Concert review: Bill Callahan at The Grey Eagle
Somewhere beyond the backs of heads was the remarkably handsome singer/songwriter with the distinguished monotone delivery. As I altered my positioning near the back of the at-capacity Grey Eagle on Feb. 26, I could catch glimpses of Bill Callahan, as well as accompanying guitarist Matt Kinsey, plus Dustin Laurenzi on saxophone. They were floating heads, adrift beyond the couple making out to my right. Also on stage was the extraordinary Jim White. Although my vantage point never allowed me to make an identifying glance, the outstanding percussion by the Australian drummer was unmistakably of his making.
Even if my personal visual experience of the show was less than ideal, Callahan and his backing trio were able to live up to the high expectations set by decades of admiring the Austin-based artist through the comfort of his recordings. From the opening moments of “First Bird,” the first of three straight songs off the fabulous YTILAER, the well-traveled band quickly established that it wasn’t just going to settle for performing carbon copies of the recorded versions. The Americana tunes, intuitively altered with the care and skill generally attributed to jazz players, felt like organic forms living within that distinct moment in time.
Callahan’s earliest recordings as Smog during the early ’90s were lo-fi and experimental, and might be mostly unrecognizable to those only familiar with his most recent albums. And although his sound has evolved into a seemingly more straightforward modern American folk music, his experimental side has never faded away — it’s just grown more restrained and subtle, qualities made more evident with the live renditions.
Of course, the factor that has made Callahan such an enduring artist, more than anything else, is his storytelling. Whereas the lyrics of many artists sound like afterthoughts to complement the music, every word choice by Callahan is deliberate. He weaves together introspective tales that ponder the nature of existence with a wry humor. Even his repetition of lines on the songs from YTILAER comes with a sense of purpose. The recurring contemplative lines within “Partition” and “Natural Information” imbue those works with a meditative quality, which came through beautifully within performance at the Asheville venue.
While many of his ’90s peers have long exhausted their muse, pushed to either calling it quits or surviving on the nostalgia of past output, Bill Callahan reaches a new creative peak with each release. Even as I stood in the back of the room without much of a view, I felt fortunate to be sharing in the experience of witnessing one of the greatest songwriters of my generation in such an intimate room.
(Photo by Hanly Banks Callahan)
