Bill Callahan weaves a honey-toned spell of many layers

SINCE his home-recorded “low-fi” beginnings in the 1990s, US singer songwriter Bill Callahan has exerted a major influence on a generation of musicians.

Bill Callahan with guitarist Matt Kinsey performing for Vivid. Picture: Prudence Upton

• Flying solo and loving it
• Fleet Foxes turn on the lights
• Track picks from Billy Bragg and Joe Henry
• Andrew Bird whistles through

SINCE his home-recorded “low-fi” beginnings in underground rock in the 1990s, US singer songwriter Bill Callahan has exerted a major influence on a generation of indie and alternative musicians.

With songs that are by turns political, romantic, enigmatic, wry and even mundane, Callahan’s unmistakeable baritone voice and simple chord progressions on acoustic guitar have eased their way into the collective consciousness and over the weekend he was back in Sydney to weave his brand of hypnotic gentle rock for the Vivid Festival.

Playing a straight-through 90 minute set with his regular guitarist Matt Kinsey, he took his Drama Theatre audience through a collection of songs that spanned two decades, including a couple from when Callahan was known as Smog.

He gave us his best with Drover (a fractured narrative where the cows’ point of view is as important as the man’s) and America, a powerful statement about war in which he never served his country unlike Captain Kris Kristofferson or Sergeant Johnny Cash, both from the 2011 Apocalypse album.

Bill Callahan performing at Sydney Opera House Drama Theatre with guitarist Matt Kinsey. Picture: Prudence Upton

Off to the side Kinsey created a series of sonic landscapes on his Gibson electric with an array of effect pedals — the low cow moans for Drover and Hendrix-like echo and reverb distorts for America.

MUNDANE

Callahan mulls over repeated phrases — sometimes obscure in their meaning, at other times simple or even simplistic — bending them and lending them layers of added meaning.

His ability to weave the seemingly mundane and repetitive into something special is all in the timing and delivery, a skill which puts this listener in mind of early Van Morrison.

Take for example one of a couple of covers he did, the traditional song Lonesome Valley as arranged by the Carter Family where father, mother, sister and brother all walk the lonesome valley because no one can do it for them. Out of such banal and seemingly fruitless material Callahan conjures a spell with his honey-toned voice, guitar and intense and slightly quirky expressions.

Sometimes his lyrics forgo ambiguity as in Spring (“we call it spring though everything is dying/connected to the land like a severed hand”).

He maps the landscape, especially rivers and mountains, and he provides us with an aerial view of it, engendered by his love of flying (one of his most personal songs Small Planes describes this while one of his albums is titled Sometimes I Wish We Were An Eagle).

He gave his audience a sense of privilege in sharing this journey. To quote one of his most beautiful songs, “riding for the feeling is the fastest way to reach the shore on water or on land”.

VIVID

● CONCERT: Bill Callahan

● WHERE: Sydney Opera House Drama Theatre

● WHEN: Friday, June 2