Eugene Chadbourne

Last updated
Eugene Chadbourne
Eugene Chadbourne.jpg
Chadbourne performing in 2003
Background information
Born (1954-01-04) January 4, 1954 (age 70)
Mount Vernon, New York, U.S.
Genres
Occupation(s)Musician and music critic
Instrument(s)Banjo, guitar
Years active1976–present
Website eugenechadbourne.com

Eugene Chadbourne (born January 4, 1954) [1] is an American banjoist, guitarist and music critic.

Contents

Life and career

Chadbourne in Aarhus, Denmark, 2015 Eugin-chadbourn.jpg
Chadbourne in Aarhus, Denmark, 2015

Chadbourne was born in Mount Vernon, New York, but grew up in Boulder, Colorado. [1] He started playing guitar when he was 11 or 12 years old, inspired by the Beatles [2] and hoping to get the attention of girls. [3] Although he was drawn to Jimi Hendrix and played in a garage band, he found rock and pop music too conventional. He gravitated to the avant-garde jazz of Anthony Braxton and Derek Bailey. [2] Braxton persuaded Chadbourne to abandon his intention to enter journalism and instead pursue music. [3]

During the early 1970s, he lived in Canada to avoid military service in the Vietnam War. [2] [4] Returning to the United States, he moved to New York City in the mid-1970s and played free improvisation with Henry Kaiser and John Zorn. Around this time, he released his first album, Solo Acoustic Guitar. In the early 1980s, he led the avant-rock band Shockabilly [2] [3] [5] with Mark Kramer and David Licht. [6]

Chadbourne explored other genres, playing with a Cajun band and a Russian folk band at a festival in Winnipeg. He mixed country, Western, and improvisation in the band LSD C&W. [2] [3] For many years he was in a duo with Jimmy Carl Black, who played drums for Frank Zappa. He has also worked with Han Bennink, Fred Frith, Elliott Sharp, and Charles Tyler. [3]

A solo album, Songs (Intakt, 1993), featured politically oriented originals, such as "Hello Ceausescu", and covers, such as Nick Drake's "Thoughts of Mary Jane", Phil Ochs' "Knock on the Door", and Floyd Tillman's "This Cold War With You".

Chadbourne invented an instrument known as the electric rake by attaching an electric guitar pickup to a rake. [7] He played a duet of electric rake and classical piano with Bob Wiseman on Wiseman's 1991 album Presented by Lake Michigan Soda. He also played the instrument on a Sun Ra tribute album.

Discography

With Noël Akchoté

With Han Bennink and Toshinori Kondo

With Evan Johns

With Henry Kaiser

With John Zorn

Books

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Derek Bailey (guitarist)</span> English avant-garde guitarist

Derek Bailey was an English avant-garde guitarist and an important figure in the free improvisation movement. Bailey abandoned conventional performance techniques found in jazz, exploring atonality, noise, and whatever unusual sounds he could produce with the guitar. Much of his work was released on his own label Incus Records. In addition to solo work, Bailey collaborated frequently with other musicians and recorded with collectives such as Spontaneous Music Ensemble and Company.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Steve Beresford</span> British musician

Steve Beresford is a British musician who graduated from the University of York He has played a variety of instruments, including piano, electronics, trumpet, euphonium, bass guitar and a wide variety of toy instruments, such as the toy piano. He has also played a wide range of music. He is probably best known for free improvisation, but has also written music for film and television and has been involved with a number of pop music groups.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Han Bennink</span> Dutch drummer

Han Bennink is a Dutch drummer and percussionist. On occasion his recordings have featured him playing soprano saxophone, bass clarinet, trombone, violin, banjo and piano.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Evan Parker</span> British saxophone player

Evan Shaw Parker is a British tenor and soprano saxophone player who plays free improvisation.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tom Cora</span> American cellist and composer

Thomas Henry Corra, better known as Tom Cora, was an American cellist and composer, best known for his improvisational performances in the field of experimental jazz and rock. He recorded with John Zorn, Butch Morris, and the Ex, and was a member of Curlew, Third Person and Skeleton Crew.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">George E. Lewis</span> American composer, performer, and music scholar

George Emanuel Lewis is an American composer, performer, and scholar of experimental music. He has been a member of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM) since 1971, when he joined the organization at the age of 19. He is renowned for his work as an improvising trombonist and considered a pioneer of computer music, which he began pursuing in the late 1970s; in the 1980s he created Voyager, an improvising software he has used in interactive performances. Lewis's many honors include a MacArthur Fellowship, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and the American Book Award received for his book A Power Stronger Than Itself: The AACM and American Experimental Music. Lewis is the Edwin H. Case Professor of American Music, Composition & Historical Musicology at Columbia University.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Conny Bauer</span> German free jazz trombonist

Konrad "Conny" Bauer is a German free jazz trombonist. He is the brother of the trombonist Johannes Bauer.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Henry Kaiser (musician)</span> American guitarist, film director, and scientific diver

