The Cedar Presents
Willi Carlisle — The Universal Bubba Tour
Saturday, September 26, 2026 / Doors: 7:00 PM / Show: 8:00 PM
All Ages
Standing
$22 Advance, $27 Day of Show
This is a general admission standing room show. To request seating or other access accommodations, please go to our Access Page.
For Cedar-presented shows, online ticket sales typically end at 6:30pm, and then, based on availability, tickets will be available at the door. Tickets purchased at the door will include a $1 Eventbrite fee.
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about this show
Folksinger Willi Carlisle holds tight the conviction that love is bigger than hate, and no-one is expendable.
willi CARLISLE
With a heavy-duty catalog of new material for a career first double album, The Universal Bubbamarks 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.
“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.”
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. Created largely on the fly and beginning with Childers’ jokingly referring to a knife-fight, the end result was Carlisle’s only co-write with his producer on the record. “We sat in a circle with pen, paper, instruments,” says Carlisle, “Tyler suggested, ‘goodle days’ instead of ‘good old days.’ We kept shaping verses, agreeing that my choruses were working. Suddenly I realized, this was a co-write! But the red light was already on. We were co-writing and recording at the same time. Wild as hell.”
Of the anarchist anthem “The Master’s Hammer”,Childers wanted a pure, essential folk song ringing out with harmonica, banjo and three part harmonies. ”I was trying to boil my ideology down into something I can sing for my friends,” says Carlisle.
The title tracks sprawl gloriously in two parts, giving praise to do-it-yourselfers that corral the cosmos into being. Carlisle sings for “booty shaking rock and rollers” and “small town hellraisers” and “unofficial mayors” the world over.
Taking on a project of this size with Tyler Childers as debut producer requires hard work, camaraderie and supreme self confidence. Undeterred by the challenge and grounded in his beliefs, Carlisle has proved that it really does “take a Universal Bubba doin’ it for themselves.”