Tone Glow 158: Bill Callahan
Tone Glow 158: Bill Callahan
An interview with the American singer-songwriter about the Maryland hardcore scene, dub reggae, and his songwriting process
Bill Callahan
Bill Callahan (b. 1966) is an American singer-songwriter who has spent more than thirty-five years crafting music of unsparing frankness. His earliest albums as Smog—including Sewn to the Sky (1990), Forgotten Foundation (1992), Julius Caesar (1993)—saw him writing tracks whose vulnerability and wit were bolstered by lo-fi production and homespun instrumentation. He’d continue to hone his sound throughout the rest of the decade, with albums like Red Apple Falls (1997) and Knock Knock (1999) taking on fuller arrangements. Callahan sees A River Ain’t Too Much to Love (2005), though, as the major turning point in his career. Thereafter, he would drop the stage name and record music under his own, releasing some of his most tender releases in the years that followed, including Sometimes I Wish We Were an Eagle (2009), Apocalypse (2011), and Dream River (2013). His latest studio LP is YTI⅃AƎЯ (2022), and more recently he’s dropped a live album titled Resuscitate! (2024), which features recordings of a concert in Chicago. Joshua Minsoo Kim spoke with Callahan on August 31st, 2024 via Zoom to discuss the nature of “scenes,” abstraction versus clarity, and the books he’s currently reading.
Joshua Minsoo Kim: I read an interview where you said you were a fan of the Maryland hardcore scene growing up. I know you mentioned the Void split with the Faith. What’s your relationship with that music?
Bill Callahan: I grew up in Maryland for most of my life and that was my scene from ages twelve to twenty. It was such a big deal back then, and no one really talks about scenes anymore. I read fanzines, like Flipside from California, but there were DC fanzines like Truly Needy, which had a pretty comprehensive live review section and interviews with local bands. Even if I wasn’t going to that many shows, it kept me abreast of what was happening.
Were there any shows that really left an impression on you as a kid?
I would go to a lot of shows at VFW halls and places like that because hardcore bands would rent them out. I remember I saw Reptile House. Daniel [Higgs] from that band went on to Lungfish, which had a longer career and was more well known. I loved this band Honor Role, who were from Richmond, Virginia. They’re not that well known—they only made two albums and some singles—and I’d go down to the DMV area to see them. The guitarist, Pen Rollings, went on to do Butterglove and Breadwinner, who had their singles reissued by Merge. He was a huge, important figure for me. People sometimes credit him for inventing math rock, but I don’t think he even wants to take that mantle.
What stood out to you about him?
It was just feeling the vibe of it. It taught me, as much as the music did, that oh, we’re just in this space that someone rented and they’re selling tickets at the door. I don’t even remember how I’d hear about these shows, but I did. The DIY attitude really appealed to me and showed me a way. There are all these books that tell you how to get a record deal—all this stupid stuff—but I didn’t wanna do that. I just wanted to make music. The punk scene really showed me that you could take things into your own hands. I like the pragmatism of Dischord Records. They’d have price caps on records and print the price on the record, too, so you couldn’t sell it for more than that. They were leaders who showed me how things could be done.
Did you feel like you had a mentor at all in this scene?
I definitely didn’t have a mentor growing up; I was more of an observer. These were just people I looked up to—people at Dischord, but also anyone who was just getting stuff done.
Was there something specific about Pen Rollings’ guitar playing that stuck out?
As a musician, he’s a virtuoso guitar player. I’m nothing like that, and don’t aspire to be like that, but it is inspiring. There’s also this visceral way that he plays where the person and the instrument become one thing. That’s so rare to see—when someone embodies their instrument. It’s a holy thing to witness.
Do you also aspire to embody the guitar when you play?
I’ve been doing this for thirty years or something like that, and for the first twenty I didn’t even think about the guitar as a musical instrument (laughter). I was so focused on writing lyrics and singing them; the guitar was just something that made the noise that would go underneath my singing. Around 2004, when I was making A River Ain’t Too Much to Love (2005), that was the first time I thought, maybe I can become a guitar player. I learned how to fingerpick and there’s a lot of that on the album. It was an untapped part of making music for me and I decided to… tap it. I don’t think I’m really cut out to be a virtuosic guitarist. I still struggle with the most basic things (laughs), like, “This chord hurts my hand. What’s a B chord again?” I just never get past a certain competency. I’m striving for competency, not virtuosity (laughter).
