Bill Callahan

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 is 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 color, 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 says 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 mid ground 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.

The goal of every record at the recording part of the process is to get thrown out of Eden. Every session starts in Eden but you have to get out of there at some point.”