Few qualities are as prized by music fans as authenticity. While authenticity is impossible to define in a truly objective sense, and presents itself differently across different scenes, sounds and eras, there is nothing more moving than an artist conveying truth through their own unique lens. Intangible and hard to define as it may be, authenticity is something fans gravitate towards and can pick up quickly. Few artists in the year 2025 radiate authenticity like folk singer, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist Willi Carlisle. Whether he’s singing a century-old labor anthem, covering a folk-rock era classic, or performing one of his own poignant compositions, Carlisle has a voice and perspective that is distinctly his own and immediately recognizable.
On his most recent release, Winged Victory, Carlisle remains in fine form. Mixing old folk songs with crafty originals and the occasional cover, Carlisle delivers all of it with the passion and wit that have become his signature. Though the record is, like most of Carlisle’s work, rooted primarily in folk music (with a touch of bluegrass), it is more notable for the heart it’s delivered with than any particular stylistic innovation. That heart is at the core of what Willi does, on record and on stage.
As good as Winged Victory, and his previous records are though, it’s Carlisle’s live show that has become the stuff of legend. Often (though not always) performing solo, Carlisle’s voice, presence, and storytelling are unmatched. With palpable warmth and charisma about him, Carlisle exudes that elusive quality of authenticity. The presence and energy Carlisle brings to the stage elevates the great songs he performs and creates a truly special experience for the audience, one that’s easy to connect to, no matter the venue or crowd size.
Twin cities audiences will have another chance to catch Carlisle Tuesday night at the Fine Line. If his recent shows in the region (At the turf club, and the Blue Ox festival, among others), are to be any indication, it will be a memorable one.
Below is an Interview with Willi Carlisle. The following has been edited for Consistency.
Music In Minnesota: I want to start by asking about your journey. I’m curious how you initially got into music, and then how you got into folk music in particular.
Willi Carlisle: My family was pretty musical insofar as my dad was a musician when I was a kid or rather had been a musician. There were rumors about pot smoking and good times and ‘back when dad was a rockstar’ types of things. And we had lots of old records in the house. When my folks were gone, we put on these records, a lot of which were old folk records. My dad played everything from classical trumpet in a symphony to bass in rock bands. He was kind of a Kansas working musician. The records were mostly obscure things, stuff picked up by somebody with a lot of special interests, so I was lucky. My Grandmother also played the recorder and a bunch of medieval instruments very well, which was kind of odd-she was totally self-taught. So, I just kind of grew up around it. When I was in high school, I was in choir and the moment I got to college I bought a guitar and started to play. I’d always been a lot more interested in country and folk music than anybody else in my family-it was just kind of in the atmosphere growing up in Kansas. By the time I moved out to rural Illinois, I was listening to bluegrass and folk and country exclusively. And then once I was in college and nobody was watching me or judging me (laughs), all bets were off. I knew this was what I wanted to do.
MIM: A couple questions stemming from that. You play so many instruments, was guitar the first? You also mentioned your singing and choir. I think you’re a phenomenal singer. Do you credit choir in any way with your voice or on-stage singing ability?
WC: I was lucky enough to have decent choir teachers and one great choir teacher. Public education did not fail me in that aspect. You get lucky in public schools, especially in rural places, if you’ve got one really good teacher. I was lucky with a couple. I had a really good English teacher, and I had a really good choir teacher. They just made it fun. Especially when you’re only interested in smoking pot and doing teenager things, it was really cool to have somebody making you interested in singing a scale properly.
As far as guitar goes, I started on guitar, but I picked up banjo in the first two years of playing guitar. I started playing harmonica a lot around the same time I got a guitar. I remember going to the shop on the second week or something and getting my first harmonica rack. So I always felt like I wanted to be multi-instrumental. The first time I played fiddle was maybe three years later, before I got out of college. Accordion was kind of a late add, I picked that up when I was maybe twenty-four or twenty-five. It’s crazy that it’s been ten years on accordion now, because that one still feels like it’s new to me in the weirdest way (laughs).
MIM: Do you still feel most comfortable on guitar?
