David Lance Callahan


David Lance Callahan is an English musician, naturalist and writer. His music has been classified as rock, art rock, post-punk, garage rock, post-rock, experimental rock, psychedelic folk, experimental folk, dub, noise rock, noise pop, and sampledelia.
Callahan has been a singer, songwriter and instrumentalist with The Wolfhounds, Moonshake, The Changelings, and The $urp!u$. He is considered a significant figure in British alternative rock due to The Wolfhounds' contribution to the C86 cassette and due to Moonshake's subsequent contribution to the development of British post-rock.
Callahan currently records and performs solo singer-songwriter work informed by folk, blues and experimental sound, describing himself as a "dissonant electric folk singer." He has also worked with Swell Maps C21, PJ Harvey, McCarthy, Stereolab, Manyfingers, and Silver Apples as musician, producer or collaborator.
As a naturalist and nature writer, Callahan has written three books and numerous magazine articles. Further books are planned on other subjects, including a study of the relationship between British popular musicians and the dole, and a novel expanding on the themes of his song "Foxboy".

Biography

Early years and formative influences

David Callahan was born in Chelmsford, Essex, England in 1964 and grew up in another Essex town, Harold Wood. He recalls his hometown, at the time, as having been "pretty small-minded, occasionally sinister" with problems of sexism, violence and racism, commenting "if you were deemed to be a – this is in inverted commas – 'a poof'... if you showed any sign of sensitivity or intelligence, you were called that word and often had it hammered home to you with hands and feet." One of Callahan’s classmates at primary school was murdered as part of a gangland hit, and he has observed that the area was "the kind of Essex you read about with gangsters moving out there. There was definitely that undercurrent there... It was definitely a kind of black economy but quite well off on the edge of town. It's hard to describe really. I spent a lot of lyrics in songs trying to describe it. There were all these possibilities. All these engaging and stimulating, positively stimulating things and, also, quite a dark side to it... Jobs did not pay well, and you were kind of browbeaten. If you were clever, everyone thought you were trying to be better than them, so they hit you. If you weren't clever, then you had to try and keep in with people. People were very physical in their opinions at the time.
Callahan was consoled by Harold Wood's proximity to London and his ability to obtain "obscure and weird and engaging records and books and magazines... Outside my house, it was often a cultural dearth but inside my house, the local library and a few select shops in Romford, there was some colour, intellectual excitement and emotional excitement." As a child, he became a keen naturalist, becoming interested in birds and lizards: he had a menagerie at the age of eleven, including newts, a stoat, a bat, a moorhen and a slow worm.
Callahan became an active music fan in September 1977 at the age of twelve, attending concerts by Alternative TV, Patrik Fitzgerald, The Purple Hearts and assorted mod revival and post-punk acts at his local youth club. He would also listen to John Lydon's DJ slots on the radio, noting that "you were expecting him to play all the great punk stuff and what he did instead was play Can and Captain Beefheart and Tim Buckley and Doctor Alimantado. Just amazing stuff and mind-blowing things. It threw you back in time to the really interesting music that was being made when you were too little to hear it. It was that stuff that influenced me much more than punk ever did really... When the post-punk and indie thing happened, that was my thing. You could mix it all up as well. You could have Metal Box by PiL but also Postcard Records pop guitar stuff. You'd buy things on Rough Trade, and it wouldn’t just be Scritti Politti, there'd be James Blood Ulmer and jazz and stuff like this. It was like a melee of really good stuff from all over the show."

Musical career, 1980s and 1990s

Callahan first performed onstage at the age of fifteen, having been asked to recite his own poetry over the music of a local punk band. Other musicians he met at around this time included Mike Herbage and Terry Edwards. Leaving school shortly afterwards, he worked at various dead-end jobs and performed briefly with a few more short-lived local bands.

The Wolfhounds (1985–1990)

In 1985, at the age of nineteen, Callahan co-founded a garage rock band, The Wolfhounds. The Wolfhounds came to broader attention due to their inclusion on the C86 compilation album, to which they contributed "Feeling So Strange Again".
With various line-up changes, The Wolfhounds spent the next few years rapidly developing into an experimental rock band and releasing four albums, Unseen Ripples from a Pebble, Bright and Guilty, Blown Away and Attitude. This work gained them plenty of critical attention but low sales, and the band split up in early 1990.

