Knock Knock

Bill Callahan released Knock Knock in 1999. The title may be a referfence to his Doctor Came At Dawn lyrics about life being a joke. Track 1 has him telling Chan Marshall Let’s Move To The Country which is the title. Track 2 Held is about him letting Chan Marshall hold him. On Track 3 River Guard he talks about standing on a high place where he could fall and die, just to get off on it. This song is about a prison guard taking some prisoners to the river. Our local prison would not let prisoners go swimming in a river where they could escape or drown. Then he feels like a criminal again as in earlier songs “we are constantly on trial, it is a way to be free”. That is a strange sentence as the opportunity to make decisions to act is where you are free, being on trial is where you are judged for how you have acted.The river here is described as providing an escape from the confines of the prison yard. Track 5 Teenage Spaceship is about someone being young and being a strange loner “flying alone a teenage spaceship”. They have lights “so large people thought [their] windows were stars”. It ends “I was a teenage Smog sewn to the sky” referring to his first Smog release Sewn To The Sky. Bill Callahan is not large although he is tall and solidly built. Track 6 Cold Blooded Old Times is about bad things from his past that made him cold blooded, and then it ends with his jealousy like usual “How can I stand and laugh with the man who redefined your body" which is presumably about not liking having to act friendly with someone who slept with one of his girlfriends.Chan Marshall was working with the Dirty Three in 1998 who were linked to Will Oldham since 1997. Track 7 is about how he should take nice things if people offer them to him. Track 8 Hit The Ground Running is about him leaving the country from Track 1 and the nice people, and going somewhere but he doesn’t know where. He talks about “Southern gentlemen bedding women that will never mend” On this song he also talks about trying not to be bitter “a bitter man rots from within”. On both Cold Blooded Old Times and Hit The Ground Running he talks about his family “the type of memories that turn your bones to glass... mother came rushing in she said we didn't see a thing, we said we didn’t see a thing, and father left at 8 nearly splintering the gate”. “I was raised in a pit of snakes, blink your eyes I was raised on cake” . Track 9 starts with him saying that he has broken lines and hurt other people “too many people have crumbled apart in my hands” and this is the reason why he should go somewhere else. The final song Track 10 Left Only With Love is about him breaking up with Chan Marshall and hoping she finds a husband and has a child, and how unlike the Cindy Dall break up the Chan Marshall break up was amicable.