Last night I met one of my musical heroes for the second time, Welsh singer-songwriter Karl Wallinger who is the well-known frontman and genius behind World Party. I owe Chris Cannon, another singer-songwriter and one of my best friends, for the tip that Wallinger was headed to Dallas. I grabbed tickets for the show the second I heard about it, and even managed to meet Karl after the show (thanks to another tip from Chris — Karl is cool and happy about meeting fans when he can). Same guy I saw all those years ago, just a little older. Like me.
Karl Wallinger turned out to be such an incredibly cool human being. He is one of those talened and humble artists who I associate with Jeff Lynne (who I also got to meet back in 2001), not only because of their shared pop-sensibilities but also because Karl is another one those low-key artists who just shows-up and brings amazing well-written, well-crafted and unforgettable songs over and over through the years. And a lot like Lynne, Karl is just content to just be making music and he doesn’t particularly care if people might regognize him in public or not.
But I have a feeling Karl won’t be able to keep low-key for too long in the coming years, judging by the size of the crowd that came out ot see him at Dallas’ House of Blues last night! I feel like World Party is headed for a bit of a renaissance, not unlike what’s happened with Jeff Lynne’s ELO recently. And that would be great.
Karl and team put on one hell of a show last night and performed all of his songs perfectly which, when you consider we nearly lost Karl to a brain aneurysm in 2001, is amazing especially when you factor in the odds that Karl had to beat. He literally had to re-learn the muscle-memory you develope and associate for playing again, not an easy-task for a multi-instrumentalist, and he also lost some vision on his left side. But after a 5 year break Karl began touring again, and if you ever hear that World Party is coming to your town you should go see them. Karl is working on new material after he released Arkeology a couple years back, which is just awesome. I picked up a copy of that 5 CD album so I could hear Karl’s unreleased material. I had planning to buy it for awhile, but I am glad I waited because Karl was gracious enough to sign it for me after the show.
When I got to meet Karl, I asked him everything that one thinks of when meeting a music hero. Which is to say, everything you don’t forget to ask and end up remembering later! What I found amusing is that Karl actually remembered my friend Chris Cannon, who saw him a few weeks earlier. I think Chris left an impression on Karl since Chris can probably recite Karl’s discography better than anyone I know including me! For Karl to give a few dedicated fans nearly half an hour of his time, after the show, was beyond generous and extremely cool.
I also mentioned my Youtube video to Karl, which I threw together using his song “Put The Message In the Box” during my Tesla-excitement last month. I didn’t have any Internet around to play it for him, but he loved the idea! Karl said he’s a fan of Tesla and all the electric cars showing up, said maybe I should one every other year for the new EVs that show up on the market. I think that’s a great idea!
Take my advice, when Karl and World Party go on-tour again…do yourself a favor buy tickets and go see him.
Originally published at julianwest.me on June 26, 2015. Since then we sadly lost Karl Wallinger in March of 2024.