Willis Earl Beal

Willis Earl Beal, a singer and songwriter based in Chicago, launched his entry into the music industry by plastering hand-drawn flyers across the broader metropolitan region that listed his phone number and address. The text on those flyers read, "My name is Willis Earl Beal. Call me and I'll sing you a song. Write to me and I'll draw you a picture." Toward the close of the 2000s he took to busking in train stations and delivered on the flyers' offers whenever calls arrived.

Found Magazine placed one of Beal's flyers, featuring a crude self-portrait seeking a soulmate, on the cover of its seventh issue in 2009. An interview with the artist appeared inside the same issue, and the strong reader response to his open-hearted and quirky personality led Found to issue a limited-edition CD of selected home-recorded songs in 2011. While still residing at his grandmother's house on Chicago's South Side, Beal began booking more conventional local gigs. His material ranged from gospel confessional to noise-touched soul ballads, all unified by his booming voice. The unusual back-story combined with his grassroots promotional tactics built his reputation as an outsider artist and drew growing press coverage after the Found Magazine feature.

In 2011 he signed with Hot Charity, a subsidiary of XL Records. His debut LP, Acousmatic Sorcery, was set for release in spring 2012, and he embarked on his first tours of both the U.S. and Europe. He followed with the more polished yet still quirky Nobody Knows in 2013, which included cameo vocals from Cat Power's Chan Marshall on one track. Beal left Hot Charity to release the self-issued third album Experiments in Time in 2014, an effort that moved toward a dreamy, synth-heavy sound.

He next signed with Portland's Tender Loving Empire. Presented as a concept album, Noctunes chronicled the end of his brief marriage and appeared in August 2015.