SOUNDTRACK: BILL CALLAHAN-Tiny Desk (Home) Concert #77 (September 9, 2020).
Bill Callahan has been making music for thirty years (half of them as the band Smog). He has a deep, calming voice.
His songs are slow and almost spoken word. They might even start to put you to sleep until you start listening to his lyrics.
For his Tiny Desk (home) concert, Bill Callahan stands outside his home, near a desk adorned with a taller-than-usual globe, two books and a single banana. [They play] three songs from Gold Record, which came out just last week [as well as an older song, “Released”].
“Pigeons” starts with Callahan saying “Hi, I’m Johnny Cash,” and, with his deep voice you might be inclined to believe it. The music comes in with a picked guitar intro and Callahan’s slow delivery of this engaging story:
Well, the pigeons ate the wedding rice
And exploded somewhere over San Antonio
I picked up the newlyweds and asked them
Where they wanted to go
They said “We don’t care, we don’t know, anywhere, just go”
Outside of Concan, the groom noticed the gold band on my left hand
And said “You got any advice for us, old man?”
Well, I thought for a mile, as I drove with a smile
Then I said when you are dating, you only see each other
And the rest of us can go to hell
But when you are married, you’re married to the whole wide world
The rich, the poor
The sick and the well
The straights, and the gays
And the people who say we don’t use these terms these days
The salt and the soilAfter I’d said my piece
We drove on in silence for a spell
How my words had gone over, I couldn’t tell
Potent advice or preachy as hell
But when I see people about to marry
I become something of a plenipotentiary
I just think it’s good as you probably can tell
Midway through, the song turns into a bouncy waltz for a few bars. Then it returns to that slow picking of the verses. Derek Phelps adds trumpet accompaniment and Matt Kinsey plays a lot of guitar lines that act as mini solos as well as dramatic bass lines.
He says he wrote “Released” a few years ago but it seems more and more appropriate every day. The dramatic guitar opening is great and Kinsey’s lead fills add a lot of depth to this simple opening.
The music gets really loud and dramatic as he sings the middle part (italicized below), before the song returns to that gentle, vaguely Mexican sounding (especially with the muted trumpet) melody.
The lyrics are a short poem
Like two wrestlers
I am mostly still
As the Four Horsemen
Come over the hill
Trying to pass themselves off as the Holy Trinity
When any fool can see
Any fool can seeEverything is corrupt
From the shoes on our feet
To the way we get fucked
Oh, I know that we are free
Don’t tell me again that we are free
Tell me, when will we be released?
Released
“Another Song” is a bit faster even if his vocals aren’t
I keep coming back to a lyric from “Another Song,” which he performs here: “Lonesome in a pleasant way.” We’re all a little bit more lonesome than usual right now, but we’re lonesome together. Maybe that feels OK, pleasant even.
It’s quite catchy. It’s also fairly short except for the coda which is louder than anything else as it builds with the repetition of the title.
“The Mackenzies” is another story song. It’s sweet and sad and comforting and painful. And the tempo rises and falls accordingly. Kinsey’s lead guitar lines throughout the verses are really something delightful as are Phelp’s trumpet additions.
The blurb ends with a nice sentiment from Bill.
Callahan, in the zone during this performance, shares so few words between songs that we decided to follow up and ask what he’s been feeling about his world today.
“There are a lot of voices these days. So many that, I think, even positive sentiments become detrimental in their deafening number,” Callahan explains. “Quiet reflection can be the clearest and most informative and soothing voice you’ll ever hear. There are many unknowns at this time in history. It’s more than a junction in our old world. It’s the possibility of a whole new world. A large part of me believes this. Listen to music, read books, talk to friends and family. Don’t listen to the voices, not even mine!”
[READ: September 8, 2020] “The Husbands”
This story is about Maggie, a woman who likes to sleep with other women’s husbands. She knows it’s not healthy (mentally or physically) but she does it anyway.
She started with her sister’s husband. She had dated Patrick in high school. Then they broke up and her sister, Sarah, dated and then married him. That’s not why she sleeps with Patrick now (probably).
She has slept with her best friend’s husband, her librarian’s husband, many other husbands.
Most of them are one of, but the thing with Patrick has been going on for quite a while. She even flew with Patrick to Texas for a weekend.
Sarah feels badly for Maggie and wants her to meet the One. So she books a cruise for the two of them–a sisters cruise. maybe Maggie will meet someone.
She does not want to go. “I’d kill for her. I’d also kill her.” Sarah seems to feel the same way. She;s mad that Maggie hid her Raggedy Ann doll when they were kids. But she feels like Maggie (who is two years older) is her hero because she beat up a boy that made fun of Sarah;s glasses.
Sarah picks out guys for Maggie (“I don’t like his teeth,” Sarah said). Meanwhile, at dinner the first night, Maggie had her hand in the lap of the (married) doctor sitting next to her.
On their trip they talk a lot. Sarah keeps saying that Patrick is a good husband. She seems to say the word husband a lot. Maggie realizes she needs to break it off with Patrick. But first there’s the matter of the married doctor.
This story felt like it was funny, but the way it kept pulling thr ug out from under the reader was perfectly done.
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