There is nothing more intricate than a simple man.
Willis Earl Beal, 27, is a musician without any form of online presence. Beal said he prefers to keep it that way. His music is beautiful.
Despite his online scarcity, however, Beal’s music is gaining traction.
I first learned of Beal at a bar after I came across his novel, which was composed of stacks of computer paper stapled together. Its words were simple, yet captivating. On the first page, Beal lists eight codes of conduct. The first one reads: “Sincerity: Never say or do anything contrary to your overall intentions.”
I share my experience with several people who were also left mysteriously intrigued after finding his chicken-scratch words. After Leor Galil came across a flyer Beal made, reading, “I want some friends & stuff,” Galil hunted Beal down for several months. In July, Galil wrote a cover piece for the Chicago Reader about Beal.
Beal’s ideals align with hipsters and hippies, ironically ordinary and seemingly shallow in depth. Beal hates anything mainstream and said Facebook makes existence all the more arbitrary, that it “represents an increasingly impersonal and cold society.”
With his music’s increasing online presence, Beal fears he will become like many other online musicians. “They mold their art just to make people happy,” he said, “I don’t want to become corrupt.”
At face value, Beal’s words make it seem like he is another pretentious indie musician. But something about Beal is genuine and captivating; something that is causing journalists again and again to stumble upon his work and hunt him down.
Before moving to Chicago, Beal recorded a 17-song album in Albuquerque.
“I recorded those songs in my apartment–a studio … really a whole in the wall,” he said. “I had like a karaoke box with two speakers, one of which didn’t work. I had a 25 dollar microphone from Radio Shack and a couple of boom boxes,” he said. “I had such a desire to express myself that I just used what I had and I did that until I got something that was moderately good.”
The 17 tracks Beal recorded in his apartment are now available online, which Beal said was out of his control. “But not without my consent. I realize that,” he said.
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“Having my music on the Internet is alright,” Beal said, “but if I had any say in it people would only know about me through word of mouth.”
Beal called his new Internet presence a compromise. “But I feel like by not going to Facebook, that’s the way I don’t compromise,” he said, “but I guess I am entitled to my own delusions.”
When people listen to music online they expect it to be streamlined, Beal said. “When it’s not, they assume it sucks and it’s not with the modern age.”
Beal performed his first show at Town Hall Pub in Lakeview this past summer after Ryan Ehresman read the Chicago Reader’s article on Beal.
“I just called him and asked him if I could throw this show on for him,” Ehresman said.
Beal often sings in downtown subways, usually in the tunnel between the red and blue Jackson stops.
Beal said he never plans to play in the subway.
“I go when I need five bucks and a bus pass,” Beal said.
Singing in the subway cuts down your ego, “which is always necessary,” Beal said. “If the people give you money, that means they like you. If they don’t give you money, that means they either don’t like you or they aren’t interested.”
“I think that’s the ultimate proving ground,” he said, “and simultaneously a way to know where you stand as a singer and as an artist.”
“But it is more than just music,” Beal said. “When you go down there you are sort of baring your heart down. You give people your heart with your singing. It’s like some sort of sanctuary.”
However, Beal says he prefers to play in bars where he can be assured that his music is something people came out to hear.
“In the subway everything is more desolate,” he said. “You start to question yourself.”
“After you finish a song, everyone is walking in different directions and you are standing there in the tunnel staring at some Macy’s advertisement,” he said. “You think to yourself, ‘why am I standing here?’ There is something about that that makes you understand how small we are to the infinite nature of the universe.”
“I guess it’s gratifying but also unsettling,” he said.
“Hopefully very soon I won’t have to play in the subway,” Beal said. “I will never miss it. “I’m not even a veteran at doing it but I’ll always remember it.”
“I never want to have a Facebook page or anything like that,” Beal said.
Beal said he would rather people just call him.
However, Beal said having a website or band page would not bother him.
“I can’t avoid it,” he said. “You have to go with what is happening to a certain extent. I can’t be a complete recluse.”
Ehresman said Beal makes his own fliers. “He puts them on regular notebook paper and Xeroxes them, doesn’t use Photoshop,” Ehresman said. “You know, like they used to.”
“That is the point he is trying to make,” Ehresman said. “That’s what our shows are about. They aren’t about ‘hey, you should come see this show and see all the glitz surrounding it’,” he said.
“I don’t think he is a person who is interested in … he is a person that would be happy in a hole in the ground,” he said. “It’s more about performing the music.”
Beal said he used to have nothing valuable to say.
“I now know you have to know what you stand for and just have to reach for the stars,” he said. “You may not believe in yourself, but you have to do it because you love it. Everything else is pretty much irrelevant.”
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