Bill Callahan

An online conversation - ‘Sup Magazine, September 2011

I used to deliver singing telegrams in ridiculous costumes. I had played the parts of a rugged cowboy who was “new to this part of town,” a straight-talking sexy cop that “didn’t take no for an answer,” and a sexually ambiguous pink gorilla who “loved bananas”. I traveled from Brooklyn to deliver said jobs, or “Johns” as I used to call them. Turning tricks got me by; it was easy and I was making money off what my mother gave me. But it never got me off. On those long, multi-transfer train rides, I needed something to get my mind off the fact I hated making an ass out of myself in costume for money. Listening to his song “I Break Horses,” I found salvation in the vast world of the man then known as Smog, now as Bill Callahan.

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Bill Callahan keeping it low-key all the way

Songwriter talks about looking inward - Chicago Tribune, September 2011

Callahan never talks.

He rarely gives interviews, and even when he does, he doesn’t say much. Full sentences are rare. Complete thoughts are practically surgical extractions. He’s polite and hesitant and prone to lots of … awkward … pauses.

Callahan, 45, used to record under the nom de misery Smog before releasing a series of increasingly great albums under his own name, culminating in his 14th and best, “Apocalypse.” An impossibly good mix of Leonard Cohen, Merle Haggard and 10 kinds of idiosyncratic folk, “Apocalypse,” which was released in April, is depressing and complicated and beautiful. It boasts at least one knockout punch — “America!” — which enlists Johnny Cash and Kris Kristofferson in a battle against U.S. imperialism (“Afghanistan/Vietnam/Iran/Native America/America!/ Well everyone’s allowed a past they don’t care to mention”). “It’s a very inward record,” says Callahan. “Each song looks deeper and deeper into a different (world).”

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Only One Story To A Story

Exchanges with Bill Callahan - Inventory, Spring/Summer 2011

The first time I heard Bill Callahan sing, he was still Smog; he may even, at that point, have been (Smog). I received a tape from a friend and somewhere in the middle they had recorded ‘Held’, from Smog’s 1996 record Knock Knock. Later on the same tape Cat Power’s cover of ‘Bathysphere’ also made an appearance, and a lasting impression, but at the time I did not know that it had originally been recorded by Bill, and featured on an earlier Smog record. However, I knew that what i had heard was special, that it was unique and that it instilled in me in a compulsory reflective urge: to sit, to listen, and to covert everything else that had been recorded previously and everything that would be released subsequently. In hindsight that first song was not in any way a defining example of the back catalog Smog possessed, nor would it entirely hint toward the future of what was to come, but it did offer an early insight into the fact that there really was no defining sound to Bill Callahan. An intelligent fighter, he bobs and weaves between records, ducks critical punches, rests between the rounds in his corner; ready to emerge once more on the canvas: at once both familiar, and surprising: a new wild thing behind the eyes.

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Bill Callahan at the Rock and Roll Hotel

The Washington Post, July 2011

“I’m going to get right down to business.”

That’s what Bill Callahan says at the beginning of his 2010 live album, “Rough Travel for a Rare Thing,” and it’s a pretty fitting motto for his 20-plus-year career. Callahan wastes no words. See him in concert and he might not address the audience at all. For an interview, he prefers to trade e-mails as opposed to talking on the phone. Each one of his albums is centered on his voice — a penetrating, deadpan baritone — and lyrics. But his ruminations aren’t overflowing with extravagant prose. Callahan’s words are few, but that just makes them hit with more impact. And he has it down to a science.

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L’Apocalypse Des Animaux

JamBase - July 2011

For over two decades, Bill Callahan has been one of the most fearless survivors of indie rock’s evolution from its earnest roots in DIY integrity to fickle accessory for the Pitchfork-abiding hipster masses.

Under the guise of Smog, the 44-year-old Maryland native’s style of homemade, lo-fi rock has inspired nearly two generations, even as his sound evolved from its humble tape deck beginnings to a more produced style under the direction of such studio wizards as Jim O’Rourke, John McEntire and Neil Hagerty. However, it was only after he emerged from the – ahem - smog of his pseudonym did Callahan see his most fruitful years as an artist, expanding the spare base of his initial format to a fuller, richer veneer that helped to earn his first two albums under his own name - 2007’s Woke on a Whaleheart and 2009’s Sometimes I Wish I Were an Eagle —the most success he has enjoyed yet in this industry.

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Bill Callahan looks to the future

Madison - June 2011

After the excitable crowds on the Memorial Union Terrace marvel at Madison’s annual Rhythm & Booms fireworks display taking place across the lake at Warner Park on Saturday, July 2, they’ll be greeted by an unlikely sight in Bill Callahan.

The introspective singer-songwriter is not the first performer who comes to mind when one thinks of a headliner for a day-long party capped by thunderous fireworks. It’s a list that would probably read something like this: 1. Kid Rock, 2. Black-Eyed Peas, 3. Bob Seger … 1,456,340. Bill Callahan.

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