Willi Carlisle: The Critterland! Tour
Mercury Lounge
July 11, 2024
In Willi Carlisle’s song “Tulsa’s Last Magician,” an aspiring trickster lives and dies on the side streets of America’s side cities: Tulsa, Reno, Santa Fe, Tampa and inevitably Tulsa again. The protagonist goes from idealist savant, with talent beyond understanding, to a dying computer fixer, yelling at his television. It’s the most streamed song on Carlisle’s 2022 album Peculiar, Missouri by a country mile, and it certainly strikes a chord with Tulsans—especially those who have left Oklahoma and returned.