Life On the Fly
Angler and rising Americana star Calder Allen finds inspiration and clarity on the water.
By Morgan O'Hanlon
Photo by Sonja Sommerfeld
With the release of his sophomore album, Dreamers Drifters and Hiders, Americana singer/songwriter Calder Allen has cast his career to new heights. As he's hustled between cities and shows this summer to promote the new album, he's carried a fly-fishing rig with him so that he can retreat to the quiet solitude of rivers and streams as often as he can.
“I always did it to keep some sense of reality,” Allen says. “Anything outside gives you perspective and some sense of grounding.”
And, if he weren't a musician, he'd probably be spending even more of his time on the water as a fly-fishing guide, like his mentor JT Van Zandt. The two also share a family legacy of music: Allen comes from a family of artists, and JT is the son of Texas music legend Townes Van Zandt. “My unique relationship with Calder is based not only on our musical heritage, but our shared love of the outdoors, and fly fishing specifically,” Van Zandt says. “It is unusual for a young man to possess such talent in one of these categories, much less naturally gifted at both. He has been an exceptional fly caster pretty much since he picked up a fly rod.”
Even as his music takes off, the 22-year-old Allen says he still considers pursuing that dream of becoming a guide someday.
Long before Allen ever strummed a chord, he was a fly angler, making music with the spinning of his reel and whirr of flies zipping through the air. Allen's older brother, Sled, learned to fly fish while away at college in Colorado. He taught it to his younger brother, who was hooked instantly. His musical inspiration came from the soundtracks of fly-fishing documentaries he found on YouTube.
Back in those days, his only instrument was his voice, so he started humming, and later strung together lyrics. Then, when Allen tore his ACL for a second time in high school, he picked up a guitar and started practicing — simple chords at first, and then more complex melodies. His momentum hasn't stopped since, just like the restless movement of a fly.
When he's not on tour, you can still find Allen whipping his line across the surface of the Pedernales River where it runs wild. When he was a kid, Allen's mom would drop him at Reimers Ranch Park in Travis County, where he would spend whole days learning to mimic the wiggle of worms or dragonflies skipping across the surface. Tours have allowed Allen to visit some jewels of the nation's park system, but he has a soft spot for Texas, where bass in the Highland Lakes of Central Texas and red drum in the Gulf's coastal shallows provide more than enough sport to keep him busy.
“When I fish, I'm only thinking about catching a fish,” he says. “It's freeing because I'm not thinking about anything else.”
In the hours after he's packed away his rig, the clarity fishing brings him usually leads to inspiration. In songs like The Conservationist, the influence of rivers and wildlife is obvious. “The water holes he fished as a boy are damn near gone, and he hopes one day they will all soon return,” he sings, referencing drought and overfishing brought on by unsustainable practices. It's because of this lack of resources that Allen usually practices catch-and-release when he goes fishing. “There is an exchange — even if it's not food,” he says.
