The VMAs may have already passed, but Willi Carlisle (and a puppet Tyler Childers) may have just given us a new contender for our favorite video of the year.
Co-written by Carlisle, Kenny Miles, and Childers, “Gas Station” is a tale of finding your identity on the road and away from convention — even if sustenance comes from a couple of questionable gas station hot dogs. From Carlisle’s upcoming Childers-produced double album, The Universal Bubba, the video for “Gas Station” finds a rambling Carlisle accompanied by puppet versions of Childers (complete with a signature green cardigan) and his band, the Food Stamps, who also played on album. Directed by Mike Vanata of Western AF, it’s pretty damn joyful.
“This record came together by luck, passion, and circumstance,” Carlisle told Rolling Stone about the making of The Universal Bubba. “Tyler and I had talked a lot about songs while I was opening for him. We sat down and played old-time fiddle music together, too, which was a big joy. I played banjo, Tyler fiddled, and we just gabbed on this and that. We talked about ‘Tomcat and a Dandy,’ his song on Snipe Hunter, and played it through a few times together. It truly was just a fun time, an Appalachian and an Ozark guy picking tunes, sharing folk music.”
Carlisle explained in a statement that “Gas Station” didn’t start as a Childers co-write, but once they found themselves together in the makeshift New Orleans studio where the album was recorded, it all came together organically.
“Tyler came into the studio, wild-eyed, guitar in hand, no shoes, a little haggard,” Carlisle said. “He had an idea, and took my kinda simple blues progression and changed the feel. It became a lot more direct, less tongue-in-cheek. More honest. We stood, started singing, changing words here and there, agreeing and disagreeing….we kept shaping verses, agreeing that my choruses were working. Suddenly I realized, this was a cowrite! But the red light was already on, the tape rolling. We were writing and recording at the same time. Wild as hell. In the long run, it felt like we should both be singing it, so we doubled up on the choruses.”
The Universal Bubba is the first record, other than his own, that Childers has produced. Full of vivid stories that paint the human experience in all of its beauty, hardship, and occasional artery-clogging meals, it will be out Nov. 6 via Signature Sounds.
