Review: Willi Carlisle ‘The Magnolia Sessions’
This year it has been hard to get going, especially when pummelled daily by the 24/7 news cycle bringing fresh horrors into your home as humanity seems hellbent on dismantling itself in real time before our eyes. So far it has left me somewhat listless and experiencing a bout of writer’s block that I have had difficulty shaking. Amid all this turmoil, the chance to sit under Anti-Corp headquarters fabled Magnolia Tree has arisen to offer some old-school peace and calm in the form of country, folk and bluegrass singer-songwriter Willi Carlisle.
It seems, much like me, Anti-Corp mastermind Dan Emery has also been experiencing his own form of burnout, which has resulted in a two-year hiatus from the long-running series that he started back in 2020 and has featured such trailblazing artists as Lost Dog Street Band, The Hill Country Devil, Jade Brodie and Adam Stambaugh (to barely scratch the surface).
The latest instalment of The Magnolia Sessions, recorded under the titular tree in the Nashville compound that the label calls home, backed by the rising sounds of chirping insects, was recorded on the back of Carlisle’s critically acclaimed third album Critterland. The session was concluded/curtailed by the first drops of rain from what would become Hurricane Helene, which would decimate North Carolina and the surrounding areas.
In a marathon recording stint that (fortunately) defied the original schedule, Carlisle recorded eighty-four takes which were then whittled down to the finest eleven, and comprised of some of his favourite songs from, to state his own words, ‘archives, old folk songbooks, reel-to-reel machines, and (mostly) what I’ve heard my friends and mentors play’ using ‘a lot of tools I don’t get to use much: autoharps funky banjos’.
The session starts, as many of The Magnolia Sessions do, with a lighter track, almost serving as a warm-up. In this case, it is A Horse Named Bill, most famously recorded by David Grisman and Jerry Garcia. The frantic banjo-picking and fast-paced lyrical delivery sings of the absurdities of life contrasting against the low pulse of the insects in the background, highlighting Carlisle’s playing dexterity.
This is followed by the sombre, downbeat tones of the old British folk song Leatherwing Bat. The picked strings and the tongue-twisting lyrics are low with an air of sadness as he sings of the various creatures and their love and doomed courtship. Even the bright notes and the rich, warm resonance of the guitar tone can’t disguise the melancholia that creeps into the track and the stripped-down setting creates a stillness that focuses the delivery.
Pagan Rite sees Carlisle flexing his fingers with a brief instrumental that has a low, rhythmic thump underneath the fret acrobatics, before turning to the traditional Shaker song Love Is Little. Laidback, with a sawing squeezebox accompaniment, the faltering lyrical delivery is tender and vulnerable during the repeating phrases as the narrator searches for hope.
This playful mixture of sad, heartbreaking, nonsensical and upbeat songs feel magical and timeless, like the calm before a storm…
Turning his hand to the violin, Carlisle picks up the pace for a quick rendition of the Otis Reynolds track Pond Creek Bottom with a cappella vocals joined by sliding notes and barely audible foot-tapping. This makes way for the slower ballad of Careless Love where Carlisle’s thoughtful tenor is slow and musing as he croons his way through the nineteenth-century Dixieland standard ballad. With his own take on the lyrics, he pulls on the heartstrings in a manner amplified by the isolation of the settings.
Carlisle continues this moulding of traditional songs with his take on Rye Whiskey that taps into his mindset of traversing ‘the backwaters of his mind and America, lingering in the odd corners of human nature to visit obscure oddballs, dark secrets, and complicated truths about the beauty and pain of life and love’ as he intones lyrics full of lament and longing.
With Which Side Are You On, he rallies with defiance as the track, originally composed by Florence Reece, is a clarion call for the Harlan County Mine Workers which feels as powerful and as relevant today as it did in 1931. Equally timeless is the full-throated, strangely rousing She’ll Never Be Mine, where he extolls the virtues of the unnamed and unrequited love of his life complete with harmonica breaks. Listen carefully and you can hear the first sounds of the rain that would go on to flood the yard.
The final pairing, the updated Woody Guthrie cover of When The Roses Bloom Again and a version of Jubilee, taken from the Appalachian community game song Swing And Turn/Jubilee, are upbeat and tender with a feel of hope, delivered with a soulful, loving conviction that led Emery to say, ‘I’ve never had an artist feel so comfortable in that environment, and he probably would have stayed out there for four-and-a-half more hours, had I let him’ having delivered fifty-nine takes over four-and-a-half hours on the first day alone.
Willi Carlisle’s session is a welcome return to the series. Having released a mammoth schedule of monthly releases for the first couple of series, it is no surprise that fatigue was creeping in. Now re-energised, the series will continue with periodic releases not bound to a monthly or seasonal release schedule.
With artwork inspired by a wood etching by Whit Stone, this latest instalment differs from the past and will be released on vinyl with proceeds used to aid victims of Hurricane Helene.
It is great to see Emery continue with this unique venture and shine a light on artists who are not only supremely talented but also have a sense of history and passion that cannot be denied. This playful mixture of sad, heartbreaking, nonsensical and upbeat songs feel magical and timeless, like the calm before a storm…
Label: Anti-Corp Music
Band Links: Official | Facebook | Bandcamp | Spotify | Instagram
Scribed by: Mark Hunt-Bryden
