The third song on Bill Callahan’s 2020 album Gold Record is called “35”: The song starts with a simple guitar part from Callahan before Matt Kinsey joins in on a second acoustic guitar and provides a big bluesy fill. Callahan sings the first verse: I can’t see myself in the books I read these daysUsedContinue reading “35”
Tag Archives: Neil Young
Spring
There is a line running through Bill Callahan’s songwriting that is similar in approach as nature writing, one that was previously referenced in an earlier Recliner Notes post. Another good example of Callahan working in this mode is the song “Spring” from his 2013 album Dream River: The song opens with a riff on electricContinue reading “Spring”
Universal Applicant
Apocalypse, Bill Callahan’s 2011 album, begins with two songs, “Drover” and “Baby’s Breath” (explored previously on Recliner Notes), that can’t help be read as extended metaphors about the founding and settling of the American West. Those two songs are followed by “America!”, a hilarious accounting of reasons why to love the United States. The humor,Continue reading “Universal Applicant”
Jim Cain
In April 2009, Bill Callahan released the second album under his own name called Sometimes I Wish We Were an Eagle. Asked about the significance of the title by Interview, Callahan replied: “It’s a phrase that I thought of a few years ago, and wasn’t sure what to do with it. I held onto it.Continue reading “Jim Cain”
Elvis Costello at the Gramercy Theater – February 10, 2023
On February 10, 2023, Elvis Costello performed a concert in which a Declan MacManus performance broke out. When the ten show residency at the Gramercy Theatre in Manhattan was announced, Costello promised to perform 100 different songs from his catalog across the ten nights, with ten songs selected beforehand by Costello to help “each night…tellContinue reading “Elvis Costello at the Gramercy Theater – February 10, 2023”
Feather by Feather
From the beginning of Bill Callahan’s career when he recorded under the name Smog until the present releasing music with his given name, Callahan has been signed to the record label Drag City. In the early 2000s, while still using the Smog moniker, Callahan was one of three white male recording artists signed to DragContinue reading “Feather by Feather”
Tokyo Storm Warning
An earlier piece on Recliner Notes investigates Bob Dylan’s song “Subterranean Homesick Blues” and the different traditions from which Dylan examined and pulled, including rhyming songs, nonsense songs, Chuck Berry’s “Too Much Monkey Business,” and skatting within songs. At the core of the Dylan song and these other song forms is the rhyming and unrelentingContinue reading “Tokyo Storm Warning”
Brilliant Mistake
In 1984, Elvis Costello undertook a series of solo concerts in which he shared the bill with T Bone Burnett, the Texan musician who had not yet become the svengali producer figure that he is known as today. These solo performances and the emerging creative partnership with Burnett led Costello to a specific vision forContinue reading “Brilliant Mistake”
To Ramona
Bob Dylan recorded all 11 songs on his fourth album — Another Side of Bob Dylan — on a single night, June 9, 1964. As demonstrated in the title, the songs reflected a shift in Dylan’s writing style. The writer Nat Hentoff was present for the recording of the album on that night in JuneContinue reading “To Ramona”
Time Passes Slowly
In 1940, the German philosopher and critic Walter Benjamin wrote a piece called “On the Concept of History” as he was trying to escape from Vichy France. Within the essay, Benjamin shares a rhyme that was written in the midst of France’s July Revolution of 1830, when it was reported that people had shot atContinue reading “Time Passes Slowly”
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