In an interview from 2007, you mentioned how you think of the guitar as a tool to carve out space. And then when I learned that you were into dub and Lee “Scratch” Perry, everything clicked. There’s a subconscious dub influence that crops up in your early work. On Sewn to the Sky (1990), you have “Hollow Out Cakes” but also even on “Coconut Cataract,” the guitar is you doing a reggae bassline.
There was a great radio station called WHFS—it was a rare community-supported station—and I listened to it constantly. On Sundays there was a dub show and I was always listening to that. With “Coconut Cataract,” I don’t even know if it was conscious, but I was making a [reggae] bassline on the guitar.
Earlier you said that scenes don’t really exist anymore. And I know you’ve called the hardcore scene “the last of the true Americana.” I’m curious if you could talk more about that and this notion of scenes.
I do think there are scenes in rap—it’s all regional and things are different in each city. It was always funny to me, this idea of a scene. Fanzines had “scene reports” and I always read them, but there was something kind of funny about it. When I lived in Chicago, I don’t know if you’d call it a “scene” but there was definitely a vibe of what was going on in the city. A lot of people may have heard the same reissued record that came out and would incorporate bits of that into their music. And that to me is what a scene is, I guess, where people are doing their own thing but influenced by each other.
I never wanted to be a part of any scene. I never wanted to taint my music, and that’s why I stayed on an independent label. For the first couple albums, no one else could play on it except me. With Julius Caesar (1993), I let a cello player [Kim Osterwalder] on the record because I knew I couldn’t do anything resembling a cello. And for the first couple years, I didn’t do live shows or interviews—not that anyone was banging my door down for either (laughter)—but I made myself clear about what my music was going to be. And once I got that clear in my head and set down my roots, it felt safe to start bringing people in.
I wanted to go back to dub. What about it stood out for you?
I first heard it when I was 15 or 16, listening to the radio, and I just thought it was cool and weird. I didn’t even question it, like, “What is this?” And then 10 years ago, I started becoming obsessed with reggae and dub and that was all I listened to. This was around the time of Dream River (2013). It started being just dub. I don’t want to use the word “mystical” because it’s so cliché, but it’s such subliminal, subconscious music that is also really earthly and corporeal. It’s deep in the body. It’s both human and outer space. You know how we’re made from stardust? Dub is proof of that. It manifests that concept, which is hard to comprehend.
Is that something you ever try to capture in your own music?
That would be nice but no, that’s not something I think about or try to achieve. Most of the time, when I’m making a record and recording and deciding what to add, or when I’m mixing, all I tell myself is that I’m “making it right.” But… I don’t know what that means (laughter). You try to make music that touches deep in people’s souls, but there’s no prescription for that, you know? I just try to make things right.
So when you’re going from Dream River (2013) to the dub record, Have Fun With God (2014), do you feel like there’s a throughline with how you’re “touching souls”?
It’s hard to say. Lyrics are very important for all my records. With the dub record we did, I still wanted there to be some sort of story somehow, even though we were only using like 10% of the vocals. I guess it was more of an abstract way of working where everything is abstracted by echoes and EQs and distortion and their absence too. It’s a much more abstract way of making a record.
I like this notion of abstraction because it aligns with something you once said about lyrics, that they’re at their best when not consciously heard. Do you often think about abstraction with regards to your lyrics?
For the most part, I have a hard time giving myself permission to be abstract. I really want to give myself that permission but it’s hard for me to let go of clarity. A lot of bands write abstract lyrics, and sometimes it’s nonsense—so many huge hits are just nonsense—and they’re beautiful. And that’s what I was talking about, that the lyrics are not being heard and become a part of this whole. I got a sampler recently and I’m trying to allow myself to be more abstract. I really like footwork music. DJ Rashad’s Double Cup (2013) is amazing. That to me is as emotional as Celine Dion. I don’t know if that’s abstract… is footwork abstract?
I like the way that a line may be sampled and you’ll hear it evolve in mood throughout the course of a song just simply through repetition.
Yeah, it’s so direct that it becomes abstract.
You said that it’s hard for you to let go of clarity. Is there a reason for that?
The reason I started making music was because I was a stuttering, mumbling fool. At least behind closed doors, and without interruption from other people—people who say things better and sooner than I can—I wanted to get this straight for myself and put it out there. So even if I’m a stuttering, mumbling fool, at least I have this record that’s a part of me. Clarity of thought and vision was really important for me in my development from a boy to a man. After a while, I just got addicted to it. And I think this is what my listeners expect from me. I don’t know if I could slip in abstract lyrics—I feel like I would lose people. But there are places that I want my music to go, and I think it’s going to involve some abstraction.
