featuring the very best of americana, alt.country and roots music
November 10, 2026
Scott Foley, purveyor of dust
This week we starred no fewer than six (6) records for possible review. Stuff by Jess Kerber and Chris Lyons rose above the fray, as did Lou Turner's Strangels. As we mentioned, Hudson Freeman's Doom Country is well worth your while. Twisted Teens' third album of the year, Holy Cross Tigers, might just be our favorite of the week, but we've spilled so much digital ink on them, and it's our intention to spread the joy as much as possible.
IF YOU ONLY LiSTEN to ONE RECORD THiS WEEK
Woody Guthrie understood it. At a time like ours, tradition can seem subversive. On The Universal Bubba (Signature Sounds), his fifth LP, Will Carlisle shoulders John Henry's hammer for a bold and brash song cycle in praise of the everyman.
Carlisle's cosmos revolves around "The Mason Jar At the Center Of the World", a rousing call to arms that sets the project in motion fueled by fiddle, banjo, and the singer's robust delivery: Take communion everywhere / At the center of the world / I was born a sinner at the center of the world. Over the space of a double album, Carlisle and his cohort rouse the rabble and hurrah the downtrodden in a celebration of what he calls The Universal Bubba - effectively the working men and women on whose backs our country is built. On the rocking two-part title track, we are reminded, Most of the things worth doing / In the Age of Babylon / Take a Universal Bubba doing it for herself.
The Universal Bubba also celebrates those third places, the secular or sacred spaces where we congregate. The gas station, the neighborhood watering hole, or even the smoke-filled bar that doubles as a yoga studio on the classic "Marlboro Vinyasa": I spent a couple nights with the bendy queers / Worshipping an elephant that held ten beers. Carlisle has spoken of his role as a ventriloquist, giving voice to the spirit of the John/Jane Doe, and he accomplishes that as eloquently and accurately as any songwriter of his generation. "Good Morning Midnight" is told from the perspective of a second shift vampire, walking home and taking inventory on the dark streets of his hometown: I twist myself into the shape I thought a man should be / Beer can mangled / Or a pair of shoes strangling the power lines across the street. The song succeeds with a singalong chorus that suggests a latenight "City of New Orleans".
The Universal Bubba was, it turns out, set to tape in the Big Easy, with Tyler Childers serving as producer. While Carlisle's earlier work has spoken of his poetic prowess, Childers' contribution serves as a convergence of compelling forces, part Will the Circle Be Unbroken and part Red-Headed Stranger. Where Carlisle has tended to record as a solo artist, just voice and acoustic guitar or banjo, Childers has convened a phenomenal band, featuring members of his own Food Stamps, including the essential utility player Jesse Wells and Ross Whitaker's pedal steel. The sessions are revelatory, infusing a rowdy spirit into Carlisle's folk, country, rock, and gospel numbers, and even displaying more experimental chops on "Contact High".
On his new collection, Willi Carlisle resembles another burly bearded queer poet - Walt Whitman. His Bubba is nothing less than the Everyman. A controversial firebrand in his own time, Whitman famous wrote, I sing the body electric / The armies of those I love ... Carlisle cites Pantera and Eyehategod, but echoes the poet: I sing America / Old and weird / Sing wide open borders and pioneers. Like Mark Twain, he recognizes the subversion of humor on seemingly goofy numbers like "She Only Loves Horses" (I thought leather bridles just meant a good time) and the lovably memorable "Sadly Enormous": Tiny chair / Tiny table / Tiny coat / Tiny hat. Universal Bubba overflows with quotable lyrics. On "Use Me Up": My dad got to work at five in the morning / So he could buy a stupid kid his football pads / So I could get my ass kicked / Five times before sunrise.
In Universal Bubba, Willi Carlisle and Tyler Childers share a new artistic peak, repurposing Woody Guthrie's songbook for our present time. On "I Ain't Crazy", the songwriter confesses, I've been learning / How to hold my spirits down / How to hide all my fears and faults in pan-american sounds. But in these hyper-personal portraits of the Bubbas in our midst, he highlights the indefatigable spirit of progress that might just save us: The world's on fire / And I'm here for it.
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