Bill Callahan - Letters To Emma Bowlcut

After years of writing songs and singing them into the space in front of him,Bill Callahan has now written a book of words to go out into that space too.

• ‘Letters To Emma Bowlcut’ is just that, the letters from a boy to a girl. It is in fact oneside of the story, and as such is a meditation on solitude, at times tracing a relationship butmainly making the expressions of a person’s soul secrets that are too difficult to impart faceto face. As the first letter says, “I couldn’t talk to you but I had to write to you” .

• A fiction with a nameless protagonist, this book collects 62 letters from a few seasons as hereaches repeatedly outwards, addressing himself to Emma whether countering her unseenwords or, more often, exploring the possibilities of explaining his self. To entertain, toexplain, to seduce or induce a reply, all his intentions are bound together in the letters,which come across alternately as diary entries, talltale confessionals and yes, letters. Ourwriter is up to the task, sifting the loose details of his day-to-day, giving emotional weatherupdates, advising, narrating and delivering dry punchlines with incredible timing.

• ‘Letters To Emma Bowlcut’ captures the sensual and esoteric qualities of lettercorrespondence that cannot be duplicated by any fancy digital technologies — your emails,texts, and the IM. There is something in the time it takes the post to deliver, and the objectthat eventually arrives that evokes an intimacy, a passion, a desire to be known and anopportunity to present oneself in the internal fantasy of everyday’s secret internal dialogue.

• To paraphrase an old adage of the entertainment industry, when fact meetsfiction, print the legend. Where comedy meets poetry, print the pros.

• Over the course of nine releases as Smog, Bill Callahan built an international audience forhis musical fights and lyrical incites. For the past three years he has presented his musicunder his own name, and his artwork, which has adorned the covers of all but one of hisalbums, has been distributed in the form of three sketchbooks (‘Women’, ‘The Death’sHead Drawings’ and ‘Ballerina Scratchpad’) and he has contributed his uniqueperspective to magazines over the years. However, ‘Letters To Emma Bowlcut’ is his firstpublished writing, and as Bill continues to record and tour, playing concerts throughoutEurope, Japan, North and South America and Australia, it will be disinseminated among hisever-changing and growing fanbase.

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