Willi Carlisle - The Magnola Sessions (2024)

WILLI CARLISLE: Anti-Corp’s Beloved The Magnolia Sessions Returns, Album By Renowned Folk Singer. The sun rises once again on Anti-Corp’s beloved The Magnolia Sessions, returning after a two-year break with a new album by renowned folk singer, WILLI CARLISLE, out now everywhere today.

The Magnolia Sessions returns with a heartfelt new album by WILLI CARLISLE, who believes singing is healing, and by singing together, he believes we can begin to reckon with the inevitability of human suffering and grow in love. His third album, Critterland – produced by the Grammy Award-nominated Darrell Scott – traverses 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.

On his installment of The Magnolia Sessions, WILLI CARLISLE delivers a variety of traditional songs and covers, performing everything solo, with Dan Emery handling the production. The artwork for WILLI CARLISLE’s The Magnolia Sessions, which differs from the rest of the series’ style, was inspired by a wood etching by Whit Stone.

Dan Emery reveals, “I hadn’t recorded a Magnolia Session in about a year, and the previous year I had only recorded three. To say I was disconnected from this project is putting it lightly. The reality is, I had been burnt out since the second season, which wrapped up in 2022. That year was supposed to cap off with a session from WILLI CARLISLE that was recorded July 19th, 2021. Numerous things prevented that recording from seeing the light of day, but perhaps that’s for the best. When we reconvened on September 25th, 2024, the plan was to set aside three days to do the session. The idea was to record Wednesday the 25th, take Thursday to go over everything, and wrap up loose ends on Friday. Mother Nature had other plans. On the first day of tracking Willi recorded fifty-nine takes over the course of four-and-a-half hours. 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.”

WILLI CARLISLE writes, “This collection of folksongs were sung under a big Magnolia Tree in East Nashville. At the time of recording, Hurricane Helene was destroying communities across Appalachia. You can even hear the wind and rain from that storm hitting the microphones. It made these songs about hard times hit even harder. I’m proud to have some of my old favorites on this record: songs from archives, old folk songbooks, reel-to-reel machines, and (mostly) what I’ve heard my friends and mentors play. It has a lot of tools I don’t get to use much: autoharps funky banjos, stuff like that. As the times change, friend, ‘Which side are you on?’”