Willi Carlisle Announces New Album With 'Work is Work'

(LBM) Missouri-based folksinger Willi Carlisle has announced his highly anticipated self-produced fourth studio album, Winged Victory, set to release on June 27 via Signature Sounds.

The upcoming album sees Carlisle return with his signature blend of traditionally-rooted folk music and kaleidoscope of oddball characters to confer with his core tenets in even more overt and provocative ways.

Today, he is sharing the first single from the 11-track set, "Work is Work," one of many songs on the upcoming album that invites listeners to pause and consider the state of things. "Did you heed the call? Were you led astray? / Work is work, or it wouldn't pay," he sings, as he imagines grace free from the haints of meaningless production and profit. "Work is Work" is available now on all streaming platforms.

Of the new song, Carlisle offers, "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."

Winged Victory follows 2024's widely acclaimed Critterland, which Rolling Stone hailed as "a beautiful folk document of American reckoning and redemption." It's the next chapter in Carlisle's long-running direct address to the hope that by understanding our collective suffering we might be free of it. He is intent on creating art and a well-rounded life in a broken world.

"These songs feel poised on the edge of the apocalypse, or at least at the beginning of a great transformation in America," says Carlisle. "During this borrowed time, the weirdos, cowboys, and dreamers in these songs dare to love, and often pay for it with blood."

The new music both indulges a few of Carlisle's wildest dreams (including a version of Richard Thompson's "Beeswing," among several traditional folk song covers), and feels like the inevitable sequel to Critterland's charismatic menagerie of chaos. Though occasionally raunchy, and routinely provocative, Victory is not afraid to make a spectacle for the sake of a point. It should be understood as a reflection: reveling in the beauty of tiny, monetarily-worthless moments and things, offering with them a consideration of our innate humanity.

"A good folk music response to the troubles of the First World is saying 'what are the little things that we can do ... where can we move the needle?" Carlisle explains.

In celebration of the release, Carlisle will tour extensively across the United States this fall with 42 new headlining shows announced today. He is also touring in the UK and Netherlands this summer and appearing at multiple upcoming Folk Festivals, including FreshGrass, Winnipeg, Mariposa, Calgary, Canmore, Blue Ox, and more, in addition to an opening slot for multi-GRAMMY Award-winning folk artist Sierra Ferrell in Edmonton.

Willi Carlisle On Tour
April 8 - Decatur, GA @ Eddie's Attic
April 9 - Decatur, GA @ Eddie's Attic
April 11-13 - Saint Augustine Shores, FL @ Gamble Rogers Folk Festival
April 13 - Tampa, FL @ New World Music Hall
May 16 - Bentonville, AR @ FreshGrass
May 31 - Thetford, UK @ Red Rooster Festival
June 1 - Forest Row, UK @ Hop Yard Brewing Co.
June 2 - Bristol, UK @ The Louisiana
June 3 - Manchester, UK @ Night & Day Cafe
June 4 - Chester, UK @ St. Mary's Creative Space
June 5 - Newcastle upon Tyne, UK @ The Cluny
June 6 - Brighton and Hove, UK @ Alphabet
June 7 - London, UK @ The Lexington
June 8 - Arnhem, Netherlands @ Luxor Live
June 11 - Haarlem, Netherlands @ Patronaat
June 12 - Middelburg, Netherlands @ De Spot
June 13 - Groningen, Netherlands @ Aa
June 14 - Utrecht, Netherlands @ TivoliVredenburg
June 28 - Eau Claire, WI @ Blue Ox Music Festival
July 5-6 - Orillia, ON @ Mariposa Folk Festival
July 10-13 - Winnipeg, MB @ Winnipeg Folk Festival
July 22 - Edmonton, AB @ Winspear Centre*
July 24-27 - Calgary, AB @ Calgary Folk Music Festival
July 27 - Salmon Arm, BC @ Salmon Arm ROOTSandBLUES Festival
August 2-4 - Canmore, AB @ Canmore Folk Fest
August 23 - La Crosse, WI @ Great River Folk Festival
September 4 - Tulsa, OK @ The Vanguard
September 5 - Little Rock, AR @ The White Water Tavern
September 6 - Little Rock, AR @ The White Water Tavern
September 12 - Washington, DC @ Union Stage
September 13 - Philadelphia, PA @ The Foundry at The Fillmore
September 15 - New York, NY @ Bowery Ballroom
September 17 - Cambridge, MA @ The Sinclair
September 18 - South Burlington, VT @ Higher Ground Showcase Lounge
September 19 - Portland, ME @ SPACE Gallery
September 20 - Saratoga Springs, NY @ Caffe Lena
September 22 - Pittsburgh, PA @ Thunderbird Café and Music Hall
September 23 - Rochester, NY @ Flour City Station
September 24 - Toronto, ON @ Horseshoe Tavern
September 26 - Lakewood, OH @ Mahall's
September 27 - Ann Arbor, MI @ The Ark
September 28 - Chicago, IL @ Lincoln Hall
September 29 - Wisconsin Dells, WI @ Showboat Saloon
September 30 - Minneapolis, MN @ Fine Line
October 2 - Kansas City, MO @ Knuckleheads
October 3 - St. Louis, MO @ Delmar Hall
October 16 - Denver, CO @ Bluebird Theater
October 17 - Laramie, WY @ Gryphon Theatre
October 18 - Salt Lake City, UT @ The State Room
October 21 - Boise, ID @ Shrine Social Club
October 23 - Spokane, WA @ District Bar
October 24 - Seattle, WA @ Tractor Tavern
October 25 - Vancouver, BC, Canada @ Fox Cabaret
October 28 - Portland, OR @ Aladdin Theater
October 30 - San Francisco, CA @ The Independent
October 31 - Mariposa, CA @ The Grove House
November 1 - West Hollywood, CA @ Troubadour
November 2 - Pioneertown, CA @ Pappy + Harriet's
November 3 - Phoenix, AZ @ Valley Bar
November 5 - Arenas Valley, NM @ Whiskey Creek Zocalo
November 6 - Albuquerque, NM @ Launchpad
November 8 - Fort Worth, TX @ Tulips
November 9 - Austin, TX @ Antone's Nightclub
November 18 - Birmingham, AL @ Saturn
November 19 - Knoxville, TN @ Bijou Theatre
November 20 - Nashville, TN @ The Basement East
November 21 - Asheville, NC @ The Grey Eagle Music Hall
November 22 - Atlanta, GA @ Terminal West
*with Sierra Ferrell

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