Interview: Bill Callahan

I interview Bill Callahan here:

http://spectrumculture.com/2010/09/interview-bill-callahan.html

Letters to Emma Bowlcut: by Bill Callahan

Letters to Emma Bowlcut
by Bill Callahan
Rating: 3.0/5.0
Publisher: Drag City

Letters to Emma Bowlcut is one of the few works of musician-penned fiction that is not appallingly abysmal or vainly self-indulgent. There's a stigma attached to works of "literature" penned by a lyricist, and with good reason. Even heavyweights like Bob Dylan and Nick Cave haven't dodged this particular landmine. With its Beat Generation-aping stream of consciousness style and nonsensical wordplay, Tarantula is still mostly unreadable, whether you're sober or stoned. Cave's And the Ass Saw the Angel is no better - hell, it's actually much worse - as its tale of Euchrid Eucrow over-imbibes in the gothic excesses that somehow still work on Cave's 1980s albums. A reader could be forgiven for hearing echoes of Cave's albums in that text; Christ, the rain even pissed down in the book too. Some wits favorably compared Angel to both Faulkner and O'Connor - surely an insult to both of those writers (to be fair though, Cave's more recent The Death of Bunny Munro is a little better).

It's therefore a minor miracle that Bill Callahan's Letters to Emma Bowlcut is actually worth reading and would likely garner attention even if Callahan didn't already have indie music name recognition to give this publication a little PR push. Alternately described as an epic poem and an epistolary novel, it consists of 62 letters over which a relationship between an unnamed man and a woman, possibly a librarian he meets at a party, develops. If the whole concept sounds too quaint for this email and text age and just a little bit precious, at least it's well-written enough to make it easy for the reader to forgive its somewhat rustic premise.

Usually writing in short, declarative sentences, Callahan gradually reveals details about each character, always through the voice of the male. The man's job remains nebulous; he works with micrometers, studies the "Vortex" and makes one trip to company headquarters, but otherwise, Callahan offers glimpses into the man's past and present in the subtlest of ways. The man is a boxing enthusiast - "god I wanted the uppercuts to connect," he says in an early letter - as well as something of an emotional live wire. He vacillates between extremes: sobriety and intoxication, insecurity and bravado, dissatisfaction and contentment, chivalry and crudity. The character is meant to be viewed sympathetically despite his flaws, as many of the events he recalls - especially phone calls with a grandmother whose memory is failing - seem designed to evoke compassion from the reader. Though the woman remains a little more sketchy, primarily because everything we know about her comes from the letter writer's perception of her, Callahan similarly provides enough back story to make her more than the man's idealized muse.

Some traits of Callahan's lyrical style find their way into Letters to Emma Bowlcut (indeed, the title of Callahan's latest studio album Sometimes I Wish We Were an Eagle can be found in letter 20). The letters are frequently poetic; in letter 3 the man says that "at the heel end of day, I need my glass of wine. Christmas lights for the brain. In lulls we assess the gulls." It could be gibberish but, damn, it sounds good. Other letters feature Callahan's sardonic and borderline cruel sense of humor; in letter 44 the man describes how he reacts when someone falls down: "I have an inability to help anyone who has fallen. To witness injects me with a paralytic joy. If someone falls in front of me, you've never seen such a smile in your life." But the book is not simply Callahan's lyrics set to paper, and is better for it.

Sometimes Callahan's inner monologue ponderings on so much of life's mundane daily acts of repetition smack of pseudo-psychological babble. But Letters to Emma Bowlcut is usually pretty damn good and shows all the traits that make Callahan's music so worthwhile. It also doesn't embarrass its author, something a few big-name lyricists who've released some serious drivel can't claim.

Bill Callahan - Rough Travel for a Rare Thing

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No one listens to a Bill Callahan album expecting to be cheered up. The singer's best songs carry with them a sense of desolation and loneliness that is impossible to miss, even if these dark overtones are sometimes offset with dry humor, a resigned shrug or hints of stubborn determination. Throw in arrangements that could squeeze an emotional response out of anyone with a pulse, along with the singer's wobbly baritone, and you've got the makings for some of the most introspective and altogether moving songs in modern indie.

It's fitting, then, that the live Rough Travel for a Rare Thing showcases Callahan's unique ability to create primarily somber music without becoming melodramatic. Taken from a November 2007 performance in Melbourne, its songs are precisely arranged, with Callahan on guitar accompanied by a trio of fiddles, bass, harmonica and drums. This isn't to say that all 11 songs are wrist-slashing weepers - they aren't, as "Diamond Dancer," "Held," "The Well" and "Bathysphere" inject some volume and speed into this show - but it's the mostly solemn tracks that stay lodged in the brain long after the record has ended. With Callahan's world-weary voice and the backing band's frequent touches of strings and other instrumentation, there is an almost unbearable sadness to the live renditions of these songs, especially in the familial histories/tragedies of "Rock Bottom Riser" and "Bowery," the introspection of the mortality-tinged "Say Valley Maker" and the mournful distance of traditional song "In the Pines."

