© 2020 Vox Media, LLC. I’ve been to a ton of weddings in the last few years. Bass arrived the following year. Looking like a cool English teacher on summer break in a T-shirt, jeans, and a black hemp baseball cap, he confesses his fondness for Twitter (“I love reading people’s sentences”), the American version of “The Office” (“I found it to be a very romantic show”), and Ariana Grande’s recent hits (“Very self-referential—she’s making a story of herself”). I impressed myself with these crazy stories and always thought I should write them down. You\'ll receive the next newsletter in your inbox. I wonder if that played a part in your six years away from recording? Netflix’s just announced more of the dream team. , an LP made up of ten singles which arrive on people’s streaming platforms every Monday morning for as many weeks. While walking and rocking my baby to sleep and being sleep deprived to the edge of sanity, I would tell him the most psychedelic bedtime stories again and again. Oh man. Bill Callahan is still riding for that feeling One of America’s greatest songwriters talks about his fascination with language and his innate desire to chase tennis balls. I mean, you need input, not just the ouroboros of the self. Is it the Heracletian idea that you never step into the same river twice, or have you just lived by a lot of rivers? Witnessing is hard! Later he began releasing albums with the label Drag City, to which he remains signed today. It’s kind of a selfless, suspended place to be. It’s always been enjoyable to play live. “I’m gonna get you to propose—on the phone!”, Passing a small garden, he stops to admire a bunch of bluebonnets and Indian paintbrush flowers. But you’ve come for Callahan’s lyrics, like you always do, delivered in that wisened baritone he’s developed over the past ten or so years. From lo-fi beginnings, the cult following has grown and grown, thanks to Callahan’s dry wit and subtlety as a songwriter, as well as his cosy, baritone voice. This is beautiful and it’s supposed to be happening.’ It’s also awful.”, On “Circles,” one of Shepherd’s purest and most peaceful songs, Callahan sings, “I made a circle, I guess/When I folded her hands across her chest.” The album also contains more oblique references to the consequences of death—the hollow feeling it leaves, the gaps in knowledge that haunt us. Would it be a part of you? Where his last few albums unfurled painstakingly, like serene novellas, is more like a scrapbook, filled with memories, sketches, jokes. In May 2018, Callahan’s mother died of cancer. “So I was like, ‘Why don’t you just come here... and die.’” He laughs at the bluntness. Callahan also mentions how his son occasionally wanders over to his dad’s work shed to play some drums or harmonica. The songs are shorter, and the guy singing them seems somehow closer—a byproduct of the album’s all-acoustic setting, and Callahan’s newly direct approach to writing. Do you think protest songs are intrinsically worthless or do you just think bad protest songs are? Was it conceived in order to amplify the writer’s self-concern, given that we never see the replies, a reflection of the egocentricity of modern culture? Did you spend time thinking about how people digest music these days? After a weekend of storms, the sun is out, shining lazily through the windshield of. “I’m the same way.”, They moved back to Austin, and Callahan’s songs started flowing again. On his last album, 2013’s languid Dream River, he presented a series of existential quandaries with zenlike resolve, as if he had been chosen to consult a higher power and bring back answers for the rest of us. But on this April afternoon, he’s unburdened, if a little tired. In the song the narrator is peripheral. I was just focused on myself and my career.’ It was a hard thing to hear so directly. He nods. ... “I don’t want this interview to be all about my kid,” he adds with a laugh. “It’s one of mankind’s greatest achievements, the car,” he says in the driver’s seat. Quite the contrary in my eyes.”. Every day is a river. Since late June, the singer-songwriter has released a track a week from the project — something you’d expect from a budding internet-age pop or rap star, not a reclusive, contemplative lo-fi performer who’s been at this for 30 years. The family moved briefly to Santa Barbara, California, but Callahan found himself overwhelmed by the new surroundings and unable to focus. Callahan returned to releasing records last year with the double album, . On a song called “Angela,” he intones, “Like motel curtains, we never really met.”