Willi Carlisle earned Artist To Watch honors for last year's Critterland. It's time to keep watching because the rootsy Arkansas singer-songwriter is already ready to roll out another album. Winged Victory, set for release in June, features some folk traditionals and a cover of Richard Thompson's "Beeswing." There are also songs called "Big Butt Billy" and "Cryin' These Cocksucking Tears." But our first taste of the tracklist is a bluegrass original called "Work Is Work," on which Carlisle sings about the value of hard labor: "Work is work, or it wouldn't pay."
A statement from Carlisle:
With "Work is Work," I wanted to write a bluegrass tune, and I wanted to try to make a direct address of my own [à la the album's opening cover of 'We Have Fed You All For 1000 Years' written by an anonymous Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) worker]. I believe that after a certain point of creature comfort and stability, money doesn’t make you happier. So what are we doing with our precious time? I wrote it in a motel room along the Mississippi River. The room was full of bedbugs, and I’d just left New Orleans, a city that seems to be thriving even as it falls into the ocean. I finished the song in about an hour. I want people to know that they aren’t free from the terrible things that work does to people, from the awful transmutation of labor into money, but that the sacrifice isn’t meaningless.
Listen below.
TRACKLIST:
01 "We Have Fed You All For 1000 Years"
02 "Wildflowers Growin'"
03 "Winged Victory"
04 "The Cottonwood Tree"
05 "Cryin' These Cocksucking Tears"
06 "The Cottonwood Polka"
07 "Work Is Work"
08 "Sound And Fury"
09 "Beeswing"
10 "Big Butt Billy"
11 "Old Bill Pickett"
Winged Victory is out 6/27 via Signature Sounds. Pre-order it here.
