Last fall, Bill Callahan dropped his long-time Smog moniker and embarked on a new stage in his nearly two-decade career. The resulting album, Woke on a Whaleheart, to be released next week on Drag City, is a shift from both his early noise-inspired production and 2005’s exceptional folk-tinged A River Ain’t Too Much To Love. Whereas his work as Smog was characteristically intense, darkly humored, and often psychologically dense, Whaleheart is laced with a playful and even hopeful attitude, light in its outlook and pop in its arrangements. Callahan, who we interviewed last fall just before he announced the name change and began performing regularly with Joanna Newsom, took the time to answer another round of emails from us about the new album and his career at this point. Callahan performs this Saturday at the Mohawk for the Austin CD release of Whaleheart.
Austin Sound: I figured we’d start with the biggest question first. Why did you feel that it was necessary or that it was time to drop the Smog moniker? What did “Smog” encapsulate for you that you think is not reflective of or at least different from the new work?
Bill Callahan: The name was niggling at me. Like when you’re trying to sleep and a mosquito keeps razzing your ear. Getting rid of it was the first step to making the record. I called my record label to make the announcement. They argued with me, but I started to write the first song, “Diamond Dancer” before I’d hung up the phone. The rest of the songs followed in short order.
AS: Along similar lines, do you consider Woke on a Whaleheart as signifying a new direction either in your career or personally, and, whether yes or no, how would you characterize the change or, alternately, the continuity?
BC:It is the first time I have given over arrangement and production control completely. This is a whole new way of approaching music for me. I’ve always thought a good song can survive any arrangement, good or bad or what have you. I thought it would make better music if I let someone else arrange the songs, give the songs more avenues.
AS: The album is also much different from your other work in terms of production. Can you tell me a little bit about how you came to work with Neil Michael Hagerty and his role in shaping the outcome of the album?
BC:I’ve known him since 1992. I know his knowledge of music is vast. I’ve worked with him on things like “The Drag City Hour”, which was a radio show we recorded in a radio station in a few hours. I also worked on “Tramps Traitors and Little Devils” with him.
I picked the players on the record and I picked the instruments. Or, I suggested instruments and Neil went with my suggestions. He said the demo I made was to him, “without influence.” I think it was true, I had written ten songs that were not obviously descended from other people’s music. He said he wanted to make arrangements that did not color the songs but just propelled them on the course they were already on. He wanted it to be ‘generic’, like the softrock you hear pumped into shopping malls and don’t really notice because it is so familiar.
AS: You’ve said before that you “tend to want to have a unifying theme” to collections of songs that you’re working on. What, for you, is the unifying theme of Woke on a Whaleheart?
BC: I would say it has a lot to do with epiphanies of various sizes. Getting in a cold body of water is an epiphany, a small and short-lived one. The album is rooted in an epiphany — me getting rid of the band name.
AS: The line “Have faith in wordless knowledge” that is repeated at the end of the opening song “From the Rivers to the Ocean” strikes me as a particularly poignant phrase as much of the album seems to explore faith within an almost inexpressible, and perhaps even irrational, hope or joy. As a songwriter, especially one that seems so intensely driven by words, how do you feel that sense of “wordless knowledge” informs or is expressed and manifested in your songs?
BC: If I were to apply how “wordless knowledge” fits into a song with lyrics, I would say in that case that it means, “have faith that all the words that are NOT said after the last words that WERE said are actually there.” Or, trust your instinct.
AS: You also return to a lot of river and water imagery with this album. Speaking about the water in your last album, you told me that: “The idea is that something can be larger than us and ever changing and still be something we can convene with.” Would you consider that to be reflective of this album as well, or does the motif work differently here?
BC: I remember pausing before I came up with the word ‘convene’, and then being pleased with it once I thought of it. I would say that motif I declared last time isn’t the prime motif of the new album. That symbol of the river is still there, but instead of describing it in all it’s manifestations, the characters “just get in.” And let the river carry them. They are a part of the river by living within it, not looking at it from the banks. So much a part of it that in the second song it leads them to the ocean and then we’re pretty much done with the river.
AS: Along those same lines, Whaleheart feels so much more visceral and active to me as opposed to the last album’s more contemplative tone. In fact, I feel that songs like “A Man Needs a Woman or a Man to Be a Man” almost rewrites “All Your Women Things” with a re-orientation towards possibility rather than nostalgia. Are those aspects a conscious reflection of a new or different outlook on life or relationships for you, and if so, how would you describe the new perspective?
BC: That’s interesting that you made that connection. I hadn’t thought of that, but I did think it was sort of another chapter in the lives of the characters in “Our Anniversary.” They both have fireworks in them, only now they aren’t possibly gunfire. And the fireworks are in the hands of the heroes, not the villain.
AS: You seem to be enjoying performing live much more these days. How have the live shows changed for you with the new material?
BC: I’ve always enjoyed playing live most of the time. Lately I feel more centered. Or it’s easier to get to that centered place.
AS: It’s also been a lot of fun watching you and Joanna tighten up your live performances together over the last 6 months. What do you feel that she has contributed in shaping the new music, and was there a particular reason she doesn’t perform on the album?
BC: The recording session started pretty much on the day she set off on tour with her band. Physically impossible for her to play on the record. She has helped me realize the potential for dynamics in music.
AS: Finally, a question more for my own interest - “Sycamore” and the character of Christiaan seems to allude to something (I feel like it’s something literary) but I can’t put my finger on it. Is the song an allusion to something in particular?
BC: It is, and you’re the first person to ask about it. But I want to hold it in for now. I’m not sure I should reveal it.
Mp3 from Woke On a Whaleheart:
Sycamore
