• Interview Joan Baez, about the abuses of his father: "I do not hold a grudge against him... I've made an effort to track empathy and what binds me to it."
  • Report The crazy concert bubble: why are tickets so expensive?
  • USA The uncertain future of Graceland, Elvis' million-making machine

It's not every day we see the last great American singer-songwriter in front of him, with a group a little weird, a little messy, like a half-cooked stew, without the alchemy of his endless succession of albums, but there in front at the end and at the end.

The rare and magnificent Bill Callahan, the volume of the microphone a little high, the prominence of the saxophone a little excessive, without bass, with a very loose drummer and a panoramic guitarist, with more electricity than in his last 15 years of recordings and a repertoire formed only by new songs: but there in front.

With his huge voice and the cadence of a stream.

You know when a musician says he never writes a song with his audience in mind? It's usually a lie. In fact, it's always a lie.

What insecure people, musicians.

A trola, yes, ladies and gentlemen, that's always the case except in the case of Bill Callahan, the last great American singer-songwriter on earth.

The elusive, dreamy and huge Bill Callahan, the aspirated axe, not like a jack, a musician of those who no longer exist. Not because of traditional, that the uncle is called Bill but there is nothing classical, but because there are simply no musicians like him and, of course, there are no new ones that may resemble him.

Our old friend Bill Callahan, companion of so many trips, is everything that music is no longer. To begin with, he is, I repeat, a singer-songwriter. Watch out for that. Perhaps (maybe not: sure), the last great living American singer-songwriter, in the sense of American of American that we used to replicate with docile fascination. A man with his guitar and his group with more guitars and drums and basses: try to explain it to your children.

Bill Callahan is literature, but not poetry, let alone poetry with transcendent ambitions, and for all that he is also everything that music is no longer. A narrator who balances his stories and experiences between the taciturn tone of a solitary spirit and the adventurous vision of the nomad he has been for decades, between solemnity and intimacy, between humor and melancholy, between seduction and simple amazed contemplation of life.

And what about his baritone voice shrouded in the mist of his quiet breathing? Seriously you can not tell me that there are musicians with that serious cadence, without any hurry, with that way of singing suspended in time. A singer who launches a stream of words in which the depth of true things resonates. It's not something you hear every day on Spotify.

Let's see more: Callahan is a fifty-something from Austin who sings songs about songwriting and about the calm his wife and son now provide. He has recorded all his albums for more than 30 years with the same record company, Drag City, the most independent of the independents in the US: a lair.

His music is simple but not at all simple. It's intimate, but never cheesy. She is direct, but she constantly beats around the bush, and has more questions than answers, and more doubts than certainties, though she once sang that she had found certainty thanks to true love, and also: "I don't believe in luck,/ I believe in fate,/ my destiny is spinning on the road ahead of me, drunk." Don't worry if you feel lost: it's not usual, but it is when the handsome Bill Callahan drives next to you, with a shy look under his sunny bangs.

Singer of the everyday and the small, of dreams and nature, of hawks, mountains, horses and bushes, of wolves and shepherds, our very dear Bill seems to make music for himself, not for others, that is the feeling transmitted by his unexpected songs, guided by the compass of search, songs that avoid the classic structure of verses and choruses, but without fuss.

No, there are no musicians like him left.

Nor are there in this time of transience musicians with a discography formed by more than 30 albums, which in his case he has recorded first under the name of Smog, when distortion dominated the sound of his low-fidelity rock guitars, and since 2004 to his name, already more folk, more troubadour in permanent flight, Almost never country: just a bohemian singer-songwriter who dominates his speech. Always without any interest in digital production or electronic alteration of sound. That is: what no one hears or wants to hear today.

Oh yes, loving his music is an act of faith and devotion, and in that, it is true, he is more like so many other musicians today.

This is how Bill Callahan arrived last night in Madrid for a small tour of three concerts (Tuesday at Loco Club in Valencia; Wednesday at Paral·lel 62 in Barcelona), a visit as unique as himself: it is his first tour of Spain since 2011, because he hardly offers a concert, and in that, too, it is an unusual case in today's music. The reason is his new album, Reality, songs that evoke a night in the open with the family as an epiphany and as an opportunity for redemption, but also as a mirror of reality: the title is written as the reflection of the word 'reality'. But if Lou Reed sang "I will be your mirror", Callahan sings looking in the mirror, because as has already been said, it is okay to remember him, he is the only musician who does not write his songs thinking of his audience.

  • music

According to the criteria of The Trust Project

Learn more