Bill Callahan to release new live album

Posted: 02 March, 2010

Over the last two decades, prolific American songwriter Bill Callahan has racked up one of the most impressive discographies in modern music, a list of releases that are unified only by Callahan's inimitable baritone and the unwavering quality of the songs. Callahan, who until a few years ago was known as Smog, now has thirteen full lengths behind him, including a number that can rightly be considered classics –– Red Apple Falls, Wild Love and Knock Knock. With the strong recent releases Woke On A Whaleheart and I Wish I Were An Eagle under his own name, Callahan shows no signs of slowing down.

Callahan's wonderfully rich catalogue is particularly ripe for a greatest hits treatment; even the most casual Smog fan could probably reel off ten tracks they've fallen in love with. But Bill has always done things his own way, and it is in this vein that he has put together Rough Travel For a Rare Thing, a new live album drawn from a Woke On A Whaleheart-era show.

Due out on 23 March, Rough Travel For a Rare Thing's 11 tracks are drawn from five lps and one ep, and cover almost 15 years of Callahan's music. The final track, the remarkable Bathysphere, is the lone entry from 1995's Wild Love; there are two tracks from the much loved Knock Knock, a few from A River Ain't Too Much To Love, and a couple from his more recent work.

Callahan has toured as consistently as he has written over the last 20 years, and many fans have had the pleasure to have see him play these songs live. For someone so resolutely deadpan, he certainly knows how to work a crowd. This set finds Callahan backed with a band, who gather steam as the set progresses.

The tracks:

1. Our Anniversary (7:13)

2. Diamond Dancer (4:00)

3. Bowery (5:59)

4, Held (5:00)

5. Say Valley Maker (6:52)

6. In the Pines (5:51)

7. Cold-Blooded Old Times (5:38)

8. Rock Bottom Riser (7:10)

9. Let Me See The Colts (6:54)

10. The Well (9:05)

11. Bathysphere (5:59)

Pete : 02 March, 2010

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