South by Southwest ‘08: Wesley Willis’ Joyrides

(Reprinted from Short End Magazine)

Wesley Willis was my introduction into the world of outsider art. I was a college freshmen living in a dorm, and my high speed internet connection was a pipeline to all manner of media I never would have otherwise been exposed to. This was the Napster era, the golden age of file sharing where it became a mission to find and consume as much music as I possibly could.

It was around this time that I discovered Wesley. He was described to me as a schizophrenic rapper, an oddball who jammed out his thoughts to the sound of Yamaha keyboard presets. His songs were profane and hilarious, and I derived much amusement in playing them for friends and dorm neighbors. He intrigued me in ways I couldn’t describe at the time. After a lifetime of pop radio, his dissonant rants were captivating in their unpolished charm, honesty and humor.

I was saddened by Wesley’s death in 2003, but five years later I have to admit that I can’t remember how long it’s been since I listened to one of his songs. That is, before Wesley Willis’s Joyrides reminded me just as much I enjoyed his work.

Helmed jointly by Chris Bagley and Kim Shively, Joyrides takes a low budget, hands-off approach to its subject and brings us into his street-level world. It observes as Willis interacts with fans and strangers, draws scenes of the Chicago landscape, and plays on various tours. It loosely retraces his beginnings in the Chicago projects and follows him up until his final hospital stay. It focuses on Willis’s success despite the many obstacles he faced in life, and no more dwells on the hardships he faced than Wesley did.

Viewing the film I was surprised to find that, even though I’d never before seen footage of Wesley, he spoke and acted very much like I assumed he would. His conversational style comes across nearly identical to that of his songs. He spoke with a poetic lyricism that is both amusing and endearing, and despite being troubled by schizophrenia and what he referred to as demons, the footage the filmmakers captured over the course of four years portrays him as overwhelmingly positive.

The film added a great deal to my knowledge of the man, and it devotes a nice amount of time to exploring his visual art, something I previously knew little of. Interviews and footage are intercut with animated segments of his some of his most interesting work, which is brilliant in its detail and uniquely distorted perspective.

Joyrides makes it clear that Willis was a person who drew and wrote songs because of an compulsion to express himself and his view of the world, a drive that should be familiar to artists of any discipline. In this way, Willis is a great inspiration. During his too-short life, he achieved what many artists struggle for a lifetime to accomplish: a prolific output, and a level of renown.

Wesley Willis’s Joyrides is a fitting tribute to the man that reminds us that no matter what kind of hell ride life takes us on, there’s no reason to give up. Willis sure didn’t. All he required was that you say rock, and then say roll, and he was happy.