Bill Callahan: in search of ordinary things

Tom Zonderman
© Agenda Magazine
10/02/2014
(© David Norbut)

Bill Callahan is one of the most enigmatic songwriters of recent years. On his latest albums, however, he has opened up. “Good and bad is everywhere, it’s just a matter of what you focus on.”

When we ring him up one morning in Austin, Texas, Bill Callahan is busy tinkering with e-mail interviews, which were, up to now, his favourite way of talking to the press. Until he discovered Skype. You couldn’t call Callahan a great talker, but despite having a bad reputation among interviewers, we found him in a good mood this particular morning. His answers come in slow motion, with a disquieting little laugh after every sentence. Other than that, however, we had no complaints.

The “the post-punk Leonard Cohen” cobbled together more than ten albums under the cult moniker of Smog, before finally making his debut under his own name in 2007 with Woke on a Whaleheart. His fourth solo album, Dream River, released late last year, marks a new high point in his intriguing career. Two weeks ago, the notoriously gloomy Callahan put that album – King Tubby and Lee Perry-style – through the dub wringer under the title Have Fun with God. Dub? Callahan? We only ever heard Americana in your songs. “It was an experiment.” [Chuckles]

Are we going to have to call you King Callahan from now on?
Bill Callahan: [Laughs] As a teenager I discovered a radio station that played reggae music on Sunday nights, and I’ve been listening to it since. [Lengthy pause] I love the way dub artists reuse previously recorded songs, over and over again, and find different things in them.
When you have made as many records as I have, you risk getting bogged down in a fixed pattern. You know what sounds and works well and you start mixing your records like a robot. It becomes formulaic and you lose sight of the song. So, it was refreshing to turn everything upside down.

A while ago, Matthew E White gave a talk about dub in Brussels, while Damien Jurado has described reverb as sugar for the soul. What are singer-songwriters suddenly seeing in that Jamaican music?
Callahan: Dub is very visceral, but also very mystical, with earthly beats and a heavenly sound. But I don’t think it’s on the up. It’s like free jazz, it’s an acquired taste.

The album is now called Have Fun with God. Is that typical Bill Callahan tongue in cheek?
Callahan: I thought it was a beautiful image. It actually came from my sound engineer, Brian Beattie. He was making a sort of opera, and I played the part of a godlike character in it. After he took a coffee break, he came back to the rehearsal space and his daughter said, “Have fun with God”, meaning me. That image stuck. [Thinks about it] I saw it as a new way of looking at spirituality. Something that makes you happy, instead of something that you’re afraid of.
Have you started to look at life differently? Dream River radiates a certain tranquillity.
Callahan: When you make a record, you get the chance to recalibrate your life, give it a new outlook. In a way, you are making yourself new again. As you grow older, you become more comfortable with the way life is and with yourself. All the experience finally adds up to something. [Lengthy pause] I do feel more centred, in control, and confident. I realised that good and bad is everywhere: it’s just a matter of what you focus on. That was a recent revelation for me.

There has been a lot of fuss about the press photograph: you’re smiling!
Callahan: I’ve been smiling all my life. [Chuckles]

That photograph was taken by your soon to be wife, the photographer and documentary-maker Hanly Banks. Is she the reason you are smiling?
Callahan: [Laughs awkwardly] Yeah, she makes me happy. We were just camping near this beautiful river in Texas. It was a nice evening.

On her website, Hanly Banks describes herself as a documentarian. How would you describe yourself?
Callahan: I really don’t know what I’m doing, and if I think about it, I get freaked out. Actually, it feels really open to me, because I feel I can do whatever I want with any record. It doesn’t feel like a defined thing.

On the track “Jim Cain” on your album Sometimes I Wish We Were an Eagle, you sing, “I started out in search of ordinary things / How much of a tree bends in the wind”. Is that what you are striving after, to find meaning in little things?
Callahan: I think that’s basically all we have on earth. There aren’t any dragons or wizards or fairies, we just have ordinary things, but they’re still magical.
Originally, you released instrumental music. Were you afraid of words?
Callahan: Vocals can be the hardest thing to record. I wasn’t patient enough for words to come, I just wanted to make music. Now words have become the whole song to me. For the past four or five albums, I wrote the lyrics first. But lately I’m trying to focus more on the music.
A couple of years ago I wrote a book [Letters to Emma Bowlcut – TZ]. Nothing makes me feel better than sitting and writing; it’s the most complete, solid, worthwhile feeling that I know. I definitely want to write more.

Dream River is a smooth album, the kind that empties your mind before you go to sleep. With a conspicuous role for the flute.
Callahan: Yeah. It’s an instrument I never don’t want to hear. It’s always pleasant. It’s unobtrusive, it’s like breathing. Other wind instruments, like the trumpet and clarinet, they all change the sound, but with the flute it’s like you hear the breath of the wind almost. It gives flesh, lungs to the song, it gives life.

Nowadays, you make a record every two years. Have you a fixed working rhythm, like Nick Cave?
Callahan: [Chuckles] I used to give myself a break after a record, but lately I’ve been trying not to take that break and get right back into working. The difference is that, instead of eighteen hours, I only work two to three hours each day, first some writing and then some guitar playing, without thinking about the lyrics. I realised the brain can only do so much in a day.

You used to find making records a struggle.
Callahan: I used to become some sort of caveman. I threw myself in the deep end; it became more and more intense all the time. It wasn’t healthy, but it’s sometimes fun to do unhealthy things. Life is very simple that way, but also crazy. This time I wanted to have a life outside the recordings too and that worked. A lot of the work gets done in your subconscious. So once you start the ball rolling, as long as you do a couple of hours every day, you can do other things while your brain is working on it subconsciously.

Do you still have big dreams?
Callahan: [Thinks about it] The record is not really about dreaming. It’s more about a reality: the fact that you can choose to tune into a very blissful way of life. It’s like a dream river is flowing by us all the time, a story of words and situations you find yourself in. You just have to be able to see it. [Chuckles]

Bill Callahan • 11/2, 20.00, SOLD OUT!, Ancienne Belgique, boulevard Anspachlaan 110, Brussel/Bruxelles, 02-548.24.24, www.abconcerts.be, Q&A with Bill Callahan: 11/2, 18.00, Huis 23, Steenstraat 23 rue des Pierres, Brussel/Bruxelles (free for concertgoers)

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