The Well— Smog
#365Songs: February 20th
Oh, there’s so much to say about Bill Callahan. I fell in love with his early lo-fi instrumental-leanings, back before he was signed by a legit indie label. It all had a DIY feel because that’s exactly how it was recorded—a bit sloppy, experimental, but there was a clear point of view. It’s staggering, in retrospect, that those albums were as good as they were without his two best instruments: his carve-through-butter baritone voice and the wittiest, most poetic lyrical structures this side of Tom Waits.
I could not work
So I threw a bottle into the woods
And then I felt bad
For the doe paw
And the rabbit paw
So I went looking for the pieces
Of the bottle that I threw
Because I couldn’t work
I went deep further than I could throw
And I came upon an old abandoned well
All boarded over
With a drip hanging from the bucket still
Well, I watched that drip but it would not drop
I watched that drip but it would not drop
There’s an apocalyptic darkness, a jagged edge of irony, and a driving heartbeat that brings to mind variation-on-a-theme repetition—one part Velvet Underground, one part Philip Glass. The world he builds and the characters who reside within remind me of what I love about Sam Shepard, Raymond Carver, and my personal favorite, Denis Johnson. In researching this piece, I was thrilled to see him classified under the absolutely perfect genres, Apocalyptic Folk and Gothic Country.
Every Callahan song deserves its own essay, so choosing one isn’t an enviable task. But The Well off the flawless 2005 Smog album, A River Ain’t Too Much to Love, is the most Callahan’ian of Callahan songs. As he tends to do, he fucks with us emotionally through brilliant contrasts: a sunny playful energetic lilt-y repetitive rhythm line that meanders off and back over the course of the 7-minute song sets a false tone for what is essentially about a character on the brink, searching for meaning in an existential and metaphorical well. What starts with a playful ‘fuck all y’all’ returns later as a frustrated ‘fuck all y’all.”
I knew what I had to do
Had to pull those boards off the well
When I got the boards off
I stared into the black, black, black
And you know I had to yell
Just to get my voice back
I guess everybody has their own thing
That they yell into a well
I gave it a couple hoots
A hello
And a fuck all y’all
Hello
A fuck all y’all
The Well is one of his more Carver-esque songs, a character out of work, and in boredom and angsty rage the bottle he shatters sends him on a journey first to make sure he’d wounded no scurrying creature and then later to reassemble the mundane details into something whole again. It’s a perfect short story with variations on a theme.
I guess everybody has their own thing
That they yell into a well
As the character finds meaning in the shattered pieces, Bill moves us from black and white to color, every detail building upon the detail before it. One of my favorite interpretations comes from a 2005 Pop Matters article: an “all-out allegory, in this case about writer’s block and inspiration. Shouting down a well could possibly represent a singer’s projecting out to the blackness from the stage, echoing a frequent Callahan theme of artist & audience interdependence.”
And as I stood like that
Staring into the black, black, black
I felt a cool wet kiss
On the back of my neck
Dang
I knew if I stood up
The drip would roll down my back
Into no man’s land
So I stayed like that
Staring into the black, black, black
Well they say black is all colours at once
So I gave it my red rage, my yellow streak
The greenest parts of me and my blues
I’ve seen Bill live a few times, and when he first hits the stage there’s a cold ambivalence, almost a boredom in his demeanor, but he rewards those paying attention with playful grins, sharp asides, and a poetic sharpness made even more powerful when that voice echoes through the crowd, as if we are in fact at the bottom of the well in which he yells.
I knew just what I had to do
I had to turn around and go back
And let that drip roll down my back
And I felt so bad, I felt so bad about that
But wouldn’t you know
When I turned to go
Another drip was forming on the bottom of the bucket
And I felt so good about that
