Bill Callahan on Escaping YTI⅃AƎЯ

Incapable of being pinned down, Bill Callahan has laced tall tales and flights of fancy with stitchings of brutal truth across five decades of ever-shifting music. That unpinnable premise was confirmed Saturday at the singer-songwriter’s tour kickoff.

On record, Callahan’s soothing baritone seems a close cousin of his natural speaking voice, bundled in gentle emotion that bears little indication of struggle or exertion. But, lounge or no, Callahan came to South Austin’s Far Out to work. Indeed, the songwriter’s utterly transfixing gifts are nothing if not the product of struggle and exertion. Aided by a no less exploratory backing band that included legendary drummer Jim White, Callahan’s face crunched, contorted, and widened depending on the words.

His various muscular accommodations sometimes emerged into sound as gulps and playful shudders, emphasizing music as a force of real consequence, but not natural expression. The astounding act rung in October record YTI⅃AƎЯ – an album drawn together by a similar overarching meta-musical inquiry, lyrically considering whether “we’re coming out of dreams” or “we’re coming back to dreams.” Catching up with Callahan over the phone last week ahead of the show, I made my best effort to discuss both.

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Austin Chronicle: You’re counterprogramming for Levitation this weekend. I’d argue the way you use words does have a kind of psychedelic quality, like a drifting mind. Do you think you could fit on that festival?

Bill Callahan: I think psychedelic is a very easy word people use to try to put a definition on things that aren’t very clear. It’s such a vague term, especially these days; I try to avoid it. But I am interested in consciousness and the way that we perceive things, so all that ties into psychedelic interests … I definitely think I could play that festival.

AC: On a more basic level, there’s just a lot of spacey guitar sounds on your latest album – more than anything you’ve done since 2011’s Apocalypse.

BC: Well the record as a whole is expressive of me starting to miss rock music.

AC: And miss touring? The song structures are very playful and infectious, and feel built for live performance.

BC: I’ve done some solo and duo things, but this is the first band-in-a-van tour in years. I’m curious how it’ll go because things really have changed. The pandemic rocked the music industry and people don’t seem as motivated anymore. Usually I’m the one that’s dragging my feet about setting up a tour, but now the tables have turned and I’ve been very on top of things, getting stuff confirmed and settled. But it feels like, with a lot of the promoters and clubs, something weird is going on. It almost feels like the tour is not gonna happen.

AC: Did the pandemic affect your desire to perform?

BC: People getting together in a space that isn’t social media platforms to listen to live music is very important. It’s important for our societal health and our psychological health, and it’s something that is possibly slipping away from the culture. Showing up to a show, witnessing it, and witnessing other people witnessing it – the exchange of whatever is getting exchanged between the audience and the performer is good for the head. Music is transformative, but that can’t happen when you’re just listening on your stereo.

AC: Let’s say the pandemic lasted 10 years, and you couldn’t tour in all that time. How would that affect your songwriting process?

BC: When I’m writing songs, I almost always picture myself on some kind of stage. Depending on the song, it might be a tiny stage for 30 people or a big stage for 1,000 people, but I’m up there performing for imaginary people, and that’s my litmus test: Am I satisfied? Where should the song live in the public eye … the public ear? If the room doesn’t feel right in my imagination, then something’s wrong with the song. I need to change it.

AC: “Bowevil” is the first time you’ve ever sung the word Texas in a song, then Dallas gets a shout-out on “Naked Souls,” plus we had San Antonio on the last album. Would an Austin shout-out be too much to ask?

BC: I went through various cities, but I settled on Dallas for reasons of loving that song “Dallas” by the Flatlanders. I tried to sing “Dallas” like Joe Ely … I will probably eventually have to use Austin.

AC: Or else what?

BC: I’ll be run out of town.

AC: Destroyed by your own music. That makes me think of the line in “Everyway” – “I feel something coming on/ A disease or a song.” It struck me as whimsical, but now I’m curious how literally it’s meant. Is your life worse because you do art?

BC: Well, I’ve started lately thinking about my work as a pathology. Music was a great bridge for me as a young man to find my place in the world. It really gave me a purpose and joy and a job that I could see myself doing forever. But, lately, I still love writing music and playing guitar very much, but I sometimes think I’m using it as too much of an escape from reality.

AC: [Struggles to pronounce YTI⅃AƎЯ.]

BC: You can just say “reality.”

AC: When you look at that early “young man” material – is it upsetting, or cutting against the idea of “Bill Callahan” you put forward today?

BC: Well I mean, whoever I was, I kind of had to be that to get here. I’ve always got faults, they’re just different shapes over the years. So, no, I’m not super interested in my back catalog, but I guess it was satisfying to me when I made it. … Here’s how I think about my old songs: They’re like some terrible apartment I lived in 20 years ago. In retrospect, I’m like, “What the fuck was I thinking? I couldn’t live there now.” But at the time, I was happy; it was fine for me.

AC: When you say you’re not interested in your back catalog, what’s the dividing line there? Is it the change from Smog to Bill Callahan?

BC: Two or three albums back from wherever I am in the present is about as far as I’ve ever been able to be interested.

AC: Does that explain the diversity of your work?

BC: As in, I change things up because I am bored with past things?

AC: Yeah, is that true?

BC: No, my music is never spurned by things I’ve done in the past. It’s more like waking up in the morning. You know, when you wake up, you’re a blank slate, right? “I could start going to the gym today” or “I could start drinking beer for breakfast today.” So every album I’m just a blank slate waking up to creation. What do I want to make this time?