Friday Folk Music Show at the Performing Arts Center | The music
Folksinger Willi Carlisle will perform live on Friday September 20 at the Trinity Alps Performing Arts Center, Weaverville. Show time is at 7 p.m. Tickets are $12 each, $20 per couple, or $30 for the whole family.
Carlisle is an Arkansas-based singer and storyteller. With years of collecting folklore, performing square dances, mentoring old masters, and tirelessly touring festivals, honky-tonks, and house concerts, Carlisle is a multi-faceted writer, performer, and instrumentalist with a big voice, a banjo, a fiddle, a guitar, button box and more.
Following his early music debut in 2015 with Allison Williams (Old Ties) and several Ozarks-focused folk shows, Carlisle released a debut EP of original songs, “Too Nice to Mean Much”, in June 2016. After a year of While on tour, Willi sat down with producer and director Joseph Fletcher to craft his award-winning piece of folk music, “There Ain’t No More.” During the 2017-2018 touring season, the one-man storytelling and folk music show won 10 awards and performed more than 100 times at festivals, colleges and arts centers. Willi then returned to Arkansas to record “To Tell You the Truth”, a stripped down live album of 12 folk and original songs that the Arkansas Democrat Gazette says will “suffice it, lyrically and musically”.
In the meantime, he has published his fieldwork and written music in places such as The Journal of American Folklore.
His final year of touring will take him from Maine to California, Texas to Manitoba, Alaska to the UK, and he occasionally performs on stage with Grammy-nominated artists like Dom Flemons, Mary Gauthier and Los Texmaniacs. or with rockers like Cory Branan and Shawn James.
With a style forged in the fire of early Ozark music and its ever-growing collection of early music, Carlisle’s musical stories boo, stomp, and ramble with banjo turns, rhythmic bones, grumps, and bad jokes. .
Carlisle has been recognized for his versatility with performances at Fayetteville Roots Festival, Pickin’ On Fest, The Focal Point, Homeroutes, The Westport Roots Festival, Thacker Mountain Radio, AmericanaFest UK, The Ozark Heritage Festival and more.
