Willi Carlisle’s Critterland frames narratives personal (the title track) and peripheral (“Dry County Dust”). We recently spoke with the Midwest native about the new collection, studying at the University of Arkansas and writing during the pandemic.
“Critterland begins with the pandemic,” Carlisle says. “I tried and failed to move onto an intentional community in rural Arkansas. I realized that there were parts of my brain that weren’t being accessed while I was spending time out there.”
Alt-Country Specialty Chart: Were you productive during the pandemic itself?
Willi Carlisle: I wrote a ton, but it was goop. The writing was like organizing clay into lumps if I were a sculptor. I was making shapes that I’m now making into actual sculptures. Some was productive, but some wasn’t. I realized my personal freedoms had been taken up by your standard brain rot like social media and television. There were stories kicking around that I’ve been trying to bury or move on from. I wanted to write songs about those feelings and times on Critterland.
Explain the album title Critterland.
I needed a name for the place. I didn’t want to just use the actual name of the intentional community, which is called Meadowcreek in Stone County, Arkansas. I called it Critterland because all of these animals were coming out of the woods the first couple nights I stayed out there. It was the first time I had lived in a place for any length of time that was more the property of the animals than yours. That was interesting to get used to.
The narrator gets arrested in the title track. What did you get busted for?
Lord. Just pot. Nothing hardcore fun or intense. I was teaching at a community college and nearly lost the job. The writing was on the wall at that moment that I had to leave that work behind. They weren’t gonna put up with me and I wasn’t very good at the job. I had gained a lot of weight, was doing a lot of drugs and was bored. Folk singing was what I really wanted to do. Honestly, getting arrested was one of the best things that happened to me.
Did you base a common lyrical theme around that intentional community?
Not really, but it is based around songs that I have avoided singing or wanted to do for a long time but didn’t feel courageous enough to do. Trying out that intentional community was a big personal leap for me. I wanted to write songs that were more leaps of faith and asking people to listen to more difficult songs. I’ve been really pleased with the payoffs from those risks.
Tell the story behind writing ‘Dry County Dust.’
“Dry County Dust” is a little of someone else’s true story and a little invention. You end up creating characters out of several different scenarios in many Americana songs. My own grandmother is the character in that song in my estimation. She was always forgiving and would never ask questions about what trouble I was in. I was imagining if my friends had a safe place to go and be like that while they were suffering.
I read that you have an MFA in poetry. Where did you go to grad school?
The University of Arkansas. I knew I wanted to play banjo and old-time music and fiddle and needed a way to get there. My first leap of faith in life was to go to a liberal arts college. I felt pretty out of place when I was there. It was amazing as an artist, but as a person I was from a small town and wasn’t used to being around people who wanted to doctors and lawyers. I was just looking to move on with life and didn’t want to have more bad jobs. So, I applied and got in at West Virginia and Arkansas.
I already had my banjo and fiddle teachers picked out at both places. I went to Arkansas because there were teaching jobs available. I could teach and pay my way through school at the same time. So, my folk music and writing journeys were happening at the same time. I didn’t really enjoy graduate school that much because I found that I wanted to be a folk singer much more than I wanted to be a page poet. I’m really grateful I did.
Didn’t Lucinda’s dad Miller Williams teach at the University of Arkansas?
Oh man. Absolutely. I got there and was like, “Whoa, are you serious? Is she ever around?” Miller Williams was one reason I wanted to go there. There’s a whole pantheon of poets in the same way you have local folk singers and local ways of knowing fiddle tunes. There are also local poets and they all comprise this beautiful oral tradition that lived in Arkansas. I would go into bars and be like, “I know this poet drank here because it’s in his poem.” I urinated in a bar in Northwest Arkansas and was like, “I know Frank Stanford, one of my favorite poets, pissed in this bar.”
Talk about working with Darrell Scott as your producer.
Darrell is a genius. We actually talked about poetry and songs for the whole first night instead of working on the record and we only had three days. We were having so much fun. The whole record with two exceptions is just Darrell and me playing instruments. We were playing at the same time with two microphones with a little overdubbing. There was a lot of cards-on-the-table critique. He would say, “I don’t think this works for this song” or “I don’t think this tempo works for this song.” We had good faith discussions in a really honest, open and a little adversarial manner. I learned a lot in three days. Darrell was very patient.
– Brian T. Atkinson
CHART CLIMBER
Artist: Sarah Jarosz
Hometown: Wimberley, Texas
Album: Polaroid Lovers
Release Date: January 26, 2024
Record Label: Rounder Records
Artist Website: sarahjarosz.com
On writing the album: “Polaroid Lovers was very much assisted by the people that I was co-writing with. I was able to more easily slip into trying to write the songs from a more universal perspective by co-writing” – Sarah Jarosz
- Brian T. Atkinson
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