Description

Vinyl 2LP

My Days of 58’ is the eighth Bill Callahan album, his first since 2022.
The twelve tunes here open uncanny depths of expression as Bill continues to blaze
one of the most original songwriting-and-performance trails out there. With ‘My Days
of 58’, he applies the living, breathing energies of his live shows to the studio
process, sharpening his slice-of-life portraiture to cut deeper than ever before.
The core musicians featured on ‘My Days of 58’ are the group that toured for 2022’s
‘REALITY’: guitarist Matt Kinsey, saxophonist Dustin Laurenzi and drummer Jim
White, whose synergy was evident in 2024’s live ‘Resuscitate!’. This showed Bill, as
he puts it, “that they could handle anything I threw at them,” adding: “Improv /
unpredictability / the unknown is the thing that keeps me motivated to keep making
music. It’s all about listening to yourself and others. A lot of the best parts of a
recording are the mistakes – making them into strengths, using them as springboards
into something human.”
With this in mind, Bill prepared the songs with each player separately. Taking a note
from songwriter, fan and friend Jerry DeCicca, he recorded the basic tracks for all but
one song in a duo with Jim White. Meanwhile, he rehearsed with Matt, guitar to
guitar, while asking Dustin to make horn charts for a few songs.
Bill: “I usually just sing a melody to a horn player or let them try a few takes and go
from there. This time I thought, why not get some of the record charted out. There’s
always room for spontaneity on top of that. And we did indeed throw some off the cuff
stuff on top of the charted horns in a couple cases where they weren’t fully doing
what I wanted.
“With this record I kept thinking of it as a ‘living room record.’ I’m not talking about
fidelity at all here. Living room attitude. Living room vibe. Not too loud, not
otherworldly. I asked for the horns to be relaxed like someone on the couch playing,
not a blast from heaven or hell.”
For more spontaneity and human colour, Bill called up several other players: Richard
Bowden on fiddle, whom he’d seen playing with Terry Allen and loved; pianist Pat
Thrasher; bassist Chris Vreeland; and trombonist Mike St. Clair. About pedal steel
player Bill McCullough, who he knew from Knife in the Water, Bill said this: “He has a
real abstract approach to an abstract instrument – he’s a photographer (shot the front
and back cover) and sees the steel in the same way as apertures and f-stops –
foreground and midground and background – blurry and sharp. That’s how I’ve
always seen the steel so it’s exciting to share that.
“But hobo stew is always the idea – throwing together who I have at hand instead of
following a recipe. I’m always learning. I know very little after all these years. I go by
gut mostly, but sometimes forget all the possible considerations to consider.”

Tracklisting:

Why Do Men Sing
The Man I’m Supposed to
Be
Pathol O.G.
Stepping Out For Air
Lonely City
Empathy
West Texas
Computer
Lake Winnebago
Highway Born
And Dream Land
The World is Still