Henry Kaiser is an American guitarist and composer, known as an idiosyncratic soloist, a sideman, an ethnomusicologist, and a film score composer. Recording and performing prolifically in many styles of music, Kaiser is a fixture on the San Francisco Bay Area music scene. He is considered a member of the "second generation" of American free improvisers. He is married to Canadian artist Brandy Gale. He is the son of Henry J. Kaiser Jr. and the grandson of industrialist Henry J. Kaiser.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Paul Lovens</span> German musician

Paul Lovens is a German musician. He plays drums, percussion, singing saw, and cymbals. He has performed with the Aardvark Jazz Orchestra and Berlin Contemporary Jazz Orchestra.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Barry Guy</span> British composer and double bass player (born 1947)

Barry John Guy is an English composer and double bass player. His range of interests encompasses early music, contemporary composition, jazz and improvisation, and he has worked with a wide variety of orchestras in the UK and Europe. He studied at the Guildhall School of Music under Buxton Orr, and later taught there.

Company was a collection of free improvising musicians. The concept was devised by guitarist Derek Bailey, in order to create challenging and artistically stimulating combinations of players, who might not otherwise have had an opportunity to work together.

Polly Bradfield is an American violinist from the New York City free improvisation scene of the late 1970s and early 1980s. Her closest musical associates were Eugene Chadbourne and John Zorn. She also played on records by William Parker and Frank Lowe. Her music career ended when she moved to California sometime in the 1980s. Her last appearance on record was on Zorn's The Big Gundown in 1986.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Toshinori Kondo</span> Japanese jazz trumpeter (1948–2020)

Toshinori Kondo was a Japanese avant-garde jazz and jazz fusion trumpeter.

Richard Royall "Duck" Baker IV is an American acoustic fingerstyle guitarist who plays in a variety of styles: jazz, blues, gospel, ragtime, folk, and Irish and Scottish music. He has written many instruction books for guitar.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Davey Williams (musician)</span> American musician (1952–2019)

Davey J. Williams was an American free improvisation and avant-garde music guitarist. In addition to his solo work, he was noted for his membership in Curlew and his collaborations with LaDonna Smith.

<i>In Memory of Nikki Arane</i> 1996 studio album by Eugene Chadbourne and John Zorn

In Memory of Nikki Arane is an album of improvised music by Eugene Chadbourne and John Zorn recorded in 1980 but not released on Derek Bailey's Incus Records until 1996. The album is named after a character from Stanley Kubrick's first major feature film The Killing (1956).

<i>The Parachute Years</i> 1997 box set by John Zorn

The Parachute Years: 1977–1981 is a compilation album 7-CD box set by John Zorn. It features recordings of Zorn's game pieces originally released as self-produced albums on the Parachute label as well as previously unreleased performances. All of the discs in this box set have been subsequently given their own releases on Zorn's Tzadik label.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Roger Turner (musician)</span> Musical artist

Roger Turner is an English jazz percussionist. He plays the drumset, drums, and various percussion, and was brought up into the jazz and visual art cultures inhabited by his older brothers, playing drums from childhood in informal jazz contexts.

<i>Irène Schweizer & Han Bennink</i> 1996 live album by Irène Schweizer and Han Bennink

Irène Schweizer & Han Bennink is a live album by pianist Irène Schweizer and drummer Han Bennink. It was recorded in January 1995 at Jazzclub Moods in Zürich, Switzerland, and was released by Intakt Records in 1996.

<i>Jazz Bunker</i> 2000 live album by Han Bennink, Eugene Chadbourne, and Toshinori Kondo

Jazz Bunker is a live double album by Han Bennink, Eugene Chadbourne, and Toshinori Kondo. Featuring a wide variety of instrumentation, it was recorded during February 1980 at the Jazz Bunker in Rotterdam, Holland, and was not released until 2000, when it was issued on CD by Golden Years of New Jazz, an imprint of Leo Records.

References

  1. 1 2 Hightower, Laura; DeRemer, Leigh Ann; Avery, Laura (2001). Contemporary musicians. Volume 30: profiles of the people in music. Detroit, Mich.: Gale Group. pp. 37–9. ISBN   978-1-4144-1313-6. OCLC   527366085.
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 Ankeny, Jason. "Eugene Chadbourne". AllMusic. Retrieved 19 June 2017.
  3. 1 2 3 4 5 Yanow, Scott (2013). The Great Jazz Guitarists. San Francisco: Backbeat. p. 43. ISBN   978-1-61713-023-6.
  4. Kennedy, Gary W. (2001). "Chadbourne, Eugene". In Sadie, Stanley; Tyrrell, John (eds.). The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians (2nd ed.). London: Macmillan Publishers. ISBN   978-1-56159-239-5.
  5. Mason, Stewart. "Shockabilly: Vietnam/Heaven > Review". Allmusic. Retrieved August 4, 2015.
  6. Green, Jim; Robbins, Ira; Gehr, Richard. "Shockabilly". Trouser Press . Retrieved 2021-04-28.
  7. "Welcome to the FREE STATE of Marginal Arts" (PDF). Marginalarts.com. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2012-03-08. Retrieved 2014-09-17.