Will Oldham v Bill Callahan

yeah i agree. those are three of my favorites. the nashville one never grabbed me but it's due for a revisit soon. bill though put out his best album in 2009 and people his vocals and sense of humor (seriously!!) are way offtm.

there are two threads comparing callahan and oldham, but i feel like david berman might be a better comparison for callahan? or like callahan is the intersection between oldham and berman?

ha just looked upthread and saw several silver jews mentions. so much for my "original thought"

been listening to a lot of the drag city weirdo troubadour poets (oldham, callahan, berman) lately. really impressive bodies of work from all of 'em...

a poll of oldham vs callahan vs berman would be impossible to vote on.

kind of feel like berman has an unfair advantage because he really hasn't been as prolific as the other guys....

yeah you are probably right

would be an easy choice of callahan for me

i need to listen to more silver jews though

pitting all three against each other would be like cohen vs. dylan vs. young. i'll let you decide which is which...

I think on ILM berman would win but maybe someone should just do the poll and find out.

Jason Molina would have to be in the poll too

Callahan got to date Chan Marshall, so he gets a few points for that.

and Dame Darcy.

and lisa carver

he was also liz taylor's last husband

and father of ned raggett

(not really)

Jason Molina would have to be in the poll too

Like the dude a lot but he seems...second string?

Anyway that poll would be good

seems like we are afraid to start the poll for some reason

Wire readers might see it?

haven't had the time to read this yet, but:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/style/2014/07/01/songwriters/

I just tried to, yeesh, don't bother.

I thought this was really good - https://pitchfork.com/news/bill-callahan-bonnie-prince-billy-and-matt-sweeney-cover-hank-williams-jr-listen/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AIPYAnjnh4M

<3

Had a horrible feeling that they were going to do an ‘ironic‘ version of it...but it’s absolutely wonderful

Bill MacKay is awesome

the guitar sounds incredible on this

Yeah, that's MacKay!

I like his albums with Ryley Walker

so great

it's not really possible to do an "ironic" version of Dan, they are miles ahead of anyone else in irony

I guess I don't know why you'd assume they would do an ironic version to begin with

the song arrived on the same day that tom scharpling promised to dedicate his whole show to telling people why the dan is bad

ugh ffs scharpling

this cover is really excellent btw

I kinda want Callahan and McKay to join Superwolf for the next album.

I think I'd prefer it if Will sang the lead vox? Bill has all the range of a parents-basement Astrud Gilberto fanatic.

MacKay really saves this cover.

(that's not to say that Donald had incredible range, yet he understood the limitations of his gift which he then built songs around, as ambitious as he was at the time)

Weirdly I guess I'm the only one who really doesn't like the guitar on this - it sounds like a mess to me.

I mean some of it sounds good but all the different layers together sound bad

Bill's vocal is good enough and I like the part where Will comes in on harmony

I mean really this sounds like a fucking mixed level guitar class playthrough

I get nothing out of Oldham while I like a good handful of smog records so it’s gotta be bill

I don’t know the original song, but I agree w/ man alive re: the guitar playing in that track.

I'm a fan of both McKay and Callahan (indifferent about Bonnie), but this cover is horrendous and really showcases the limits of Callahan's voice

It sounds like there is one good acoustic track, which I assume is McKay, but then there is some real awfulness layered on top, like that sloppy delay electric. But also a fair number of clashy notes and rhythmic ideas in the multiple acoustic tracks. The background "ooohs" are also terrible and take away from it. It's an extraordinarily harmonically and rhythmically nuanced song and extremely hard to cover for that reason. A laid-back, vaguely bossaish cover of it is a nice concept but Bill is the wrong guy to do it and there's a lot of bad, amateurish stuff stepping all over it here.

Ah guys. I love this, but any Bill/Steely combo was going to make me happy since those are two Big Musics for me.

those are two Big Musics for me.

Same. I honestly really like Bill’s vocals on this — his voice sounds great over these kinds of chords. But I’m also in the camp that thinks all the guitars here sound like a mess. I made a mono version using only what’s in the left channel and I find it a lot more palatable. Oldham’s vocals are less prominent too, which is fine with me.

there are so many of these covers now! I'm keeping a playlist since it doesn't seem to exist anywhere

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/7EoNfsSBILMQ9vpxq9KIWv