Hayes Carll is a gifted singer/songwriter with an independent streak as wide and as chaotically active as an eight-lane highway, and a mood-swing sense of musical diversity that simultaneously incorporates and transcends Folk, Indie Rock, Americana and Roots Rock. Equally impressive are Carll’s lyrical acumen and emotional range in the service of songs that ride a wild wave between heartbreakingly raw and raucously hilarious.
In the former category, there’s pretty much all of Carll’s fifth album, 2016’s Lovers and Leavers, produced by longtime Over the Rhine boardsman and collaborator Joe Henry, which detailed the painful aftermath of Carll’s divorce. But Carll is also renowned for his seriously twisted sense of humor; the title track to 2011’s KMAG YOYO (& other American stories) — the title refers to the military acronym for “Kiss my ass, guys, you’re on your own” — is a masterful first-person story of dark government deeds in the name of national security told by Carll with the lyrical precision and gymnastics of Bob Dylan’s “Subterranean Homesick Blues” galvanized by Todd Snider’s slanted booze-and-couch-chemistry perspective.
Carll insists that his latest album, What It Is, released back in February, is not a political album, but a good many of its songs comment disparagingly on the state of the world today. At the same time, there’s “None’ya,” a song he wrote about his wife and creative partner Allison Moorer, which combines the quiet reflection of Lovers and Leavers with the sly wit that built Carll’s fanbase from the start.
What It Is is also Carll’s second go-round with a somewhat major label, the result of his freshly inked contract with Dualtone; KMAG YOYO and 2008’s Trouble in Mind were both released by Universal imprint Lost Highway.
Carll certainly hasn’t been toiling away in obscurity over the past two decades. He’s earned best-of-the-year accolades from Rolling Stone and American Songwriter and he was Grammy nominated in 2016 for Best Country Song on the strength of Lee Ann Womack’s version of Carll’s “Chances Are.”
But none of that particularly matters to Carll, so long as it leads to inspiration for a new song and an audience to hear it.
Catch Carll this Sunday (June 2) at Newport, Kentucky’s Southgate House Revival. Tickets/more show info here.
This article appears in May 29 – Jun 5, 2019.