Though Bill Callahan, known in music circles simply as Smog, has been hailed as one of the progenitors of the lo-fi movement, that tidy label has always done a disservice to this nomadic songwriter (in recent years he's called Prosperity, S.C., Sacramento, San Francisco and, most recently, Chicago, his home). For more than ten years, Callahan has penned scores for people's pathos from the perspective of the detached observer -- even when that pathos was his own. He's an obvious fan of self-parody and irony, and he has an inspired habit of bringing upbeat tempos to downbeat lyrics. His songs often are populated by characters who have been sapped of life. His early tapes, fittingly, were released on Disaster Records.

Knock Knock, the seventh full-length release for Smog, is musically more varied than many of his previous works, with the added help of a string quartet, piano and drums. The album focuses on a struggle to retain personal freedom amid constant change and unceasing movement. For a couple of tracks, Callahan enlists a portion of the Chicago Children's Choir, adding an innocent patina to his search for breathing room. It's this type of creative tension that makes Knock Knock, and many of Smog's previous efforts, so compelling -- and the reason the Rolling Stone Network sought out Callahan to talk about industrial music, his teenage years and making children cry.

I read that you consider this an album for teenagers. What do you mean by that?

I said it, but now I regret it. People keep asking me about it. It's just that some of the themes are things I associate with teenage years. You're at the time of life when you're making your own decisions for the first time. You pretty much decide what you're going to do with your life. Teenagers think they might be more free than they're going to be.

Do you look back at teenage years as a good time for you?

I think I had it about as bad as anyone. But I think I held onto some ideas. I think that I wanted to be in control, to be my own boss. I knew I couldn't work in an office. I remember, when I had summer jobs working in an office or something, I couldn't stand it. That's when I think I made a first record, when I was twenty-one or twenty-two.

I read you wrote half the songs in a day, while you were driving from the Carolinas to Maryland. Are the characters on the record based on people you saw on the road?

No, it was more the act of moving. The landscape is not spectacular, at least the way I went. I hadn't done much writing for ten months before that and I think I just must have been writing these songs subconsciously, because they all came out quickly.

I see some kind of thread in a search for freedom.

It could be. It's just about moving as a way of keeping alive. Not being stuck in a place just because you're there and you think you have to be there.

How did you go about getting kids from the Chicago's Children's Choir to sing on the record?

The whole choir was too expensive, so we just got a couple from there -- and their friends from school.

Did you have to hold auditions?

No, we just kind of listened to them. Some of them really couldn't sing. I can't think of a nice way to put that. We kind of moved them farther from the microphone and made some excuse why they had to be far away. There were some tears shed.

"Teenage Spaceship" makes reference to your first proper album, Sewn to the Sky. Do you ever think to going back to experimenting with sounds more like you did on that record?

It was really a sort of situational kind of thing. I was recording at home. I was also listening to a lot of industrial type of stuff. I didn't have access to other instruments. If someone lent me a sampler or something, I'm sure I would think of something to do with it. I'm really haphazard how I work. I like to work around difficulties and not really plan things. Like, I had a keyboard that got stolen [on tour in Barcelona] -- the keyboard I used on the Wild Love album. Then I made Kicking a Couple Around, which is just with acoustic guitar. It was my reaction to having my keyboard stolen.

Are you sick of that whole lo-fi category you have been placed in?

It never meant anything to me, and I never really understood it. I don't believe in these sorts of movements in music. I don't think they even exist. Every time I do interviews, every year people are asking about some kind of new movement, like "singer/songwriter." But it's just music, and has been since music started.

MARLENE GOLDMAN
(February 3, 1999)