Manchester Scenewipe

BILL CALLAHAN || CENTRAL METHODIST CHURCH || 06.05.11

Friday, May 13th, 2011, 11:31 am

Friday night sobriety isn’t a concept I’m overly familiar with, but one with which I have to get briskly familiar when considering the ‘pissed’-logistics of a gig in a Methodist Church. The posters on the doors read something to the effect of: ‘NO ALCOHOL IS PERMITTED ON THESE PREMISES’ (continuing on a separate sheet below, as though to interject before you can let out your expletive laden frustration) ‘PLEASE RESPECT THAT’. It’s uncertain how the decision to use this venue came about, but is admittedly befitting a stop on a tour for an album steeped in Americana entitled: ‘Apocalypse’, especially, considering Methodism is a religious schism inspired in-part by spontaneous Congregational singing in the face of certain obliteration on tempestuous seas en route to convert Native Americans in the Southern States.

Thanks to schizophrenic weather in Manchester today, The Central Methodist Church has been suffused with the palpable humidity of Savannah Georgia, in addition to the Parent’s Evening-feeling of a building that’s stayed-up past its bedtime to moonlight as something else. In the auditorium, the punters attempt to make the place their own as they throng before a swirling, hypnagogic red & green oil wheel projection on the stage’s backdrop, which I assume and hope is the property of Callahan’s crew lest we’re being subconsciously indoctrinated. I arrive too late to see Sophia Knapp, but then so do a lot of people judging by the queue that stretched all the way down Oldham street to the scumbag Amusement arcade on Piccadilly.

William Rahr Callahan makes an unassuming entrance via a door somewhere in front of stage right and climbs the negligible steps, standing momentarily in an off-white suit like a dodgy evangelist to a friendly welcome…before inexplicably leaving again, inadvertently making the welcome committee feel a little stupid, which is to be expected when attempting to communicate with a guy who has more than a little ‘otherness’ about him. This dispensation seems to be lost on the increasingly mainstream attendances that seem to be coming to see him, one that demands he fulfill requests before the set has even begun. When spotting Bill a couple of hours prior to a gig at The Roadhouse on the ‘A River Ain’t Too Much To Love’ tour, I was desperate to engage him, just so I could know that I had, in my lifetime commanded his attention, however briefly. But I soon changed my mind as I saw him approach where I was sat, looking for the toilets in flip-flops with the quiet, deliberate determination of an Aspergic. I momentarily feared for his feet while imagining him pissing-down into that sub foot-level trench, before being comforted by the thought that Bill would probably have come-up with something of worth to take away from the experience – perhaps a wry smile underscoring his 10 yard stare as he ruminated on his unfortunate choice in footwear as the hot urine sprayed his feet.

‘Riding For The Feeling’ ushers the set in, with it’s weary submission of a variation on the well-worn adage that “It’s never easy, to say goodbye…” this five-chord song, two of which show-up late, gets incredible mileage out of it’s simplicity – as does his set from an austere accompaniment of just an electric guitar & drums. Songs such as ‘The Wind and The Dove’ which follows, shouldn’t in theory work with such constituents, but somehow manage to convey the exact same message as on record. As Bill stands in front of the swirling oil wheel projection and the band grind through a coruscating representation of ‘America’, it takes on the appearance of green land masses passing-by on a rotating blood-oceaned planet. All the while the temperature in the room is reaching hellish levels. As Bill sings “It’s hard to rouse a hog in Delta, and things can get tense around the Bible belt-ah.” there’s either a weirdly prescient, or affected chick finally getting the chance to waft an actual fan. Kitty Saros asks me for a flyer of some sort in order to do the same. I reach in my coat pocket and retrieve an old copy of ‘The Watchtower’ that I’ve been saving for a year because an illustration on one of it’s pages looks like someone with a semi is pissing on a bible belonging to two oblivious women.

An hour-in, needing respite some of us leak out the back doors, where before long we’re met by the promoters handing-out free bottles of water along with their apologies. Bill finally capitulates to some drunk guy’s continuous requests for ‘The Well’ (or more likely just gets round to it in the setlist), and the description of a solitary droplet of water kissing the back of the neck sounds better than heaven. Bill doesn’t even seem to be darkening patches into his white suit’s underarms, since this heat is probably positively brisk in Texas where he now resides. I’d kill for someone to piss on me. By the time the encore rolls around, Bill capitulates to another persistently requested song from the Smog canon: ‘River Guard’ with its description of taking prisoners swimming, which is too much for me to take, and I escape.

More Bill Callahan here folks!

WORDS by Chester Whelks

PHOTOS by Kitty Saros