Going Rogue

Over the last decade, the avant-garde bluesman transitioned from being an occasionally homeless Army vet, living with his grandmother in his native Chicago and leaving CD-Rs of his music around town, to a critically lauded indie favorite. He signed to Hot Charity, a subsidiary of highly regarded XL Recordings, and picked up gigs at the Pitchfork Music Festival and on Later…With Jools Holland. Then, this past summer, Beal called it all off. He left his label and moved from New York to Lacey, Wash., a suburb of Olympia. Turns out, being another cog in the music hype machine didn't suit an artist of his creative compulsion.

"I don't want to be sitting around waiting for some particular season when all the other artists release their stuff, and then that way all the reviewers can catch up and release everything at the same time," Beal says. "In order to pull yourself up by the bootstraps and establish something for yourself, everybody wants you to kiss their ass. I don't know how to form my lips that way."

The problem is that Beal wanted to operate more like Lil Wayne, releasing mixtapes at his leisure. Beal's music is minimal and bluesy, full of pounding percussion and tinny guitars—not exactly Weezy F. Baby territory. But in the months since leaving Hot Charity, Beal has made good on those prolific aspirations. He's put out two full-length albums, Experiments in Time and Experiments in Time: The Golden Hour, via CD Baby, with another, titled Noctunes, on the way. The tiny, California-based vinyl label Electric Soul is pressing a limited run of 300 records.

Noctunes is a world apart from Beal's earlier efforts. There's none of the droning guitar, nor the lo-fi tape hiss (he recorded his first tracks on a boombox). Instead, he's using mostly cheap keyboards. It's still anchored by Beal's voice, but whereas the singer frequently pushed into anguished howls, he's now utilizing a gentle falsetto, which pairs well with the lush instrumentation. "Night" begins with electronic percussion and what sounds like a synthesized wind sound effect, and crescendos into a drum-machine pulse, full of swelling synths and cryptic lyrics. "The stairs flow down from the street to the hall," he croons, "and now it's time to let your image fall."

Beal credits part of his new sound to his Pacific Northwest relocation. Free of New York's congestion, and of a label requiring he send his material to a producer, he's been able to focus on creating richer soundscapes. "The people are kind of standoffish, but the trees are beautiful," he says of his new hometown. "I've always liked geography better than people, anyway."

Of course, leaving your label does come with some drawbacks. Beal doesn't have much money to tour, though he is continuing to play high-profile gigs: The night after his show at Holocene, he's headed back to Chicago, then to Berlin. He doesn't have a backing band anymore—it's just him, a microphone and his iPod—which, he claims, he didn't want anyway. "I performed at a lot of big-name college music festivals," Beal says, "and, like, the people will be reacting positively to my show, but then I look at the newspaper and they'd be like, 'Oh, yeah, Willis Earl Beal, he's a good performer, but he needs a band.' I'm like, 'You fucking squares, you probably weren't at the show.'"

But Beal hasn't totally broken free from the machine. He's being represented by Brillstein Entertainment Partners, whose other clients include Selena Gomez. And he says he's also in talks to sign with another label. This time around, though, Beal promises that working within the system will be different.

"I'm only talking to these people because I like them as people very much," he says. "I'm not against labels. I'm just against being told what to do.” 

SEE IT: Willis Earl Beal plays Holocene, 1001 SE Morrison St., with Dragging an Ox Through Water and Aaron Chapman, on Wednesday, Jan. 21. 8:30 pm. $8 advance, $10 day of show. 21+.

WWeek 2015