On Thursday night, it seemed like the fringe was everywhere, and it truly was thanks to the Tampa International Fringe Festival that is taking over several Ybor City venues this weekend. At Crowbar — where Willi Carlisle staged There Ain’t No More: Death of a Folksinger — it resonated loud like the twang from an aggressively picked banjo.
Carlisle, a Fayetteville boy with warm eyes, fierce fingers and an even more intense stage presence did actually play the banjo (along with the guitar, harmonica, fiddle and accordion) as he executed the one man, red, white and blue operetta to an audience fully invested in tales of ‘nam, heartache and insecurity all told through the lens of a dying folksinger reliving his life in one last performance.
It took five years of researching Ozarks folklore to complete There Ain’t No More, and the attention to detail pays off over and over again in the performance, which is a collection of square-dance calls, poems, fiddle tunes, and field-recordings from Carlisle's notebooks. It is sprinkled with dirty jokes, a strip-show, the occasional cheesy one-liner and just enough to music to almost make the damn thing a concert. In fact, Carlisle could be doing this show as an opening act for some traveling folk musician, but casual listeners might not be ready for the potency of the performance.
There are puppets and masks, even face paint. The script is filled with colorful descriptions of life in the mountains of Arkansas (I swear I can still smell that catfish nailed to an ash), and that crankie was more like a canvas. Carlisle — a self-described folksinger/poet from the Midwest and upper South. — is impossible to look away from, even as he bounces uncomfortably between the many personalities of the show's protagonist. The activism, sexuality and tongue-in-cheek nods to Nixon and McCarthy in There Ain’t No More are just more glimmer on an already shining show that secretly celebrates the real America where we, as Carlisle half-jokingly says, “love a winner” but “won’t tolerate a loser.”
Everyone deserves to see Carlisle work through this hour long show, and you’ll get two more chances when he does it again on May 12 (10:55 p.m.) and May 13 (12 p.m.).
More information on the show is available here, and you can listen to a live recording of an unrelated Carlisle performance below.
Fri., May 12 @ 10:55 p.m.; Sat., May 12 @ 12 p.m., 1812 N. 17th St., Ybor City. $13 w/Festival button.
