LIVE REVIEW: Bill Callahan, Nathan Bowles @ Wylam Brewery, Newcastle (30.09.26)

Image: Bill Callahan by Lee Fisher

It’s been a while since I’ve seen Nathan Bowles play, and the first time I’ve caught him solo (previous gigs have seen the Virginian in his Pelt and Black Twig Pickers bands) so I didn’t know what to expect. It was better than I hoped. Bowles had piled his gear – a mixer, tape deck and the rest – atop an oil drum and proceeded to generate sustained tones and drones, slowly introducing a crawling drum pattern that was almost funereal. After a few minutes, he produced a banjo and added percussive, sharp motifs to the drones, picking out haunting melodies and fragments, building in intensity before putting the banjo aside and letting the drones began to fade. Some tape manipulation towards the end of his 30-minute set made some of the crowd jump, and then he was done. A lovely but unusual start to the show.

Another lovely but unusual start to the show was the intro tape of James Brown’s magnificent, score-settling Dead On It (“Nashville, Johnny Cashville…”), although the impact was diminished a little when tech problems meant it had to be faded back in for a while. And then Bill Callahan was back on a North East stage for the first time – I think – since the Sage in 2014. He’s touring My Days Of 58 from earlier this year, a fine record that often looks at the absurdity of music and touring from the POV of an older man, and things kicked off with Why Do Men Sing? where he questions his life choices accompanied by the ghost of Lou Reed. From the off, It was clear that his band were going to be pretty special: Matt Kinsey on guitar is a regular collaborator, Dustin Laurenzis on reeds is a Chicago jazz/underground mainstay and Jim White is frankly one of the finest drummers in the world, always watchable and always stunning. Their combined sound is rich and full but never overpowers Callahan’s voice, and all three of the musicians bring so much variety and nuance to the songs. Whenever I see Callahan live, there’s always a line or a phrase that hits me anew, this time out if was from Pathol O.G. where he repeatedly insists that “It’s important to not treat your lifeboat like a yacht”, his always precise phrasing in full effect.

We get about half of My Days of 58 tonight, and some well-chosen older tunes – Sycamore, Coyotes, Partition (which was blended with an unlikely dip into Dolly’s Jolene and sounded almost like a Bad Seeds song) – and a couple of Smog classics, Let’s Move To The Country and Teenage Spaceship, both a quarter of a century old but both as fresh and affecting as ever. Lonely City saw Jim White tell a pun-laden love story before ribbing Callahan about his obsession with his kids. In fact, Jim White was just remarkable all night – he can do this stuff in his sleep so he keeps himself amused with little flourishes and gestures, before driving things forward with an intense propulsion when needed, pushing the band onwards. Callahan has a habit of seemingly discovering words anew and rolling them around in his mouth, trying them out – loneliness, sorrow and such – and he seemed to be in a sprightly mood (in the past he’s come across like a curmudgeonly Ivy League classics don grudgingly attending a faculty party). Callahan’s voice remains a thing of wonder, sonorous and authoritative, presidential even. There was no encore but the closing double whammy of the impossibly lovely Riding For The Feeling and a version of Drover that saw the band in almost free jazz mode under the swirling mirror ball was a perfect ending to a remarkable night.