A River Ain't Too Much To Love

Bill Callahan released A River Ain’t Too Much To Love 31 May 2005. It was recorded November 2004. The cover had a hole burned out of paper — similar to what children do as an art activity — like there was something he wanted to hide or make disappear. I see this record as one of Bill's most important works, and even as marking a turning point in his musical style and a demonstration of heightened new ambition for a man who started out making scrappy four track records. 

The river symbol is linked to Cindy Dall in Red Apple Falls, although in 2006 he links it to methadone, so I think it means his relationship with Cindy Dall and also the affair she had and the heroin (later methadone) which he started around then. So he’s essentially saying with this title that drugs and Cindy Dall memories aren’t much to love. 

Bill Callahan seems to have started dating Joanna Newsom around 2004, as she toured with him overseas and played with him at the Drag City Christmas Party that year. Joanna Newsom's Wikipedia page says it was a short relationship in 2005, but other online references say they dated from 2004-2007. In October 2005 Bill Callahan was sleeping with at least one other woman in the music industry according to industry scuttlebutt, as Joanna Newsom had had an affair with Will Oldham in 2005. Bill Callahan, unlucky in love as usual, was left to tour this record about Joanna Newsom, while their relationship was troubled from the affair. Probably a bad idea to date a young musician who owed Will Oldham her career for discovering her and getting her signed to Drag City. There was a big age gap between Bill and Joanna Newsom, he was born in 1966, and she was born in 1982. 

Track 1 Palimpsest is named after a text that is written over and written over again. For a songwriter and performer this probably means his old texts were given new meaning. The song starts with a claim that his soul is not winter but the biding for spring. As if his life has been bad but he thinks it does not define him, wanting something better during the bad times defines him. This starts out the record’s theme about how his life is going to get better. But then it goes on to his social problems and his weird personality again, themes we have seen in other Smog records many times now, “Why’s everybody looking at me/Like there’s something fundamentally wrong. Like I’m a southern bird that stayed north too long”. 

Track 2 Say Valley Maker continues the theme of how he is going to improve his life. It starts with him in the sea where he lets go in a riptide which means he might drown (“with the grace of a corpse in a riptide I let go”) then he’s in a river not the sea, sliding down river with an empty case. Having an empty case is his crime. This is like his ongoing theme of feeling like a criminal. The empty case possibly means not having much money. He sings in order not to curse, so he’s feeling bad and wanting to curse. Its in the river — “river oh river end” — then the river takes him to a valley of love “take me through the sweet valley where your heart blooms”. Then the river will dry one day and that seems to be about  him dying maybe and he then wants to be buried in wood or stone. Then it says something similar to his early Smog line about “I’m not lonely anymore now that I realise I have two hands not four” except it says that “to make it on [his] own” means “death.” It is kind of like a drugged dream that makes little sense. A stone coffin would be really expensive and heavy. Then it goes on about there being no love. He says he cantered out here — to aloneness and death — but he’s galloping back, like he made a mistake in the direction of his life he took after the Cindy Dall affair and now he wants love again and not drugs and aloneness. Then he goes on about bury him in various ways culminting in “Bury me in fire/And I’m going to phoenix” like he wants to revive his life and career like a phoenix. The last line also reminds me of By The Time I Get To Phoenix by Jimmy Webb. So this song is sort of about how he is desperate to change his life from the drugs and sex that had followed after his break up with Cindy Dall around 8 years ago. 

Track 3 The Well is a boring song about him struggling to write songs. He throws a bottle into the woods, goes to find it, finds a boarded up well because he is so good at throwing things the bottle went like miles into the woods where he never had been before and there was a well. He gets the boards off the well and yells into the well. Will Oldham did make a movie where his charater’s daughter fell down a well. 

Track 4 Rock Bottom Riser starts out with Bill Callahan covering up all the bad stuff about his family “I love my mother, I love my father, I love my sister too”. Then its about him buying a new guitar to pledge his love to a woman, as she has helped him rise up “I am a rock botttom riser and I owe it all to you”. He is then at the river and sees a gold ring and goes diving for it. He gets to the bottom of the river where there is fractured sunlight, then he rises up in the river. His family pull him out of the river. Maybe they paid for drug rehab or something. Singing about pledging his love to someone as if he was an old fashioned gentleman is weird as Bill has never been in his entire life an old fashioned gentleman with dating Lisa Carver, Cindy Dall, and Chan Marshall or the lady he pushed to the floor or the woman he lost his virginity to who looked like a leper. Old fashioned gentleman just is not his usual style. As the river is linked to Cindy Dall and this record is about how he wants to rise up from a bad patch it is like he has made Joanna Newsom his replacement for Cindy Dall. In the indie music scene at this point, everyone started to curate their lives because of the internet and 90s small indie bands getting popular with the younger hipsters. So I see this record more about Bill curating his life for the public, rather than his life miraculously being great. He depicts himself anew with a fashionable image as a reconstructed man, linked romantically to Joanna Newsom a young rising star. 