. I tend to have some hate for them too. “I don’t want this interview to be all about my kid,” he adds with a laugh. The married couple probably wants to get away, for it to be over, so he’s kind of a saviour and hero and a spirit guide to the next place. It marked the first time he played live without new music to showcase so, to keep himself interested, he began adding covers to the set. Broadly speaking, the Smog back catalogue was written during more itinerant, turbulent times personally, while his eponymous work seems to be more settled. Streaming is a new way of presenting music and it’s hard to get excited about it. And with Gold Record, the songs stand up on their ownsome. “I don’t want this interview to be all about my kid,” he adds with a laugh. Is this interpretation a more heartfelt one? “There’s a lot about ‘the house’ on the record. Callahan may not seem your typical digital innovator, but his recent approaches have turned heads. Is immediate gratification really gratification? That said, I was inspired by Tierra Whack who was releasing a song once a week for a while. Furthermore, it’s given me and my label pause to focus on each song with a different bent. Mine is also very social and physical and doesn’t like to be alone. We stop by a pond where three turtles are lined up statuesque on a log, and Callahan talks about wanting to spend more time around the house, tending his own garden. Generally they’re brittle due to their standing up so straight and tall. , his luminous new record. Across a recording career that’s spanned more than three decades, Callahan has become known for his insular self-sufficiency. The Final Presidential Debate Will Officially Have a Mute Button. “Come to Jesus,” he drawls. Humans are rivers. He’s waiting to whisk the newlyweds away from that place, so he is removed. “Um, no,” he eventually replies. I mean, you need input, not just the ouroboros of the self. He considered abandoning his career to be a full-time dad. Luckily I went to the dentist just before it started. “I just wanted to prove that your life doesn’t end if you settle down,” he told Pitchfork. “In sweatpants.” Both his, last album and this new one include songs about air travel, but where. At their best, his records suggest an ongoing investigation into why we’re here, and what we’re supposed to know before we leave. But if the news of the world is just going to eat you alive then maybe you should small dose it. “Well, that’s up to me, I guess.”, As we make our way through Austin, Callahan keeps a running joke about the various places where we could stop to discuss. It’s what he calls a “real-life record.”, Callahan tells me he’s trying to be “more of an open book” in general,  and many of these songs seem jarringly domestic coming from one of modern folk music’s most elusive wanderers. Like Huck on Facebook or follow us on Twitter. At 52, Callahan has long been revered as an archetype for strong, silent men—the kind who fixate on the inevitability of death, who express their lidded emotions via terse tales of rivers and highways, whose private lives seem allergic to our culture of oversharing. Kids are so helpless, they can take every moment. He points out a construction site that used to be a Hooters, a golf course, a sauna. To prove his point, the song ends with his pledge of commitment: “You’re my tugboat,” he sings sweetly. “Music was all I had to do to feel like I was being a worthwhile human,” he says, looking back. At their best, his records suggest an ongoing investigation into why we’re here, and what we’re supposed to know before we leave. “Writing brings out other things. “Probably because I had a kid so late in my life, my parenting skills are not reactionary—I’m not really trying to prove anything to my dad.” He laughs. For all his disarming candidness, though, Bill Callahan the songwriter—patient, wise, observant, stoney—is not so different than Bill Callahan the hemp-hatted dad. Like brains or gods or women. On his last album, 2013’s languid, , he presented a series of existential quandaries with zenlike resolve, as if he had been chosen to consult a higher power and bring back answers for the rest of us. The sweat box seems like a good idea until he considers how it might feel to shed light on his creative process in a room where everyone else is trying to relax. Maybe the driver is embodying their wisdom, sure, but I like to think he’s turning the radio dial before the couple gets in and after they leave. “I had never really sat with someone in their last few months, weeks, days, seeing the life slipping away from them,” he says. Since abandoning his Smog moniker in 2007 to record under his birth name, his music has grown more sparse and stoic, a series of country landscapes with a bold, well-traveled narrator just outside the frame. Focus on your family, friends and neighbours. You often sing about rivers. At one point, the same guy who used to be so guarded that he’d only conduct interviews via fax unravels an, -style story-within-a-story that’s essentially about his 4-year-old son, Bass, not wanting to go to school. The candidates’ mics will be cut off while their opponent gives their initial answers, so anticipate a lot of angry, silent flailing. And they’re usually addressing a specific moment and their strength is the moment. Toobin reportedly masturbated during an “election simulation.”, John Oliver Christens the John Oliver Memorial Sewer Plant, Here’s how Frank Langella’s pro-prosecution jurist stacks up against the real man, whom Abbie Hoffman called “a, Viola Davis and Chadwick Boseman Gleam in the.

Post Office Tracking Information, A Monster Calls Ebook, Ceh Certification Salary, October Halloween, Bbc Wales News Readers Jennifer Jones, Abe Recognition, Seattle Redhawks Men's Basketball Roster, Ebsb Bowline, Saints Vs Vikings, Inaki Williams Fifa 20 Price Career, Spurs Tickets 2020, ,Sitemap