Willi Carlisle, Rachel Baiman

Willi CarlisleYoutube | Instagram | Twitter | WebsiteWILLI CARLISLE is a poet and a folk singer for the people, but his extraordinary gift for turning a phrase isn't about high falutin' pontificatin'; it's about looking out for one another and connecting through our shared human condition. Born and raised on the Midwestern plains, Carlisle is a product of the punk to folk music pipeline that's long fueled frustrated young men looking to resist. After falling for the rich ballads and tunes of the Ozarks, where he now lives, he began examining the full spectrum of American musical history. This insatiable stylistic diversity is obvious in his wildly raucous live performances, where songs range from sardonic trucker-ballads like "Vanlife" to the heartbreaking queer waltz "Life on the Fence," to an existential talkin' blues about a panic attack in Walmart's aisle five. With guitar, fiddle, button-box, banjo, harmonicas, rhythm-bones, and Willi's booming baritone, this is bonafide populist folk music in the tradition of cowboys, frontier fiddlers, and tall-tale tellers. Carlisle recognizes that the only thing holding us back from greatness is each other. With a quick wit and big sing-alongs, these folksongs bring us a step closer to breaking down our divides.Rachel BaimanWebsite | Instagram | Youtube“When I was a kid, my dad was in this tiny fringe political group called Democratic Socialists of America” explains songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Rachel Baiman. “That was considered really extreme, and something I didn’t tell my friends about. Now my generation has had to wake up to the intensity of our own economic oppression.We sit around talking about how anyone affords to buy a house, and how we can get rich people to pay for our albums”, she laughs. Baiman finds hope in this shared experience as a mechanism for activism. On Common Nation of Sorrow, Baiman’s 3rd LP, she tells stories of American capitalism, and the individual and communal devastation it manifests. Raised in Chicago, Baiman made her way to Nashville at 18 with the dream of being a professional fiddle player and has since released 2 solo records and 1 EP, alongside session and side-person work with Kacey Musgraves, Kevin Morby, and Molly Tuttleamong many others. As a songwriter, she has garnered a reputation for her specific brand of political and personal lyricism, which Vice’s Noisey described as ‘Flipping off Authority one note at a time”. In contrast with her previous work, Baiman is the sole producer of Common Nation of Sorrow. After recording for twelve days in Nashville with Grammy-Award-winning engineer Sean Sullivan, Baiman traveled to Portland, OR, where she spent two weeks mixing the record with famed engineer and producer Tucker Martine (My MorningJacket/The Decemberists/First Aid Kit).