Track 5 I Feel Like The Mother Of The World refers to the song “Sometimes I Feel Like A Motherless Child” and talks about his family again. About his mother and sister. It starts with him saying God is a word, whether God exists or not, God is a word. Bill Callahan has talked about his parents raising him as an atheist. Then the chorus goes “Oh do I feel like the mother of the world with two children fighting”. Then he talks about fighting with his sister as kids and their mother would say stop fighting. This was the single and had a film clip with Chloe Sevigny in. It is a weird choice of song for a single film clip. Why would anyone want a single about kids fighting. Due to Bill's hesitance about sharing biographical information its hard to say he fought with anyone other than Will Oldham over the years, or his various high profile musician girlfriends. 

Track 6 In The Pines refers to the old murder ballad song “Where Did You Sleep Last Night” that Nirvana played. There is a long train that takes 3 hours to go by. The narrator asks the Captain for the time and the Captain said he threw his watch away. The narrator seems to murder him with a steel rail and goes home. Then the song moves to ask a “little girl” what has he done for her to treat him like this, and she says he made her weep, moan, and leave her home. 

Track 7 Drinking At The Dam is another song of memories, with Bill Callahan recalling drinking at the dam with “jarheads” on the other side. Jarheads are American Marine Corps. He says they drank warm beer and yelled abuse and cut school. Then its about reading porn mags in brambles which is weird because most boys don’t read them in brambles like Brer Rabbit. You would get a lot of scratches doing that. He talks about how he is “holding back what I can but the power is so much” as if he was angry about something. This is after he talked about “teenage warchests fill and do the dirty dirty work”, which sounds like it's about war and young soldiers. 

Track 8 Running The Loping is another song about memories and with a porn theme. This time he is laughing at the pornography of his past. He lights matches and drops them futiley into a wet glass. He then talks about it being Summer and he has a bizarre skin condition where when there is no Sun his skin goes brown, opposite to everyone else whose skin goes brown with the sun. He then makes a note “you wouldn’t know me from your Pa” possibly about his age difference with Joanna Newsom. This song challenges the theme of redemption that started this record, with Bill Callahan saying “I haven’t changed”. He has scratched knees from running the bramble lee and would rather be running the loping. I have no idea what either of these things mean. Then he wants to live in the country like the song Let's Move To The Country on Knock Knock. He talks about getting married “To take a wife and no paper/Never again to wonder/Did that rapper rape her.” You can see how this is his cheating/jealousy fixation again, he is focusing on the idea that if he gets married nobody else will have sex with the woman. This links to the lines in Rock Bottom Riser about pledging his love to a woman. 

Track 9 I’m New Here again talks about how he has not changed after all “I did not become someone different”. The idea is that he is the same person, but in a different place now, in his relationship with Joanna Newsom a rising young star “But I’m new here, will you show me around?” He is still thinking of turning his life around though “No matter how far wrong you’ve gone/You can always turn around" as if he thinks his life is going to get better from this point on. He talks about meeting a woman in bar and saying he was “hard to get to know and impossible to forget” and she says he has a huge ego. He says he is like a snake changing its skin. Snakes are still snakes when they change their skin so this is a confusing sentence. He then says “it may be crazy but I’m the closest thing I have to a voice of reason”. No offence to Bill, but I'm not sure he is a voice of reason judging by his lyrics over the years. I often think he could have done with a good psychologist. 

Track 10 Let Me See The Colts. Colts are young horses. In this song the narrator gets up early and gets someone out of bed to go and see some colts that will be race horses next year. He is a gambling man thinking of the future. There’s more brambles in this song. The third song with brambles on this record. He says that Joanna Newsom thinks he is an “all seeing all knowing eye”. Then they look at some sleeping horses. My cousin has race horses and you don’t go and look at sleeping horses in a field to decide who will win the races next year. 

On this record Bill Callahan refers to Sometimes I Feel Like A Motherless Child, Where Did You Sleep Last Night, and possibly By The Time I Get To Phoenix, like he is thinking he will change and be a classic American songwriter.