Willi Carlisle Announces New Double Album The Universal Bubba

Folksinger Willi Carlisle will release his new double album The Universal Bubba on November 6 via Signature Sounds. Carlisle reaches new heights with the added accelerant of first-time producer Tyler Childers. In an all-time DIY effort, Childers and his band convened at 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.

Watch the music video for “Mason Jar at the Center of the World.”

Pre-save/pre-order The Universal Bubba HERE.

“I think this one goes to outer space,” says Carlisle. “I think this is the widest range of influences that I’ve ever had. It touches on funk, it touches on Americana, Cajun, oldtime, and experimental music.” With Childers’ band behind him, Carlisle embraced the freedom to wander across genres both familiar and new, testing out instrumentation and toying with the surreality of traditions being turned on their head. “It feels like getting drunk at the Civil War reenactment, or cruising at the cattle auction, or doing molly at the square dance,” says Carlisle. “It’s the first time I’ve ever used synthesizers and double electric guitars. There’s also more fretless 19th century style banjo on it than any record I’ve ever made.”

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.”

Filled with banjo and fiddle, album opener “The Mason Jar at the Center of the World” arrived well traveled — being written while on tour with Childers across six shows in Australia as the whispers of their collaboration were just beginning. Following a conversation with soon-to-be featured multi-instrumentalist Jesse Wells, affectionately called “The Professor,” about traditional musicians back home, completion of the track was aided by a snort of moonshine in an Australian motel room and an old poem from Wallace Stevens. “Smash three or four folk songs against a poem and add some hard traveling, you get a song,” says Carlisle. “Stuff’s intertextual like that.”

Serving as the last gasp before intermission and first howl into the homestretch of the record, Carlisle introduces “the universal bubba” in two parts: “The Universal Bubba, Part One” — “for the booty-shakin’ rock and rollers and their pals” — and “The Universal Bubba, Part Two” — “for the small town hell raisers, the unofficial mayors.”

“The universal bubba is somebody who can fix anything,” says Carlisle. “Somebody who is good for just about anything. Everywhere I go I meet these giant people — and what I mean is these men and women and folks who can do it all themselves. Something that’s really struck me about traveling around the world is that everywhere you go there are people who are tirelessly working to make things a little bit better without succumbing to modernity’s pitfalls. They’re somebody who has enough, and if it wasn’t enough they would make it enough.”

A top candidate for encapsulating the energy of The Universal Bubba, “Gas Station” is a driving recollection of life on the road with a sing-along chorus. Other standouts include the rocking of “Hare-Krishnuts” on the absurd and smoky groover “Marlboro Vinyasa” (“Yoga breathing exercises and cigarettes,” says Carlisle. “What an American thing, to find the wheel of samsara in a pint glass!”), while “She Only Loves Horses” is a comical but forlorn Western about unrequited affection for a horse-obsessed woman.

Taking on a project of this size with Tyler Childers as debut producer requires hard work, camaraderie, and supreme self-confidence. Also the otherworldly talent of musicians like the aforementioned Wells, guitarist CJ Cain, bassist Craig Burletic, and many other supporters and players. Undeterred by the challenge and grounded in his beliefs, Carlisle has proved that it really does “take a Universal Bubba doin’ it for themselves.”

“You don’t need permission to make something beautiful,” says Carlisle. “You just need kindness, pals and elbow grease.”

Carlisle will tour North America extensively in support of the album, beginning in Minneapolis in September and running through mid-December.

The Universal Bubba Tracklist
1. Mason Jar at the Center of the World
2. Gas Station
3. Use Me Up
4. Good Morning, Midnight
5. Marlboro Vinyasa
6. The Master’s Hammer
7. Contact High
8. The Universal Bubba
9. The Universal Bubba, Part Two
10. She Only Loves Horses
11. Ditchdigger’s Song (Dust and the Devil)
12. Sadly Enormous
13. I Ain’t Crazy
14. Red Leather, Yellow Leather
15. Old Milwaukee Onestep
16. Bigger’n Dallas
17. Golden Dragon Buffet

Willi Carlisle 2026 North American Tour Dates
SEP 26 - Minneapolis, MN - The Cedar
SEP 27 - Madison, WI - High Noon Saloon
SEP 28 - Ann Arbor, MI - The Ark
OCT 1 - Toronto, ON Canada - Longboat Hall
OCT 2 - Buffalo, NY - Mohawk Place
OCT 3 - Lakewood, OH - Mahall’s
OCT 4 - Charleston, WV - Mountain Stage
OCT 6 - Lexington, KY - The Burl
OCT 7 - Nashville, TN - The Basement East
OCT 8 - St. Louis, MO - Off Broadway
OCT 9 - Cape Girardeau, MO - Scout Hall
OCT 10 - Kansas City, MO - Knuckleheads
OCT 28 - Indianapolis, IN - Turntable
OCT 29 - Columbus, OH - Skully’s Music Diner
NOV 1 - Ardmore, PA - Ardmore Music Hall
NOV 2 - Brooklyn, NY - Baby’s All Right
NOV 3 - Somerville, MA - Crystal Ballroom
NOV 4 - Northampton, MA - Iron Horse
NOV 6 - Portland, ME - First Parish Church
NOV 7 - Burlington, VT - Higher Ground
NOV 8 - Kingston, NY - Assembly
NOV 10 - Pittsburgh, PA - Thunderbird
NOV 12 - Washington, DC - Union Stage
NOV 13 - Carrboro, NC - Stanczyks
NOV 14 - Atlanta, GA - The Earl
DEC 3 - Denver, CO - Bluebird Theater
DEC 5 - Salt Lake City, UT - Urban Lounge
DEC 6 - Boise, ID - Shrine Social
DEC 9 - Vancouver, BC Canada - The Pearl
DEC 10 - Seattle, WA - Tractor Tavern
DEC 11 - Portland, OR - Mississippi Studios
DEC 12 - Trout Lake, WA - Trout Lake Hall
DEC 14 - San Francisco, CA - The Independent
DEC 15 - Felton, CA - Felton Music Hall
DEC 17 - Los Angeles, CA - Sid The Cat Auditorium
DEC 18 - San Diego, CA - Soda Bar
DEC 19 - Pioneertown, CA - Pappy + Harriet’s
DEC 20 - Phoenix, AZ - Valley Bar