SEAN GLENNON

For The Journal News

Bill Callahan's songs have a way of coming around unannounced. They present themselves to Callahan when he least expects them, showing up all but fully formed and ready to be recorded.

That's the way Callahan tells it anyhow. And he tells it plainly enough that, at least as he's speaking, it becomes difficult to doubt his word.

"I don't think I really have a (writing) process," says Callahan, a smart, country-tinged rock singer-songwriter who has made 11 albums under the band name (Smog). "I think it's different if you're writing a book or something; you have to sit at a typewriter 9-to-5 or whatever. A song just comes whenever it wants to and it doesn't matter where you are."

What's more, Callahan says he's never been tempted to try to figure out where his songs come from or how they get to him.

"I don't like to think about it," he says. "It just kind of happens. It just comes out and, uh, you can't really make it into any kind of science."

Fair enough. But the idea that Callahan's creativity could be as purely instinctual as he claims is difficult to accept if you're at all familiar with his work....