Video: Bill Callahan: "River Guard" (Live on "The Black Cab Sessions")
HBO viewers may already be familiar with the partiers, horndogs, and lonely hearts of the cable network's "Taxicab Confessions". The premise seems to be that people, especially drunk people, will tell almost anything to their cabbie. London's "The Black Cab Sessions" transposes that logic to musicians, getting intimate performances out of such artists as Daniel Johnston and, here, Smog's Bill Callahan-- live, from the back seat. Callahan gives a spare rendition of Smog classic "River Guard", from 1999's Knock Knock. As the driver dodges bicyclists and double-decker buses, Callahan serves out prison metaphors in this stately ballad about a guard's observations when he takes the inmates to the water. "Every breath is death-defying," Callahan intones in his rich baritone. His acoustic strums refuse to keep pace with traffic.
[from Knock Knock; out now on Drag City]