TICKETS: $20 ADVANCE; $25 DAY OF SHOW

Willi Carlisle is an acclaimed American folk singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, poet, and theater artist known for blending traditional Ozark folklore with punk rock sensibilities. Born on the Midwestern plains of Kansas and raised in a musical family, he later relocated to Arkansas, which deeply influenced his musical style.

With a heavy-duty catalog of new material for a career first double album, The Universal Bubba marks a half dozen releases for folksinger Willi Carlisle and reaches new heights with the added accelerant of first time producer Tyler Childers. In an all-time DIY effort, Childers and his band convened to a makeshift home studio nestled in the Bywater District of New Orleans for two weeks to cut 17 tracks that expand Carlisle’s sonic scrapbook and capture the off-kilter characters living in his songs.

Exploration aside, Carlisle’s mission as a folksinger largely remains the same - documenting the stories and struggles of the people and balancing the humor and hope of existence. “I want to make a universal folk music. Songs for all kinds of weirdos,” says Carlisle. “With the idea that there is nobody that doesn’t have folk songs and everyone deserves folk songs. I want to write songs that prove the old weird America didn’t go anywhere, that we are living and dying for it everyday. I believe there’s noble work to do in that context. That if we feel despair, we don’t need to because there’s so much good work to do.”