The show's lack of frills suits Callahan's style well; the songs are performed in an understated manner with a sincerity and conviction that emphasize each song's content and composition. There are also a few fever-pitch moments that probably left the Aussie crowd floored, most noticeably Callahan's howls on "The Well" and "Cold-Blooded Old Times" and the rising strings that punctuate "Let Me See the Colts" and "Bowery." It's an outstanding show to represent the artist's first officially released live album, with each song performed uniquely enough to distinguish it from its album counterpart; old standby "Cold-Blooded Old Times" in particular is a highlight, slowed down to a near crawl and featuring alternate lyrics and off-center phrasing, especially on the classic line "How can I stand/ And laugh with the man/ Who redefined your body?."

Rough Travel likewise hits all the main checklist points any legitimate live album should. It consists of a single show instead of a couple dozen tracks culled from various concerts, which is preferable to this reviewer at least. Its sound quality surpasses most of the Callahan shows that circulate unofficially; unlike many of the American shows that make the rounds, there is no idiotic audience chatter to fill those uncomfortable silences between songs or, you know, those distracting minutes where the band is actually playing. The record is also fairly representative of both the musician's Smog and solo careers up to 2007, with tracks from five different albums and one EP included.

Some fans will argue that one of Callahan's more recent 2009 shows - which mixed tracks from Sometimes I Wish We Were an Eagle with other songs from the singer's 20-plus year career - should have been considered for Rough Travel, and they'd have a point. Still, any quibbles are minor. For the most part Rough Travel is a live album done right and again confirms why Bill Callahan's work is consistently just so damn good: like the artist's best studio efforts, this live document offers the types of subtle melodies and poetic lyricism that few indie musicians can come close to matching.

Rough Travel may leave listeners feeling a little bit morose, but that's to be expected with Callahan's songs. Quite simply, this album is the next best thing to actually seeing Callahan live in concert.

Bill Callahan: Sometimes I Wish We Were An Eagle

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It's tempting to view Sometimes I Wish We Were An Eagle as just another entry in that long line of breakup albums, with Bill Callahan sorting through the wreckage of his split from pixie harpist Joanna Newsom. Amid all the horse/river/bird imagery that recurs throughout the album, its songs certainly serve up heavy doses of looking back, with a mixture of regret, disappointment and rueful bemusement. Leave that two-bit analysis to the armchair psychologists out there; such an approach sells this album far too short.

Whatever its inspirations, Sometimes I Wish is a remarkably understated and textured album. As an artist Callahan has never seemed particularly interested in confining his style. The primary consistency in Callahan's albums is his speak/sing baritone voice; like fellow Drag City cohort Will Oldham, all other elements are negotiable. In his Smog and solo guises Callahan has explored lo, lo-fi, folk and pop, though the crimes committed on Rain On Lens still aren't forgivable. Previous effort Woke On A Whaleheart was fairly optimistic and contented - or at least as optimistic and contented as Callahan gets - so it should come as no surprise that Sometimes I Wish is primarily pensive and rife with mournful undertones.

Sometimes I Wish is unassuming and unimposing, a near-perfect blend of guitars, keyboards, strings, percussion and occasional horns that Whaleheart merely hinted at. These are the type of songs where the listener can't help but listen to with just a little bit more attention; the songs' emotions and intentions unfold slowly and reveal themselves more fully with repeated listens. With its sparse guitars, weary strings, hushed percussion and half spoken/half sung vocals, opening track "Jim Cain" sets the template for most of what follows. Name checking the fiction writer best known for The Postman Always Rings Twice, Callahan offers a depiction of someone brooding over the past with an eye to the present, equal parts resignation - "I used to be darker/ Then I got lighter/ Then I got dark again" and disappointment - "Things didn't pan out as planned." "Eid Ma Clack Shaw" mines similar thematic territory, the song playing like a walk through the bleakness and dark comedy of someone's mind. Callahan lays on the equine imagery pretty thick, contrasting the song's somber image of someone haunted by a memory with a bouncy arrangement and humor, as the narrator's dream of his lyrical masterpiece is revealed to be little more than the nonsensical babble of the song's title. "Rococo Zephyr" is arranged beautifully, with acoustic guitar, keyboards, and strings used to devastating effect. Moments of joy are tempered and measured in the song; the woman who laid next to its narrator "like a branch from a tender willow tree" is presumably long gone, the narrator left with little more than a bittersweet moment of clarity: "I used to be sort of blind/ now I can sort of see."

Austin-based musician Brian Beattie provides string and horn arrangements that are as integral to the album's mood as Callahan's lyrics and vocals. Subtle strings and horns float throughout the gloom of "The Wind and The Dove," while "Too Many Birds," with its central image of a wandering and lost bird, features a string section that heightens the song's impact. "My Friend" and "All Thoughts Are Prey To Some Beast" up the album's intensity level via strings and guitars that stab through Callahan's growls, both songs building tension like a wave that crashes and then recedes slowly.

Still overall the album's vibe is one of disappointment, regret and restlessness. When Callahan sings that "it's time to put God away" in closing song "Faith/Void," it's hard not to view it as a summary of the conflicted emotions that preceded it, a sentiment of deep resignation or perhaps an optimistic acknowledgment that things haven't completely gone to shit. For an artist who has tended to jump genres with seemingly perverse glee, Sometimes I Wish is nearly flawless in its approach and execution.