This record of zany duets is among Eugene Chadbourne's wildest and dearest recordings, featuring selections from over two decades. These duets with Han Bennink, Derek Bailey, the late Charles Tyler, John Zorn, and others, showcase the woolliest side of Chadbourne's woolly playing and his dodging all over the musical and historical map. The first track is an acoustic version of John Lee Hooker's "Whiskey and Women," accompanied by Bennink playing a pizza box with brushes, a giant bass autoharp played with drumsticks, and, of course, a drum kit. Chadbourne plays the tune straight (for him) at the beginning, even getting all the words right, but then veers off his National Steel onto a "communist" five-string banjo, and he and Bennink run the course, carrying the off-meter 12-bar blues as off-world as they can go, laughing all the way. Next up is Derek Bailey and Chadbourne on two selections. The first, "In Search of Carl La Fong," is filled with commentary by both men. Bailey's guitar and Chadbourne's electric rake and electrified banjo trip and slip all over one another here, with respect and purpose, of course, but nonetheless sloppily. It's a rousing series of musical maneuvers at over nine minutes. When Bennink and Chadbourne reunite, it's a darker, more percussive show: feedback from rhythm and lead instruments becomes the M.O. by which they create something resembling a melodic idea from the wreckage. And it's quite beautiful, as Gershwin's songbook comes through as the melodic framework for the improvisation. The work with Tyler, "In Between Comme C and Come Saw," is balls-out space improv, though the master saxist uses his baritone in striking ways not usually becoming of the instrument itself. It becomes a kind of clogged, scraped, razor-voiced bell in the tower of noise. Tyler draws microtones out of the instrument we have literally never heard before, and Chadbourne is content to lend idiomatic support to this gracious unfolding. "Red Lightning, Pt. 1" by Chadbourne and Zorn is hilarious. This is more in line with Zorn's Classic Guide to Strategy than anything else, in both spirit and execution -- though there are no duck calls credited on this recording. There is space here, sometimes long periods of it, where what is happening between the pair is not readily apparent; there is plenty of trickery and tomfoolery as well, leaving the listener guffawing in more than a few places.

Eclectic and unconventional improvisor/guitarist/banjo player Eugene Chadbourne returns to Cafe OTO for an evening of unaccompanied music and song. Doc Chad draws on a range of forms - from free jazz, country and blue grass and all out noise. His idiosyncratic and uncompromising approach to music has made him a living legend. --- Eugene Chadbourne / electric guitar, banjo --- Tracklisting: 1. Set I - 50:05 2. Set II - 01:00:39 --- Recorded live at Cafe OTO on Sunday 29th October 2017 by Shaun Crook. Mixed and mastered by James Dunn. Photos by Dawid Laskowski, and artwork by Oli Barratt.  

"In 1980, when these four pieces were recorded, John Zorn and I had been playing together for about three years. Four pieces from two different concerts are presented in their entirety. Now I wouldn't dream of touching them, but from my 80's notebook scribbling I can see that although we certainly were enamoured with these duets and thought they were better than anyting anybody else was doing (a musicians right!) we at the same time saw the process as sort of dispensible: another duet concert would be coming around the corner, it might be even better, maybe one day a good recording might get made out of one. Now I listen to these pieces and hear them as complete and perfect, and I wonder how we were able to create them in the midst of such confusion, insecurity and indifference. But hey, the pay was great! My notes indicate John and I split $30 for one of these shows." - Eugene Chadbourne, 1996.  --- John Zorn / saxophones, balloons, bucket Eugene Chadbourne / dobro, acoustic & electric guitar, contact microphones --- Recorded in the state of New York 1980.

Eugene Chadbourne is one of the great guitar players of the modern era. At the time he began recording in Canada in 1975, his music was a unique syncretic formulation. While its most obvious component was free improvisation in a style then most widely associated with English and European players, his music also contained elements of jazz, country, folk, blues, psychedelic and international sounds, referencing these threads in ways that were so diverse and intensely personalized it would take scholars decades to decode them. Volume 3-1/3 is the third of four LPs Feeding Tube is releasing, devoted to documenting some of the music Dr. Chadbourne was creating during the years he was based in the provinces of Canada, while avoiding the conscriptive powers of Richard Nixon and his ilk. Exact details of the recordings are vague, but that’s trivial. Here are seven tracks of improvisational guitar madness at its most glorious. Describing them is almost impossible, but I can at least tell you their names “East Was,” “Texas Was,” “The Shreeve,” “Evil Was,” “What Was,” “Superman’s Problem,” and “Reflections.” The “Was Tetrology” was a piece I believe to have been originally conceived and performed while in the lair of Davey Williams, R.I.P. (and associated members of the Alabama Surrealist Cabal). “The Shreeve” is another take of a track originally recorded for the timeless Volume Two LP. “Reflections” and “Superman’s Problem” probably date to a Clouds & Water session in early ’79. Heard together they suggest an entire parallel universe of guitar history Solo Guitar Volume 3-1/3 is an even more amazing spin than the last one. And there’s still one more to come! -Byron Coley, 2019