Moonshake and The $urp!u$ (1990–2000)

After the split of The Wolfhounds, Callahan formed the experimental rock band Moonshake with former Ultra Vivid Scene member Margaret Fiedler. Following a debut EP on Creation Records, the band signed to Too Pure and released two further EPs, touring the UK, France and America. Moonshake's debut album Eva Luna was well received and has maintained an enduring reputation as one of the key albums shaping British post-rock as well as redeveloping dub-based post-punk and incorporating hip hop production techniques.
Following the release and tour for the band's second album Big Good Angel, Moonshake split in half in 1994. Fiedler, bass player John Frenett and producer/engineer Guy Fixsen left to form Laika. Callahan continued Moonshake with saxophonist Ray Dickaty and various other musicians, continuing to play live and recording two further albums, The Sound Your Eyes Can Follow and Dirty & Divine.
Following Moonshake's final split in 1997, Callahan briefly moved to New York before returning to London circa 1999 and forming The $urp!u$ with Anja Büchele. The $urp!u$ recorded four songs, compiled onto the $$ EP, before Callahan quit band work in 2001.

Becoming a nature writer (2000–present)

Now the father of two children, Callahan spent the early 2000s working in warehouse logistics. Having rediscovered his interest in nature, he began studying Biological Science on a night-school degree course at the University of London's Birkbeck College, as a mature student, as well as spending seven weeks in Madagascar on an ecological survey. Graduating as a Bachelor of Science, he subsequently went on to gain a master's degree in Taxonomy and Biodiversity at Imperial College.
Callahan's writing career began when he approached Birdwatch magazine on spec, suggesting some topics for articles. His suggestions were taken up, and the first article which he wrote for the magazine made the front cover. Callahan then joined Birdwatch as a staff writer and remained there for ten years before going freelance.
Since the start of his work as a naturalist, Callahan has also written for the UK publications Birdwatching and BBC Wildlife, and for international publications including BirdLife magazine. He has also written three popular ornithology books – A History of Birdwatching in 100 Objects, Where to Watch Birds in East Anglia: Cambridgeshire, Norfolk and Suffolk, and Where to Watch Birds in Southeast England: Essex, London and Kent. A well-respected expert on the birds of eastern England, he has also travelled the world to research and report on birds across the globe.

Musical career resumed

The Wolfhounds (2006–present)

In 2006, Callahan resumed his musical career alongside his writing career. The Wolfhounds reformed in 2006 and have gone on to play regularly and to record three new albums, Middle Aged Freaks, Untied Kingdom and Electric Music.

Solo work (2018–present)

In 2018, Callahan began a solo career – this time under his full name of David Lance Callahan – creating music for which he describes himself as a "dissonant electric folk singer." These recordings have seen Callahan producing more intimate work for voice and solo electric guitar, with some use of string quartet and sampler. There are also contributions from other musicians – regular Callahan horns collaborator Terry Edwards; former Pram/Nightingales/Fall drummer Daren Garratt; Alison Cotton ; Mel Draisey ; several Spanish students from the Berklee music school in Valencia; and singers Katherine Mountain Whitaker and Anja Büchele.
Callahan began his solo career with two singles, "She Passes Through the Night" and "Strange Lovers". His first solo album, English Primitive I was released in October 2021 on Tiny Global Productions: a second, English Primitive II, followed in November 2022. A stand-alone single, "Evil Magnets/Free Radicals" was released in May 2023. Callahan's third album, Down to the Marshes, was released in September 2024. Callahan promotes his solo music via gigs and tours on his own and as a two-piece with Daren Garratt.
Taking note of Callahan's "career of consistent brilliance and stark originality", the press release for English Primitive I commented that "Wolfhoundian riffage offered enough ramshackle charm to somewhat obscure Callahan's darker, more penetrating writing. Likewise, Moonshake's musically bi-polar approach disguised his underlying political impulse. Here Callahan's lyricism finally, indelibly, proves him to be among the finest British pop craftsmen. This is his masterwork, a mélange of what has been called 'mutant Eastern, West African, folk, blues and post-punk influences'... an improbable cross-cultural gumbo, yet one which coalesced into a swirling, kaleidoscopic psychedelia of emotion unlike any other record in this era."