Willi Carlisle – “Marlboro Vinyasa”

"I been gettin' up each morning with the hair of the downward dog." That fantastic lyric belongs to "Marlboro Vinyasa," the latest single from Willi Carlisle's Tyler Childers-produced double album The Universal Bubba. Unlike prior single "Mason Jar At The Center Of The World," which was the kind of a traditional reel you could squaredance to, this song is a barroom country-rocker. The press release repeatedly uses the word "smoky," which would be appropriate even if a cigarette brand wasn't name-checked in the title.Carlisle offered this backstory:There’s a great bar in the Quad Cities called the Raccoon Motel. After a few gigs there, I got to talking to somebody who hosts yoga, and said they do their breathing exercises on the sticky floor and do sun salutations facing the Marlboro advertisements. I couldn’t get over the irony: yoga breathing exercises and cigarettes. What an American thing, to find the wheel of samsara in a pint glass! All I brought to the table was a little shuffle, sort of something out of Springsteen’s Nebraska in its spareness but with a feel from the Band, maybe like the songs “Jemima Surrender” or “This Wheel’s On Fire.” The band did the rest, took it to sp...