Willi Carlisle released his latest album, "Critterland," earlier this year. He'll perform Oct. 10 at Volcanic Theatre Pub in Bend.

Willi Carlisle’s albums — 2002’s “Peculiar, Missouri” and this year’s “Critterland,” especially — are terrific collections of highly literate, heart-on-sleeve, happy-and-sad-at-the-same-time folk music about life on the margins, generational trauma, humility, spirituality, human connection, optimism and the overriding power of love, even in the face of so much struggle.

You should, dear reader, finish reading this, then go find those two aforementioned albums and listen to them over and over and over again.

And yet, Carlisle is also an artist you should see perform live to fully appreciate his appeal. When he’s not singing and playing his traditionally rooted music, he is a master of banter — part storyteller, part stand-up comedian, part preacher, part motivational speaker, part carnival barker, part community organizer.

For the right listener, at least, his concerts are as much about the things he says in between the songs as they are about the songs themselves.

Carlisle said he hears that often.

“There’s a long tradition of folk singers who are politically and socially activated and had to … talk cogently (about their generations’ issues) onstage. And that’s a tough thing. It’s a real assignment, you know?” he said in an interview.

“And I don’t think I always nail it, especially (because) no one is coming after me in the way McCarthy came after Pete Seeger,” he continued. “Sometimes I’m like, ‘Well, I’m just not causing enough trouble.’”

Carlisle is originally from the Midwest, but he really found his footing in Arkansas, where he earned a master’s degree in poetry, learned how to play the banjo and discovered the music of Utah Phillips, a fellow poet and folk singer known for his lifelong activism on the behalf of working people and labor unions. Musically, he immersed himself in Harry Smith’s “Anthology of American Folk Music,” a landmark collection of early 20th century folk, country, gospel and blues.

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You can hear the influence of Smith’s compilation — as well as Seeger and Phillips and others — in Carlisle’s work, which explores modern topics like drug addiction, mental health and queer love against a backdrop of sounds from decades past: old-time music, talking blues, cowboy songs, revival-era folk, traditional bluegrass and beyond. The ties that bind it all together? Carlisle’s knack for memorable melodies and his razor-sharp way with words, which he uses to construct a remarkably lifelike tension between lingering melancholy, resilient hope and heart-bursting joy.

Carlisle’s magnanimous and inclusive approach to earthly existence is perhaps best summarized by the chorus of the first song on “Peculiar, Missouri,” which goes like this:

The heart’s a big tent

Gotta let everybody in

Doesn’t matter who they are

If they do right or where they’ve been

Everybody gets in

“Most movies or literature (portray love as) this very airy, mellifluous concept, right? As something people spend hours discussing and moving around invisible energies,” Carlisle said.

“I don’t want it to always be that! I sometimes want it to be like, ‘I’m giving you this thing,’” he continued. “I want it to maintain something of a material reality, because (love) is something I do feel like I have in infinite reserves.”

Who: Willi Carlisle, with DUG

When: 8 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 10, doors open 7 p.m.

Where: Volcanic Theatre Pub,

70 SW Century Drive, Bend

Cost: $15

Contact: volcanictheatre.com