Willis Earl Beal Music Makes Memphis

Musician Willis Earl Beal Debuts in Tim Sutton’s Film Memphis: Opening September 5, 2014

Under a canopy of oak leaves, among crowds of mysterious shades, a singer wanders through a city rich in folklore. This singer, based on local legend, is embodied by maverick musician Willis Earl Beal in director Tim Sutton’s new film Memphis (www.memphis-film.com), opening in select theaters September 5, 2014, with press opportunities for Beal in NYC on September 3.

Beal draws on his own pensive, musically unique work to bring the film’s troubled but spiritually elevated musician to life. His songs channel inner monologues and banal details into the soulful, evocative music, as heard on his new release, Experiments in Time. Loose beds of dreamlike keys, raw guitar, bass, piano, and found sound—some of it from the Memphis set—create beautiful frames for Beal’s uncanny, emotional voice and multifaceted philosophical perspective.

“Now is Gone,” reminiscent of Rain Dogs-era Tom Waits, was recorded as Beal worked on the film. Beal captured the piano and birds on the track on an old-school tape recorder at the house where he was staying and where the film crew worked, ending his album on an enigmatic, rustling note.

“The whole record is like one dream,” Beal reflects. The same dreamlike feeling runs through the film.

In Memphis, Beal portrays a strange singer with “god given talent” who resembles but doesn’t equal Beal. The singer drifts through the mythic city of Memphis under its canopy of ancient oak trees, shattered windows, and burning spirituality. Surrounded by lovers, legends, hustlers, preachers, and a wolfpack of kids, the unstable performer avoids the recording studio and is driven to spend time in his own form of self-discovery. Shown in fragments, his journey drags him from love and happiness right to the edge of another dimension.

“Our film captures the descent of a troubled singer as he drifts through an urban landscape looking to save his very soul,” explains Sutton. “We surrounded ourselves with real Memphians and made a film that hopes to project a cool, beautiful world – as old as dirt and yet entirely new.”

Beal proved the perfect catalyst for this mythic, wandering tale. He was approached by Sutton and producer John Baker after they discovered his emotionally intense, idiosyncratic songs online. “It was like divine intervention,” recalls Baker. As Baker listened to Beal’s music and read his interviews, he grew more and more convinced that they had found their man.

“Willis is a weathervane of certain things in the cultural conversation. Existentialism is a very big theme in Willis’ work,” Baker reflects. “He is on a search. He is on a journey to find something. Whether that’s the meaning of life or existence of death or something far more positive… he is a man on a mission and he is fearless in the search.”

Beal, along with other non-professional actors in the cast, fearlessly engaged with Sutton’s story, working loosely. One of the firm pivots for the tale was Beal’s character, one of those artists able to glimpse the extraordinary. “These artists color outside the lines,” says Sutton. “The character I wrote was part of that fabric. And Willis, whom we cast after the story was written but angled it more toward him and his reality, is truly of that lineage.”

Memphis opens in NYC on Sept. 5th at the IFC Center and on Sept. 12th in L.A., with national rollout to follow courtesy of Kino Lorber.