Prolific songwriter Callahan finally lends his name to work

Austin musician built a fervent following recording as Smog

Bill Callahan is an enigmatic dude. Some of this is by design, some by tradition, some by default. The artist, an Austin resident for four years, is known for his shyness and reserve. He recorded for years under the name Smog, but he made the sort of music that prompted serious fans to want to know everything about him. We corresponded via e-mail, but he doesn't seem paranoid about his privacy or tremendously secretive, like the avant-garde Texas singer-songwriter Jandek.

And unlike Jandek, he's performing and releasing music under his real name these days. His most recent album, "Woke on a Whale Heart," is his 12th (!) full-length and his 32nd overall release since his 1988 debut — the self-produced cassette "Macramé Gunplay" — but the first under the Callahan moniker.

Kelly West
AMERICAN-STATESMAN

(enlarge photo)

Bill Callahan put out his most recent release, 'Woke on a Whale Heart,' under his real name. Previous full-length albums (he's done 12) were released under the name Smog.

Music with 'Heart'

Bill Callahan plays at 8 p.m. tonight at the Mohawk. Tickets: $13.

"It wasn't spur of the moment," Callahan says, "I'd been thinking about it for a couple years." He says he almost did it for his last album and first as an Austinite, "A River Ain't Too Much to Love" But it seemed too off the cuff, too spur of the moment.

"This time I was well-prepared," Callahan says, "I called my record label to inform them of the change before I'd written any songs for the new album. They put me on hold and I wrote 'Diamond Dancer,' the first song for the album, while I was on hold." (Note: This is impossible to confirm, but sure makes for a nice story.)

He even thought about changing the band name to another band name. This didn't fly either. "Since band names are assigned to every newborn child these days, it's kind of hard to come up with one that isn't being used," Callahan says. (Note: This is less impossible to confirm. Earlier this month, a Swedish couple ended up in court over the right to name their child "Metallica." Weirdly, it was Sweden, not Lars Ulrich, standing in their way.)

Why make such a fuss? Songwriters do this sort of thing all the time. Well, Callahan is a little different from most singer-songwriters.

As Smog, Callahan made his songwriting bones in the nirvana of '90s indie rock. His early albums, such as "Sewn to the Sky" and "Forgotten Foundation," were indie landmarks of a specific time and place, when four-track cassette porta-studios turned all sorts of folks into basement Todd Rundgrens. These were difficult albums of questionable fidelity and strange instrumentation, the sort of music that caused a Rolling Stone critic to call Callahan (with no small amount of affection) "indie rock's most pathetic misery goat," whose music was worshipped by a "dangerously undermedicated fanbase."

Callahan's pretty blunt about his time as an underground icon: "Nothing much really has changed at the core. You make songs and play shows."

But even as his sound opened up into clearly recorded, baritone-voiced folk-rock, Callahan remained the sort of songwriter for whom it was difficult to distinguish between singer and song. The stuff sure sounded deeply personal and Callahan seemed a world-class mope, but he seems like a pretty regular guy. (Over e-mail, that is.)

For example, "The Wheel," off "Woke on a Whale Heart" has a strong gospel feel, the lyrics "lined out" as if to a congregation. But Callahan wasn't raised in any particular faith.

"My parents left me a blank slate as far as religion goes. I used to pray as a child, but I don't know if it was to God or what," Callahan says. "It wasn't to a Christian god or any kind of established god. I prayed to the childhood god. The one that makes your mother not notice that vases are broken."

And listening to his early material, with its fuzz and tape loops, it's hard to hear where he got the country jones that shows up in songs such as "A Man Needs A Woman or A Man to Be A Man."

"Country music taught me to sing," Callahan says. "From the Merle Haggard record I had to have when I was 5 or 6."

Some of his fans don't care about the space, or lack thereof, between the person Callahan and the artist formerly known as Smog. Thor Harris is an Austin drummer who worked with Callahan on his past two albums and serves in his touring band. (He also drums in Shearwater, whose album "Palo Santo" was recently re-released on Matador Records, and has played with basso indie icon Michael Gira's Angels of Light.)

"About four years ago, I wrote him a fan letter telling him I would like to play with him," Harris says. "Will Sheff from Okkervil River made me a Smog mix CD and instantly I was converted. I loved his voice and this twisted humor, this very sly humor in his songs."

Harris admits he wasn't one of the early, "undermedicated" fanatics. "I think he went from doing one real interesting thing to a number of things that I find more listenable," he says. "He redirected his energy really well."

Callahan's also not too guarded to admit he's something of an Austin cliché: the guy who plays South by Southwest and falls in love with the town. It's worth letting Callahan finish his own story:

"I played an in-store on Sunday, the quiet day. All my friends had left that morning, so I was alone in Austin for the first time in my life. The in-store was nice. Crowd was nice. Someone invited me to a party. I didn't go. I drove back to the La Quinta. I was tired. Had been a big week. I pulled into the hotel and parked. The sun was setting and the trees were filled with thousands of grackles. I'd never heard such a thing. I sat in the car for an hour watching the sunset and listening to the grackles. I figured if I felt this good in a La Quinta parking lot in a rented Buick LeSabre, then imagine how good I'd feel if I actually lived here."

jgross@statesman.com; 912-5926