Guest List: Bill Callahan’s Influences

On his 14th studio album Apocalypse, Bill Callahan (The Artist Formerly Known As Smog) keeps returning to images of the singer-songwriter at work, beginning with the opening "Drover," where the long-time Texas resident uses a cattle drive as an extended metaphor for the creative process. In this Critical Mob exclusive, Callahan explains how he geared up to create his latest album by delving into the work of others, and provides a list of some of the songs that inspired him.

Bill Callahan: The last few years, I've been trying to create or get to a place where music is unbound by circumstance. Apocalypse is no different. There are things you know about music, things everyone knows, but you don't always know which bridge to take and will a troll laugh in your face when you break your leg. I started out listening to a lot of choral music. Random choral. I found myself feeling wan and depressed afterwards. I'd listen to it during breakfast while I was writing the album, but then I'd be like "Dang...what's going on, I want to work but I can't get up off the couch and I can't stop thinking about how my parents wouldn't buy me a dirt bike in 7th Grade." Then I read an article about a new study that found that singing in choral groups lifts your spirit, but listening to choral groups lowers your spirit. So I scrapped that. I started listening to Pandit Pran Nath instead. That's just one guy singing. Pandit sings ragas, which are traditionally created to be listened to either in the morning or at night. I lost the case for the CD, so I didn't know which was which and I started to fear maybe I was listening to a night raga in the daytime. I started to feel a bad sinking feeling like on The Brady Bunch in Hawaii when Bobby finds that totem.

But I started with these really voicey things because that's something you don't want to lose track of. But then you have to remember the word, so I listen to a lot of the hip-hop. Mostly ODB and Wu-Tang because the hip-hop reminds me that all is possible and in the simplest of terms.

The goal when making a record is to not make a record. The thing needs to already exist in me, in other people. Or it exists outside of you. You just have to find it. It's like when that gal takes the bus at the end of the Ghost World movie. It's there waiting for you, you just have to see it. The first step is creating a storm within you, with music. I buy a bunch of records I've never heard before until you reach a point where you want silence or quieting. And there's nothing more quieting than a good recording. I was listening to that Sarah Vaughan record she recorded with just a bassist and guitarist. That record can teach silence a thing or two. It's called Sarah Vaughan +2. This led to thinking of someone like Caetano Veloso, who has a way of always holding the reins on a song, no matter what is going on around him or in life. It's unbound by circumstance. I also caught a clip of Frank Sinatra on the boob tube. Singing in black and white. "Summer Wind." The song is there, the delivery -- you just have to see it. He walks into it like a cloud of perfume. There comes a point where you cast this music aside and this is when you start writing your own album in earnest.