The spirit’s willing Califone’s Tim Rutili conjures up a new album —and a feature film to go with it GHOST OF A CHANCE: Califone

by JOHNSON CUMMINS The first time I saw Califone’s primary songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Tim Rutili perform was roughly 15 years ago in his former band Red Red Meat, at the now long-defunct Jailhouse Rock. There were only a handful of people there, but the band’s bluesy swagger and Rutili’s narcoleptic drawl still ring crystal clear in my memory bank. Shortly after Red Red Meat hung up their hats, Rutili withdrew to a home recording studio and started making recordings with the original intention that they would not make it past his front door. They did, though, and they formed the initial framework for Califone, with a rotating list of collaborators. Numerous records later, Califone is marked by Rutili’s surreal storytelling and combines commonplace stringed instruments and traditional forms of blues and country with seamlessly added samples, treated instruments and loops. Califone’s new record, All My Friends Are Funeral Singers, is a companion piece to a full-length feature film of the same name, written and directed by Rutili, about a fortune teller named Zel, played by Angela Bettis, who lives in an old house inhabited by ghosts. “The record and the film really started at the same time,” he says. “I would start a song and that would inspire the script, or a song would conjure up visuals that I would use in the script. They really both came from the same place—shooting the movie was like recording basic tracks and editing was just like adding overdubs. It really comes from the same frame of mind, which is just putting yourself in a position where you’re receptive and getting out of the way of your own self.” Although Rutili has had limited experience behind the lens, his first foray into full-length narrative filmmaking, surprisingly, went off without a snag. “We didn’t really have a lot of money and we had to work really fast, but we worked with our limitations and just got really lucky. There were some challenges but everything just really fell into place. I was just really lucky to be working with such talented people.” AT UKRAINIAN FEDERATION ON SATURDAY, OCT. 17, 9 P.M., $15