Bill Callahan Is Entering the Audiobook Space

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The singer-songwriter is set to narrate a new memoir about grief

July 17, 2026

Bill Callahan is lending his weathered baritone to the audiobook world. The fabled Austin singer-songwriter is set to narrate Rise Above, the upcoming memoir from Matthew Schnipper. The book details how Schnipper navigated grief following the death of his nearly two-year-old son Renzo in 2021. (Full disclosure: Schnipper is a former executive editor of Pitchfork.)

In the first clip, which you can listen to below, Callahan recounts Schnipper’s story of introducing a three-month old Renzo to the death metal band Morbid Angel. “In the way that you’re encouraged to introduce your child to different foods at an early age, I took it upon myself to give Renzo a wide musical palate,” writes Schnipper. “I know that, in addition to Morbid Angel, I played him an assortment of metal and hardcore, and so much other music, but those memories, like so many of my memories of his brief life, are gone. I happen to have the Morbid Angel moment on video, so I can revisit it. It took place in May of 2020, 19 months before he died on Christmas Eve of 2021, after suffering an aneurysm two days earlier.”

Rise Above is out July 21 via Random House.

Alex Suskind has overseen music coverage at New York magazine’s Vulture and, before that, Entertainment Weekly (where he also co-founded the publication’s union). He has written about TV, film, technology, politics, and tons of other stuff for The Guardian, Vanity Fair, Vice, and The Fader. ... Read More