WC: That’s a great question actually, I kind of think they all have their used. Guitar has taken the back seat for me for many years because it feels less novel. If I had to play only one instrument for the rest of my life, I’d probably play banjo or accordion. I couldn’t pick between the two, it would be a dead heat. I’m sure I’ll have another moment with guitar. I think I got a little tired of hearing the people around me in americana music play guitar all the same way. I was interested in finding textures that were quite a bit different. And I also got a little tired of people playing traditional blues music in a way that was either a copy of the record or that had nothing to do with the original version. And that’s just as a deep listener, I think “Man I want to do something different” and with banjo music, it’s the wild west. It’s goofy, nobody knows exactly where it fits. Really it’s the same with the accordion. There’s all kinds of different systems and styles and cross pollinations. And on banjo you have that funny short fifth string that drones and has so many weird possibilities.
MIM: I want to touch on a few of the a capella songs that you do, which I think are fantastic. I’m curious about the song “Sound and Fury.” I love your approach on that, it feels almost like a lost art that you’re doing on that. It’s not something you hear very often. What was the inspiration to put a song in that particular style on Winged Victory.
WC: Well I appreciate the kind words, because that’s my favorite on the record. I grew up listening to a lot of bluegrass. While It’s not strictly bluegrass, it borrows its melody from a few different hymns. I just kept thinking about Michael Hurley. What an example of a “First thought, best thought” guy. Like something goofy came into his head that was gonna be goofy from the time he was thirty until the time he was in his eighties. That song came out very quickly (laughs) and I had a lot of fun insisting that we use the bluegrass style arrangement of something that goofy to try to elevate it to gospel. I appreciate you saying it’s a lost art because in many ways it’s a new art but it’s using an old medium. It’s like you’re using the same technique as the mona to paint somebody slipping on a banana (laughs).
MIM: I had the opportunity to catch you at Blue Ox this year and I found the set very moving. One of the most powerful parts of the set was when you sang “Penny Evans.” I’m curious what drew you to that song. I know you also included it on a record as well.
WC: Well, let’s see. It’s time for American folk singers to sing anti-war songs again, if the time ever left. I’ve been singing that great song for a long time now. It was written by Steve Goodman and was written in 1970, I think. There’s a lot I could say about the song. It was based on the melody of a very old folk song that probably has roots in the Middle Ages melodically called “The Flying Cloud.” “The Flying Cloud,” I believe it was written about a slave ship called the flying cloud. It’s sung from the perspective of the people working on the slave ship. It’s not a spiritual or a song about the conditions of slavery, it’s kind of a pro-slavery ballad, if there can be such a thing. It does not age well, in short. But Steve Goodman, in the 1970’s, heard someone singing this ballad, possibly Louis Killin, one of the first trans folk singers in our community that used to sing the flying cloud, and made it work for their time period.
The song, as Steve Goodman Made it, “Penny Evans,” tells the story of a woman who has lost her husband and is widowed with her two children in the Vietnam war. She says “I’ve had two infant daughters, and I’m glad I’ll have no sons. If you say the war is over, I’ll say it’s just begun.” At the time when the pill and contraception was brand new, Steve Goodman used this character to essentially take her reproductive rights into her own hands and say “I’m not going to have any more kids, I don’t want anybody to go to war. I’m doing this as an act of protest” It’s a really lovely update of an old melody turning it into something brand new and timely. I guess I just found it fascinating that the song goes back that far and it’s only needed to be reinvented two or three times to serve our purposes 50 years later.
MIM: It’s profound to draw from something that deep.
WC: It’s fifty-five, sixty years old now. It’s an old song by our standards, but it goes back so much farther. I feel like that’s encouraging. If you’re worried like I am, that the world won’t survive another fifty or a hundred years. At the very least, there’s a rich history of people who are overcoming the same kind of issues as we are now.
MIM: I want to ask about your performance style. Your performance is so captivating and energetic. I imagine it’s very different performing as a one-man band compared to playing with a band or larger ensemble. Can you speak to some of your influences as a performer? It’s something you do very well.
WC: I guess I always liked Vaudeville and pub singers. I always liked guys who worked on their material a lot. Who thought of themselves as craftspeople. Folk Singing as a profession, as a calling as a craft, not just a thing you do on the porch. It is very different playing with people than playing alone. The way we try to do it is ‘by myself I’m a clown, with a band I’m a circus.’ We’ve just got more monkeys, lions, and rings of fire. That’s maybe really it. I take a lot of cues from older performers. I definitely view this art project as a piece of a bigger history than my own and hope to revise and modernize what happened in the nineteen twenties and thirties with the first folk revival in the U.S. and then in the sixties and seventies with the second folk revival. Here we are in our third folk revival-possibly the tail end, who knows, and I hope to hang my hat there in something that’s three generations deep that still keeps a foot in the nineteenth century.
