anticipate APOCALYPSE, the new bill callahan record

sometimes his vocals in live performance can get too arch, but that doesn't happen too often on record.

amazing show last night in denver, my first time seeing him. almost a two hour set! he really is a great performer, something i wasn't totally expecting. commands the stage! even took requests during the encore, and closed with mine, "Sycamore". beautiful.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-uaN0y8YWTM

chicago show asshole otm, smog otm, drummer otm

show in brooklyn the other night was awesome. favorite bit was during the well when there was a pause and he said "i forget the next line" an audience member screamed out a lyric and bill replied "no that comes later" Then later in the song, while the band was still plugging away, he commented that the song was "taking forever tonight"

dude's voice is arresting and kinda transfixing. band was hot too, has that guy played guitar on any of his albums?

Matt Kinsey was his name and he was shit-hot, on some intergalactic swamp twang tone. Joanna Newsom's drummer (whose name escapes me) was behind the kit. such nuanced stellar playing from them and a great show.

yeah his band was great -- who needs a bass player! Callahan was better than I expected on classical guitar too.

yeah the nasty tone his guitarist was pulling off was great. sort of a classic rock thing.

sort of a classic rock thing.

totally. totally a part of the record, too, that kinda longing slightly wailing guitar, the electric part on riding for the feeling.

his show in boston the other night was fantastic. it restored my interest in going to see shows—not one iPhone in the air, nobody texting, the sound was perfect. his music is so wonderfully minimal and full of intention... stoic... transfixing is a good word.

yeah, even though you could probably describe callahan's stage presence as "aloof," it sort of works for him -- like he sets the right tone for the live show. I had close to the same experience (maybe a few iphones) in Denver -- packed crowd, but really quiet and into it.

it restored my interest in going to see shows

yeah: like there is something about it that so resembles the platonic idea of going to see like, lol, a songstrel play his songs, rather than your favourite musician possibly play one of your favourite of his songs. you're really listening, rather than remembering or tracking or appreciating or anticipating. there's a video on some site of him playing one fine morning in front of a crowd, & you can see it ringing out better than it does on the lp, because it's hitting people one line at a time - i can't explain it but the way it's unfolding feels so charged & ephemeral, seeing him.

^ yes, well put.

he's always been like that. i remember a show ca. 1997–8, he actually showed up early (wtf) and was drinking at the bar, looking into space w/ a 100-yard stare. nobody dared approach him.

"like that" -- aloof, stoic, whatever

just makes his droll humor stand out. at the show a few weeks ago, when one sort of embarrasingly overenthusiastic dancer dude stopped to relax/get a beer, and another dude started doing something similar, bill just said, "looks like we're at a shift change."

lol

XP: at both of those stories!

makin' me regret not going to the show he's playing here tonight but MONEY Y'ALL

that aloofness is why i thought it was weird he asked for requests, and then embarrassed when people were shrieking out song names. he doesn't seem like someone who should take requests.'][[[[[[[[[[iiii

sorry my daughter typed that last part.

heard a story about an old show when people were hollering for requests, he'd been silent all night & then stepped up to the mic to say:

is anyone willing
to die
for their request

that's the best concert banter i've ever heard

i feel like callahan's the sort of ornery dude who'd ask for requests and then systematically ignore all of them.

i laughed every time he said "I Thank You" at the show. classic.
but where DID that guitarist come from anyway?

i think i wrote this on another thread, but after he asked for requests and people were screaming song titles for a couple of minutes, he said "i'm glad you guys don't write the set list."

his funny comment at my show was: "I haven't played here in many years ... but I thought about you ... the whole time I was gone."

he should do a comedy album.

"take my cryptic poeticism ... please!"

Oh yeah, so like I said on the other thread I realized this album is amazing. I actually bought it mainly because the record store clerk was cute and playing it, but it's amazing.

would smog clerk

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/650397224/apocalypse-a-bill-callahan-tour-film

Anyone else pledge? Seems an unlikely subject for a tour film, Bill being famously reticent and all, but what do I know? I just wish there was an actual, you know, DVD. Ah well. I pledged for the mix CD. That's gonna be awesome.

http://americansongbook.org/pdfs/2012/AS-2012-02-08-Callahan.pdf

lol @ Thursday, February 9, at 8:30
tUnE-yArDs

ha that program is classic

So that concert film/road doc is finished. Saw it in Baltimore this past weekend with the director and Bill in attendance. It was quite good! She caught some beautiful footage. Bill played a nice short little set after the screening. I’m assuming there will be a DVD/BluRay release at some point in the not-do-distant future.

#217 of my 1,000 favorite moments on this record:

that quiet, brief laugh he does at 3:56 in "universal applicant" ---- "the flare burned and fell / the boat burned as well, hm!"

bees only swarm when they're looking for a home
...and so i followed them!

#218

"to be free in bad times... and good"

IF this record has 1000 moments, Eagle has 100,000.

Both Eagle and Apocalypse are favourites of mine but out of the two, I prefer the latter - more consistently excellent and for me the lyrics are the best Callahan has ever wrote.

this was the performance that convinced me that "america!" is the highlight, not the goofy outlier, of this album:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kwaiE9nZWCk

incredible record and cannae wait for the new one

ne too but i hope it will be better than Apocalypse

nobody does not hope that but we can still be fond of apocalypse all the same

waking up tremulously anxious to hear this every day btw

Apocalypse is his best album.

that's going a little far but there's absolutely nothing wrong w/it

it's not one of my fave callahans but seeing him live on this circuit helped me appreciate it more

i do not generally care for, or at least don't automatically prioritise, shows, but he does something so special, live, i think, like it plays to a strand of his music, to do with timing & tension, that makes it even more itself, in a kinda extra-dimensional way. it becomes ... ultra-smog.

yeah - and more simply for me, you notice how good a guitarist he is, how much he's doing in those economical little turnarounds

it is interesting seeing the new song to know it's another of his kinda woven into a simple, rolling line, like it has the DNA of to be of use or all thoughts are pray to some beast. I think there was definitely a moment (like around a river?) when he seemed to step up & sorta click more with what a guitar could do propulsively, how it could be momentum for him to sing with or else play against, pitching his hesitation against its flow on the well or whatever. I'm curious to hear the arrangements for the new record (which I hear are pretty jazzy/loose), because I generally can't neatly assign a register or style he's working in , now - that he is amid this kinda syrupy late flowering, & playing with these sorta austere & delicate classical sounds seems to mean people are calling him glen campbell or picking up on his mickey newman affection, but it isn't that, to me. I feel like he's doing everything very minimally & then dressing it up well.

he's always been kind of a minimalist, arrangement-wise, and he's always been good live with these kind of steady vamps whose dynamics shift in subtle ways. i've admired this about his live shows since... probably the red apple falls era. he's just got better since.