’s can-do attitude for crafting songs comes in many forms on this alb um heavily inspired by the DIY ethos.\nFilled with banjo and fiddle\, albu m opener “The Mason Jar at the Center of the World” arrived well trave led - being written while on tour with Childers across six shows in Austra lia as the whispers of their collaboration were just beginning. Following a conversation with soon to be featured multi-instrumentalist Jesse Wells (affectionately called “The Professor”) about traditional musicians ba ck home\, completion of the track was aided by a snort of moonshine in an Australian motel room and an old poem from Wallace Stevens. “Smash three or four folk songs against a poem and add some hard traveling\, you get a song\,” says Carlisle. “Stuff’s intertextual like that.”\n\nA top candidate for encapsulating the energy of The Universal Bubba\, “Gas St ation” is a driving recollection of life on the road with a sing-along c horus. Created largely on the fly and beginning with Childers’ joking ab out getting in a “knife fight at apple day\,” the end result was Carli sle’s only co-write with his producer on the record. “We sat in a circ le with pen\, paper\, instruments\,” says Carlisle\, “Tyler suggested\ , ‘goodle days’ instead of ‘good old days.’ We kept shaping verses \, agreeing that my choruses were working. Suddenly I realized\, this was a co-write! But the red light was already on. We were co-writing and recor ding at the same time. Wild as hell.”\n\nThe first half of The Universal Bubba contains the blistering ballad about hard work and hard fought love in “Use Me Up\,” the honky-tonk nighthawk salutation of “Good Morni ng\, Midnight\,” and the rocking of “Hare-Krishnuts” on the absurd a nd smoky groover “Marlboro Vinyasa.” “Yoga breathing exercises and c igarettes\,” says Carlisle. “What an American thing\, to find the whee l of samsara in a pint glass!”\n\nJust before the flip side lie the anar chist anthem “The Master’s Hammer” and superbly sinister “Contact High.” Of the former\, Childers wanted a pure\, essential folk song ring ing out with harmonica\, banjo and three part harmonies. ”I’m trying t o boil my ideology down into something I can sing for my friends\, a kind of reminder of who you’re trying to be\,” says Carlisle.\nServing as t he last gasp before intermission and first howl into the homestretch of th e record\, Carlisle introduces “the universal bubba” in two parts: “ The Universal Bubba\, Part One” - “for the booty-shakin’ rock and ro llers and their pals” and “The Universal Bubba\, Part Two” - “for the small town hell raisers\, the unofficial mayors.”\n\n“The universa l bubba is somebody who can fix anything\,” says Carlisle. “Somebody w ho is good for just about anything. Everywhere I go I meet these giant peo ple - and what I mean is these men and women and folks who can do it all t hemselves. Something that’s really struck me about traveling around the world is that everywhere you go there are people who are tirelessly workin g to make things a little bit better without succumbing to modernity’s p itfalls. They’re somebody who has enough\, and if it wasn’t enough the y would make it enough.”\nIntended to give glory to the spirited do-it-y ourselfers corralling their own cosmos into being\, the title tracks’ ch aracters are not far off from Carlisle’s accomplishment with this projec t.\n\n“This is the sort of person I want to be\, and is the reason I’m a multi-instrumental folk singer with a lot of influences\,” says Carli sle. “On this record I’m playing banjo\, guitar\, fiddle\, harmonica. Writing out honky-tonk songs\, proper folks songs\, stuff like that - I wa nt to be able to do it all myself and be in touch with the kind of music t hat universal bubbas might be interested in.”\nWith plenty of room to st retch across styles\, The Universal Bubba continues with songs of great em bellishment and somber tales on its latter half. “She Only Loves Horses ” is a comical but forlorn Western about unrequited affection for a hors e-obsessed woman. Sticking to the deepest depths of his folk roots\, “Di tchdigger’s Song (Dust and the Devil)” is Carlisle’s ode to unskille d labor and self-prescribed spirituality.\n\n“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. “Paganis ms. A kind of Kabbalah. Cold beer and the apostles\, pop country and boots traps. I saw a guy kill a rattlesnake and take it home to eat it and absor b its power. I saw a guy singing to make it rain\, and I knew a guy who re cited dirty limericks to me daily. I wrote this from their perspective.” \nSpanning a range of emotions while the band sways along\, “Sadly Enorm ous\, Enormously Sad” offers an alternate look at the world from Carlisl e’s perspective as a six foot four and 300 pound man. “I love that son gwriters like John Prine\, Micheal Hurley\, and Todd Snider made people la ugh\, cry\, and think in the same song\, so that’s my target here\,” s ays Carlisle.\n\nA sincere account of searching for purpose over the cours e of his wandering\, “I Ain’t Crazy” is Carlisle’s oldest song on the record and one that beautifully leads off the last five tracks of the album. What follows is a trio of tunes that tackle Roger Miller-esque tong ue-twisters in “Red Leather\, Yellow Leather\,” a sprinkle of local fl avor on the “big hollered Cajun ballad” “Old Milwaukee Onestep” (w ith one of Carlisle’s heroes\, Grammy winning Andre Michot on accordion) \, and the unexpected arrival of a special guest on the starry-eyed love s ong “Bigger’n Dallas.”\n\n“We were wandering around New Orleans\, taking a tiny break from our 12 hour recording sessions. Somebody spotted Amanda Shires on the street\, partying with some friends\,” says Carlisl e. “We asked her cold if she wanted to sing a song\, and she was a delig ht\, all floral and sentimental in the studio for a half an hour. Excellen t luck\, and a good omen for the young lovers in the song.”\nWith a maca bre sense of humor\, album closer “Golden Dragon Buffet” lists Carlisl e’s last requests to ceremonially serve his remains at an all you can ea t restaurant amongst his mourners. “You try to write folk songs that tal k about real people\, what we really do. I personally spend a lot of time having existential crises at Chinese buffets in small towns\,” says Carl isle. “There are plenty of songs about drug addiction and booze but I’ ve never heard a truly vulnerable song about eating too much\, so I set ou t to write one. It’s a way a lot of us die.”\nTaking on a project of t his size with Tyler Childers as debut producer requires hard work\, camara derie and supreme self confidence. Also the otherworldly talent of musicia ns like the aforementioned Wells\, guitarist CJ Cain\, bassist Craig Burle tic and many other supporters and players. Undeterred by the challenge and grounded in his beliefs\, Carlisle has proved that it really does “take a Universal Bubba doin’ it for themselves.”\n\n“You don’t need pe rmission to make something beautiful\,” says Carlisle. “You just need kindness\, pals and elbow grease.” ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://kingstonhappenings.org/wp-content/upload s/2026/07/Portrait-BLANK-for-VENUE-Tour-4x5-1.jpg CATEGORIES:@Featured,Music LOCATION:Assembly\, 236 Wall St. 3rd Floor\, KINGSTON\, NY\, 12401\, United States GEO:41.931738;-74.018648 X-APPLE-STRUCTURED-LOCATION;VALUE=URI;X-ADDRESS=236 Wall St. 3rd Floor\, KI NGSTON\, NY\, 12401\, United States;X-APPLE-RADIUS=100;X-TITLE=Assembly:ge o:41.931738,-74.018648 END:VEVENT BEGIN:VTIMEZONE TZID:America/New_York X-LIC-LOCATION:America/New_York BEGIN:STANDARD DTSTART:20261101T010000 TZOFFSETFROM:-0400 TZOFFSETTO:-0500 TZNAME:EST END:STANDARD END:VTIMEZONE END:VCALENDAR