Willis Earl Beal

Often armed with little more than a tape deck and guitar, Chicago ‘nobody’ Willis Earl Beal seamlessly blends vintage blues-folk, no-fi rock and soul to devastating effect.

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You can imagine that being discharged from the US Army, being homeless in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and working as a night security guard could leave you feeling pretty lonely. When Chicago’s Willis Earl Beal found himself in just such a set of circumstances, he started leaving self-recorded CDs and self-illustrated flyers advertising himself as single and offering to sing people songs around Albuquerque. Eventually one of these flyers made its way to Found Magazine, who put Beal on their cover and released a collection of his songs. He moved into his grandma’s house in Chicago, where he continued to flyer and sing songs over the phone and on subway platforms before eventually getting signed by Hot Charity. Beal may have come a long way since his rough early days in a material sense, but his ramshackle blues-folk still relies on skeletal instrumentation and his lyrics and soulful croon remain haunted by a sense of alienation that’s hard to imagine but easy to enjoy.

Willis Earl Beal:

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