Was there a specific album you made where, for the first time, you felt like you were able to say the things that you needed to say? That you felt mature?
I look at A River Ain’t Too Much to Love as a turning point. With the first three records, I had a machete and was hacking away through the brush of immaturity. With Red Apple Falls (1997) and Knock Knock (1999), I was halfway out of the jungle of youth. And then finally with A River Ain’t Too Much to Love, I’m walking into a big clearing.
Is that part of the reason you went from using Smog to making music under your own name?
Yeah. Jungle and smog—it’s the same thing.
Earlier you mentioned hip-hop. Do you keep up with mainstream rap right now?
I thought 50 Cent, Jay-Z, and Eminem were really great. But now the current rap stars can’t capture my attention for some reason. I tried listening to Drake but… he’s awful (laughter). Kendrick Lamar is okay but he doesn’t grab me. I try to look at lesser-known things too. But now there’s so much that it’s hard to know where to start. And it’s the same with any genre now with how it’s all available to us—-everything ever made is right in your hand. I remember when my friend got the first LL Cool J record in 1985. That was the only hip-hop record I saw or heard for years (laughter).
On “Naked Souls” off of YTI⅃AƎЯ (2022), you’re referencing Jay-Z and Kanye’s song, right? You sing, “If you escaped what I escaped, you’d be stress-eating in a diner in Dallas, too.”
You’re definitely the first person who’s ever pointed that out to me. I think most people miss that (laughter). I love Watch the Throne (2011). I listened to it a lot back in the day.
I wanted to talk about your new live album, Resuscitate! (2024). How do you approach playing a song live? I’ll hear a song like “Partition” where there’s a whole jazzy excursion. In the live version it sounds way more raucous.
You know how some people say their songs are like children? I… don’t usually say that (laughter). I do think that when a song is born, and I tend to record things when they’re really young—when they’re babies—so the recording studio is like a womb. And when it’s done, that’s right when it’s born. When it’s mixed and mastered, that’s when it gets its head out in the world. The longer it exists, it grows up and gets some piercings and tats.
So really, a song is just like Play-Doh. I’m not gonna go out on stage night after night and recreate the thing that happened in the studio. I remember recording “Partition” and we got the basics of it down and I’d been listening to Mahavishnu Orchestra. So the original song will be there for posterity but during soundcheck, I might be listening to something else or someone might make a sound on their instrument and we’ll try to add that. I wouldn’t go out on the road if I couldn’t improvise and change things, from the singing to the drums. It’s all gotta be flexible. You can’t be on cruise control. And that’s the best sort of show, when you can tell that everyone is listening to each other.
I get that when I hear “Coyotes,” for example. That one stretches out to 13 minutes.
There was a little evolution to that. We played it on the record and there’s no sax on the record—Dustin [Laurenzi] wasn’t on YTI⅃AƎЯ. Once I started hearing what he was playing on “Coyotes,” I wanted to have more of that, so he gets like five minutes to solo (laughter) and then we’ll play the song, and then we’ll let him do it again at the end. When I like something, it’s hard to stop.
Do you feel like that’s true in your relationships with people too? Like, you’ll be super passionate and committed to someone after realizing you like them? This can be either platonic or romantic relationships.
My social life is somewhat regimented now because I’m married and have two kids. We have friends and we see them but it’s part of a schedule. There’s not a lot of room for… improv (chuckles).
You’ve mentioned in the past that you’re often in your head when writing lyrics and detach from that by exercising. What camp does playing an instrument fall into? Like, when you’re playing live are you really in your head or is it in your body?
Playing live, and even when just playing an instrument on my own, I’m very much in my body. My mind gets in the way.
How so?
If I start thinking, I’ll play the wrong chord. I’ll start wondering what someone is doing on their phone in the audience. I’ll mess up. Even when I’m playing by myself, I’ll get transported somewhere.
How do you reconcile the process of writing lyrics, where you’re using your mind, and writing the music, which is when you’re in your body? Do you have a specific middle ground that you work out?
That’s probably why 100% of the time I write the lyrics first. That’s the semi-cerebral part of making music. Once I get that down, it’s almost just play. I don’t have to think because I have the text. So, I get the mind part out of the way because when I go and set it to music, it’s definitely not me using my mind.
What was it like to write Letters to Emma Bowlcut (2010) then? Was it solely cerebral?
