American musician Bill Callahan Photo: Supplied
For Bill Callahan, it's "a version of hell" to play songs the same way every time.
The beloved American musician tells Music 101's Charlotte Ryan about the thrill of improvising on his new live album Resuscitate!, the "little sparks" which become songs and why he's planning to explore not songwriting later this year.
Improvised music can sometimes get a little tiring "because there's not always a ground to stand on", Callahan says, but for him, that looseness is also part of its appeal.
"I like that unstructured and floating and confused feeling that a lot of like free jazz gives me but I also wanted to combine that with a ghostly, overarching structure so that it was somehow improv and structured at the same time … When it starts to get too abstract, you reign it in and give it some structure."
Also because he's "not much of a musician", Callahan often can't remember the tempo of the recorded version anyway.
"I just go with what I'm feeling at that particular time. If it's a boisterous audience, then might egg us on to play harder and louder. But if it's a quiet audience it might make me think 'Oh, we can really get away with some really quiet and subtle things now'. It's just circumstantial, I guess."
Music is supposed to be performed in front of an audience so live albums should be the best albums, Callahan says, but he wasn't sure how Resuscitate! - a recording of a 2023 Chicago gig - would be received.
"I fully went into it knowing that live records, just not many people care about them and or buy them so I was surprised when [my record label] Drag City said it's selling well."
Callahan discovered authentic live recording is itself a rare thing while making his first live album - 2007's Rough Travel for a Rare Thing.
"The guy that I was mixing that with was like 'I can't believe you're not overdubbing anything'. He said 'Everybody who makes a live record just fixes all the mistakes and beefs it up, especially any mainstream artist. They call it a live record, but all they've really kept is the crowd cheering. They re-record everything else."
Most of the songs on Resuscitate! are from Callahan's 2022 album Reality but the most streamed - 'Keep Some Steady Friends Around' - originally appeared as "the ray of light" on his 2001 album Rain on Lens.
That album (released under Callahan's former music moniker 'Smog') was written while he was living in Chicago. He says the Twin Towers had fallen, a "really stupid war" was going on in Afghanistan and in the US it was a "dark time".
"I did a tour around then and nobody was even showing up to the shows, like no one even wanted to go out. [Rain on Lens] also wasn't a very popular record for some reason but that song is on there. Maybe it is the ray of light on that set of songs. It just seemed necessary to put a little, uh, hope in the record."
For Callahan, songs arrive as "one little spark" which might be a title or an opening line.
"Once that happens we're off to the races. Whatever the title or the first line is, I know that the DNA of the whole song is in there and I just need to unravel it."
Usually, he doesn't remember the process of writing them which unfolds in an "otherworldly" state that's kind of dreamlike.
"I don't really know how I get there, it just seems to happen. And when it's not happening, it seems impossible that it ever happened and that it'll ever happen again. But I've been doing it so long I trust that it will happen again sometime. I just need to wait."
Listening wise, Callahan enjoys electronic noise and prog rock - "I recently remembered how great Genesis is or was" - and likes to check out all the new stuff.
For him, Billie Eilish and Charlie XCX "rise above the rest" and he's also glad his son "finally, thankfully" is playing Eminem in the car.
As an "old-school" musician himself, Callahan feels lucky his audience doesn't expect him to market himself or his music on social media.
"When I came up, I was just selling records that I pressed myself and then records that Drag City pressed so I had deep roots in selling a physical product. That is just the way I learned how to work and try to get people to listen to my record.
"Also, what goes along with me putting those roots deep for 20 years without social media is I have a following and fans who are not desiring me to put a picture of my face up every three days on Instagram. I have an audience that has been there with me for all this time."
Next up, after some solo shows in Europe, Callahan plans to take a rare break from songwriting, just to see what happens.
"I've got plenty to do round the house… I just wanted, as an experiment, to not try to rush into the next record. I just wanna see what happens if I don't write songs. What's the worst that could happen?"
