Front page	From the Event Guide archive! This article refers to an event which took place on, or until, 10 August 2007 Music Interview - Bill Callahan On a Clear Day Bill Callahan used to be Smog, and now he is himself - not that Smog wasn't himself, it just isn't really who he is now. Smog made often brutal, intense and burning acoustic work (such as 'Sewn to the Sky', 'Songs of Sevotion' and 'Supper') which was as enigmatic as it was engaging. The legacy of Smog is Callahan's bruised baritone that works even more compellingly when pitted against a more optimistic landscape - where he is now. This shift was potentially first signalled in the Smog record 'A River Ain't Too Much to Love' (2005) which had a kind of delicate naturalism that almost invited us in. This naturalism is fully realized in his new album 'Woke On a Whaleheart' (Drag City), which was produced by former Royal Trux vocalist and guitarist Neil Hagerty. It is a really impressive yet touching record with diamond dancers and wheels careering past each other to get to a rich string section and possibly a semblance of peace. The record proves that while there may no longer be Smog; there is still a kind of morbid (but melodic) chaos. Siobhán Kane talks to Bill Callahan. Out of the dedicated haze of Smog has come something very much different - Bill Callahan. Was this to signify a change in process to both yourself and your audience? It was a way to really have a blank slate. I built this latest record up from nothing, from a zero. The songs are genre-less. I am a new man. I don’t even need wings. Neil said the songs were genre-less and he tried to keep them that way with the arrangements. The arrangements are transparent but rhythmically propulsive. So it is more like a spirit guiding things, I think. Guiding the story along. And yet ‘A River Ain't Too Much To Love’ was a record that already seemed to signify you were changing your view/process. It was a folding of the hands and a stepping back and looking up. It’s a really good record, I’m proud of that one. I like the new one, too. But A River… was me just touching off the core of things. I think there are some really classic songs on that – 'Say Valley Maker', 'The Well', 'I Feel Like the Mother of the World', 'Let Me See the Colts', 'Palimpsest'. I’m really proud of all those songs. Is Smog now deceased? If so, was it a kind of a killing of a beast from which ‘Woke on a Whaleheart’ could only flourish from? It was important that it was not a killing. It was a birth of a second thing. Smog continues to exist. However, there will be no more new Smog records. But it continues to exist alongside or in contrast to whatever else I do. There is not necessarily a death that heralds the birth of everything new. In some regards, there seems to be a kind of prescient fairytale working within ‘Woke on a Whaleheart’; ‘Diamond Dancer’ sees the girl almost dancing herself into a diamond; it seems reminiscent of writers like Hans Christian Andersen and Roald Dahl – do fairytales hold any appeal for you? Like Violet Beauregarde turning into a blueberry, eh? I hadn’t thought of it like that. I don’t know much about fairy tales. I like the Czech ones I’ve read, but it’s not really a realm I endeavour in. There is a joyous sense to the record, with various references to gospel – has music always had a spiritual sense for you? I’m starting to wonder what ‘spiritual’ really means. If it is not definable but only knowable, then it is like music. I would guess they are the same thing. So, your question would read, “Has music always held a musical sense for you?”, and lately I have been thinking about what makes music pretty or pleasing to the ear. And if you take a non-musical approach to music, I think you can make something heavy. Do you think the natural world and landscape hold a lot of resonance in your work? ‘The Wheel’ seems to meditate on nature and natural cycles. The natural world holds the same amount of resonance for me as for you and everyone else. 'The Wheel' is more about change and identity within change, I think. And it’s about another way to measure life. In other words, not time or space but The Wheel. You once said that you “previously used to be an artist” – do you still feel that and if so, could you qualify why? Well, you see, I set up this template for myself back in the late 80’s or early 90’s. This template of how to work, and in what manner life would situate itself around work and how things would be fed into the machine and how they would be handled on the other side. That to me was what was known as being an artist. And now maybe it is not so much that I am not one any longer, but that the template for work has changed. Was it hard to hand over production duties on this record? It was easy. I want to hand off more small parcels of my songs and let other people run with them. Messengers all over the city, all over the world. If the songs are strong enough, it doesn’t really matter what they sound like. You started out using tape recorders and such; do you feel that there is a constant battle between the advanced developments in technology and striving for a kind of simplicity in the music process? If anything, I think it is actually becoming more simple to record music. Computers and such. You just gotta keep your bearings with all the changes that are going on. It’s faddish and fragile. I still prefer the nuts and bolts of recording on 2” tape. New technology is only really interesting if you’re just fucking around with it and making it do what it’s not supposed to do. Horses are a recurring image in your music – is it because of the myth-making they represent; classical civilization, the cowboy, westerns? The power horses have is the same for me as everyone. That is my point. Them and birds are the closest ties we have with dinosauric times. And so they are the longest standing witnesses to what we do. In that way, they have the lion’s share of accrued knowledge. They have the most vast world view. So it is wise to use them as characters. What other projects are you working on? Have you already mapped out in your head the kind of records you want to produce from this point? Naw, I’m happily floundering at this point. Window shopping from an innertube in the river. Bill Callahan plays The Village, on Dublin’s Wexford Street, on Friday 10th August. 7.30pm. €21, available from the WAV Ticketbox, Camden Row, Dublin 2 (1890 2000 78) and all usual outlets. www.dragcity.com / www.thevillagevenue.com / www.mcd.ie / www.ticketmaster.ie