It was musical because writing is musical to me. There’s rhythm and cadence to written words. I don’t even know if cerebral is the right word because… I’m not that smart (laughter). All my judgment for writing that book was just my gut. “Is this right? Does this feel right?” When I’m writing words, I think I’m writing music. I know I’m not the first person to say this, but I don’t recall writing most of my songs. I don’t come up with them. It’s like the elves who make the shoes at night. When I look back on them I’m like, whoa. I think it does come from some other place that’s not of this world. It’s hard to talk about lyrics because I don’t even remember how quickly I wrote something—you get into a trance-like state. My songs seem alien to me, and that’s why I can perform them repeatedly. It feels like they aren’t mine and that they’re from someplace else. I don’t attach ego to them because if I attached ego to them there’d be shame, like “is this good enough?” These songs are like the Ten Commandments—you just find them on these stones (laughter).
Are you planning on writing another book?
I would like to. I’ve tried various things and nothing’s really taken hold. Right now I’m trying to organize my studio and I’ve been letting all these vines and thorns grow around it. Yesterday and today I started hacking away at all the ground cover. I’m hauling out all these big sheets of corrugated metal. I had just let it all go to pot, and it’s because I can work in the biggest mess. Lots of people get distracted by messes but I could write songs in a garbage dump. I’m trying to clear everything, both inside and out of my space, because there’s so many things I wanna do: writing, drawing, and other stuff that I don’t seem to have the time to do. I think clearing up the space will help me.
Have you been reading anything lately?
I started reading The Brothers Karamazov for the first time in like thirty years. It had a huge, mind-blowing influence in terms of, like, coming up as a man. There was a little free library and I grabbed it. I read a little bit and so far it’s been good.
Do you feel like your experience with it so far has been different from when you read it thirty years ago?
When I reread stuff that made a big impression on me thirty years ago, I often feel like I’ve outgrown it. They were necessary stepping stones, but I don’t need to go back on them because… I’ve already stepped on them (laughter). With this book, I’m probably getting the exact same thing I did thirty years ago. It’s such a perfect novel. I feel like I’m reliving that time, or that it’s touching the same synapses in my brain.
I’m starting to read a lot of musician autobiographies. They’re fun to read, but I never let myself read them because… I don’t know if reading’s supposed to be that much fun (laughter). I was just like “fuck it!” and got all of Merle Haggard’s—he wrote two and there’s a biography.
The fiction that most blew my mind lately—and this is after years of wanting to have my mind blown again by fiction—was one by an Australian guy, Gerald Murnane. I saw it in a bookstore and I liked the cover, but I kept thinking about it because it had this cool cover, so I went back and got it. Sometimes you just know. He has his own style of writing that’s as unique as Samuel Beckett’s, though it’s unique to him. He’s not for everybody. And I hate to keep using this word, but he can be quite abstract. It’s called Stream System (2018). It’s the most original thing I’ve read in years.
I wanted to ask about your works with the late Cynthia Dall. There’s the Smog song “Wine-Stained Lips,” and then the songs on her debut that you sing on. I really love “Holland.” What do you remember about working with her?
As I said at the beginning of the interview, I set my roots down doing everything by myself, and then I started letting people play with me. She was one of them, and I think she really wanted to do her own thing. People had come to think of Smog as, “Well, that’s Bill Callahan.” She’d be angry when people thought she was my puppet or something, like I was just telling her what to do, and I think that was the impetus for her to make a record on her own.
She didn’t really know how to play any instrument. She couldn’t really even play chords—she’d play one string at a time. I think that contributed to the uniqueness of those records. I helped a lot with the lyrics on “Holland,” but that was a really tumultuous relationship that we had.
I end all my interviews with the same question and I wanted to ask it to you. Do you mind sharing one thing you love about yourself?
…Just one? (laughter). Well, one thing I like about myself is that I change my mind a lot. I’m flexible. I don’t think there’s anything wrong about changing your views, whether it’s political views, religious views, artistic views, or views on humanity. For me, it makes my life more dynamic and interesting because I’m always trying to evolve, you know?
Did you change your mind on anything recently?
It’s happening constantly, really. I’m always thinking about God and Jesus and political figures. The big thing was with the pandemic and all the absolute bullshit there. That really changed my opinions on a lot of political things. I used to think that the government was there to take care of us, but it’s not. I’m glad I learned that lesson.
Bill Callahan’s new live album, Resuscitate!, can be purchased at the Drag City website and at Bandcamp.
Thank you for reading the 158th issue of Tone Glow. Always try to evolve.
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