BILL CALLAHAN

WHERE THE LIGHT GETS IN

BILL CALLAHAN has spent the past 30 years chronicling the human condition in his own droll, contemplative way. But as new album My Days Of 58 explores profound loss and a recent brush with mortality, is the elusive singer-songwriter finally ready to come clean? “The way to live is to be excited about being alive every second,” he tells Sam Sodomsky

Summoning the spirits: Callahan on Mount Bonnell, Austin, Texas

Photo by HANLY BANKS CALLAHAN

HANLY BANKS CALLAHAN

AFEW hours into our time with Bill Callahan, near the peak of Mount Bonnell in his adopted hometown of Austin, Texas, the 59-year-old songwriter starts noticing the vultures circling overhead. “We’ve been sitting still too long,” he deadpans. It’s a wry joke – the kind he’s made a name on since debuting his brilliant songwriting in the early 1990s under the cryptic moniker of Smog. But as he scans the verdant landscape of the Southern city he’s called home for more than 20 years, the ominous observation also provides insight into his restless, creative mind.

In February, Callahan will release My Days Of 58, the eighth album under his real name. It’s the most direct and unflinching collection of music he’s ever recorded.

From day one, the spectre of death has haunted Callahan’s work – among his first stabs at a love song was “Dress Sexy At My Funeral” – but now he speaks candidly about the loss of his father and his own recent brush with mortality. In one song, he describes a nightmarish visit to the doctor; in another, he provides explicit instructions to his loved ones: “Bury me far away”, he sings, “So I can take one last long trip/ Out on the highway”.

For now, however, Callahan seems content and settled. Today, he’s wearing understated hiking attire and a baseball cap advertising Joe Pera Talks With You, the wholesomely surreal comedy show created by his friend and kindred spirit in guiding everyday experiences toward surprisingly moving ends. As we amble back through town, he points out a spot along the trail where he shot a music video some years back; as we drive, we pass his favourite bookshop.

Where Callahan was once guarded, he now feels compelled to be as honest as possible, both in conversation and in his songs. Since his sprawling 2019 comeback Shepherd In A Sheepskin Vest, he has often positioned himself as not just the narrator of his songs but also the protagonist.

Nearly a decade into this experiment, he’s at a point where his songs can end with cheeky sign-offs (“Well, bye”, he announces in his signature oaky baritone to close out “Pathol O.G.”) or earnest addresses that transport us to brutal, one-on-one conversations. “Dad”, he sings at the beginning of “Empathy”, as if to summon the spirit.

Callahan recorded My Days Of 58 with several of the musicians who accompanied him on tour for his last album, 2022’s Ytilaer: drummer Jim White, guitarist Matt Kinsey and saxophonist Dustin Laurenzi. On stage, these musicians helped cast a psychedelic landscape for that record’s imagistic musings on pandemic life, signalling a distinct break from the starker storytelling of his previous releases. On My Days Of 58, he splits the difference.

On one hand, his music has never sounded quite so much like Van Morrison’s Astral Weeks, swaying and swelling as he repeats certain words like mantras before a jazzy, livewire band. “Sax is probably my favourite instrument besides guitar,” he explains. “It sounds like a crying baby, you know? Or a distraught woman. It’s the most human instrument to me.”