Path for singer is Smog-free after 15 years

Things may seem a little clearer for Bill Callahan these days. At least the Smog is gone, which is what singer-songwriter-guitarist Callahan called himself for the first 15 years of his career. There have been other artists who have embraced this approach: Iron & Wine (Sam Beam), Bon Iver (Justin Vernon) and Bonnie “Prince” Billy (Will Oldham).

Callahan, 46, released Sewn to the Sky, his first recording as Smog, in 1990, and subsequently released 12 more Smog recordings, the last of which was A River Ain’t TooMuch to Love in 2005. He has since released four albums under his own name: Woke on a Whaleheart in 2007, Sometimes I Wish We Were an Eagle in 2009, Rough Travel for a Rare Thing in 2010 and Apocalypse in 2011.

A year ago, he released a “split” single, with one side Callahan’s version of the late Mickey Newbury’s “Heaven Help the Child,” with Newbury’s version on the flip side.

Born in Silver Spring, Md., Callahan spent eight years of his youth in England, where his parents worked as language analysts for the National Security Agency. (Callahan has described their jobs as “code-breakers.”) When he decided to retire his Smog identity, he moved to Austin, Texas, but he is nothing like many of the musicians in a city known for its roots rock and Americana sounds.

Blessed with a baritone voice that is frequently deadpan and expressionless, Callahan’s song topics range from relationships and politics to birds, trees, rivers and various animals. With accompaniment that ranges from his acoustic guitar to a string quartet, Callahan at times sounds like a blending of Leonard Cohen and Van Morrison, with a gift for wordplay that rivals that of Bob Dylan in his early years.

In an interview with music website Pitchfork, Callahan says that in his work, “I equate being an artist with impaling yourself on your art … Although I do often think of working out a guitar part as ‘carving.’ There is the huge block of silence and you carve little bits out of it by making sound.”

Callahan’s opening act, Flat Foot, also known as Cass Roberts, is a solo dancer who combines tap dancing (she was trained at the University of Mississippi at Oxford) with choreography that mixes jazz dance, contemporary, freestyle and swing. She moved to Austin two years ago to add singer-songwriter to her resume and earlier this year, she was a finalist in that city’s Solo Artist of the Year competition.

Music

Bill Callahan

Opener: Flat Foot

9 p.m. Monday, White Water Tavern, West Seventh and Thayer streets, Little Rock

$10

(501) 375-8400 or whitewatertavern.com

Style, Pages 52 on 04/28/2013

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