EFW Presents: Eugene Chadbourne and Jim McHugh
Schedule
Thu, 14 Sep, 2023 at 07:00 pm
Location
Cunneen-Hackett Arts Center | Poughkeepsie, NY
Advertisement
"Eugene ‘Doc’ Chadbourne’s career has been absurdly prolific. According to Discogs he has played on at least 358 albums. From John Zorn and Jello Biafra to the Violent Femmes and Camper Van Beethoven, Toshinori Kondo, Carla Bley, Han Bennink, Susan Alcorn, Corrosion Of Conformity, Henry Kaiser, Wadada Leo Smith, They Might Be Giants, Half Japanese, Derek Bailey, Polly Bradfield and Anthony Braxton, to name but a few, he has worked with hundreds who are pioneers in their own right. He has been friends with hundreds more. He has played live constantly for decades, both on his own and in groups, performing everywhere from his local record store to the Soviet Bloc. He is a cult figure, yet sometimes it feels strange that he is not more widely revered. To some extent he’s a victim of his own inventiveness, too mercurial to be summed up in an easily digested narrative."— Patrick Clarke, The Quietus
Elysium Furnace Works is thrilled to present the dynamic duo of legendary multi-instrumentalist, vocalist, composer, author and all-around creative force Eugene Chadbourne, joined by guitarist/vocalist Jim McHugh from the NYC-based band Sunwatchers. Following up on their 2021 recording Bad Scene, this talented pair will perform originals, covers and who can say what else?
Eugene Chadbourne and Jim McHugh will perform on Thursday, September 14 at 8 PM at the VBI Theatre of Cunneen-Hackett Arts Center, located at 12 Vassar St. in Poughkeepsie, NY. Tickets are $15 in advance and $25 at the door — advance tickets are on sale at https://chadhugh.eventbrite.com
EFW's upcoming 2023 schedule includes:
September 23: exclusiveOr (VBI Theatre @ Cunneen-Hackett Arts Center, Poughkeepsie, NY) — this duo featuring Peabody Institute professor of both Computer Music and Music Engineering & Technology, laptop artist Sam Pluta, and director of both Electronic Music and the Princeton Laptop Orchestra at Princeton University, analog synthethist Jeff Snyder, creates real-time electronic sound architectures which fluidly warp space-time, leaving far behind any conventional definition of “music.”
October 21: Sana Nagano's Smashing Humans (VBI @ CHAC) — the Brooklyn-based noise-jazz violinist Nagano leads an adventurous ensemble performing her compositions which bring together gorgeous chaos, explosive energy and exceptional musical dexterity, featuring Nagano on violin and effects, Anna Webber on saxophones, Jonathan Goldberger on guitar, Kim Cass on bass and Danny Sher on drums.
November 18: Joe McPhee with Strings (VBI @ CHAC) — the legendary Poughkeepsie-based multi-instrumentalist performs with a large string ensemble which includes such acclaimed musicians as bassists Michael Bisio and Hillard Greene, cellists Fred Lonberg-Holm and Lester St. Louis, violists Melanie Dyer and Mat Maneri, violinists Rosi Hertlein and Gwen Laster and guitarists James Keepnews and Billy Stein.
December 16: Joe Fiedler (VBI @ CHAC) — this solo performance by the consummate trombonist/composer/arranger, building on his recent solo recording The Howland Sessions, is sure to be startling and deliriously engaging, closing our 2023 season on a multiphonically high note.
_______________
A seemingly endless -- and endlessly eclectic -- series of releases made the innovative guitarist Eugene Chadbourne one of the underground community's most well-known and well-regarded eccentrics. Born January 4, 1954 in Mount Vernon, NY, Chadbourne was raised in Boulder, CO, by his mother, a refugee of the Nazi death camps. At the age of 11, the Beatles inspired him to learn guitar; later exposure to Jimi Hendrix prompted him to begin experimenting with distortion pedals and fuzzboxes. Ultimately, however, he became dissatisfied with the conventions of rock and pop, and traded in his electric guitar for an acoustic one, on which he began to learn to play bottleneck blues.
Perhaps Chadbourne's most significant formative discovery was jazz; initially drawn to John Coltrane and Roland Kirk, he later became an acolyte of the avant excursions of Derek Bailey and Anthony Braxton. Despite the huge influence music exerted over his life, however, Chadbourne first studied to become a journalist, but his career was derailed when he fled to Canada rather than fight in Vietnam; only President Jimmy Carter's declaration of amnesty for conscientious objectors allowed the vociferously left-wing Chadbourne to return to the U.S. in 1976, at which time he plunged headlong into the New York downtown music scene. After releasing his 1976 debut, Solo Acoustic Guitar, he began collaborating on purely improvisational music with the visionary saxophonist John Zorn and the acclaimed guitarist Henry Kaiser.
Quickly, Chadbourne carved out a singular style, comprised of equal parts protest music, free improvisation, and avant-garde jazz, topped off with his absurd, squeaky vocals. A complete list of Chadbourne's countless subsequent collaborations and genre workouts is far too lengthy and detailed to exhaustively document, although in the early '80s he garnered some of his first significant attention as the frontman of Shockabilly, a demented rockabilly revisionist outfit which also featured the well-known producer Kramer. Following the group's breakup, Chadbourne turned to his own idiosyncratic brand of country and folk, accurately dubbed LSD C&W on a 1987 release, the same year he joined the members of Camper Van Beethoven for a one-off covers project. In addition, he recorded with artists ranging from Fred Frith and Elliott Sharp to Evan Johns and Jimmy Carl Black, the original drummer in the Mothers of Invention; in between, he continued exploring unique styles inspired by music from the four corners of the globe, all the while issuing a seemingly innumerable string of records, most of them on his own Parachute label.
_______________
Biography for the band Sunwatchers, featuring Jim McHugh:
Inspired by Terry Riley, Ethiopian and Thai music, and the outer limits of jazz, Sunwatchers are a New York City-based ensemble who play a heavy, intense brand of mystical free rock. Coming from roots in Athens, Georgia's wild-eyed Dark Meat collective, the group quickly became a part of New York's experimental scene and released records on exploratory indie labels like Castle Face and Trouble in Mind. Their electric energy was in full swing by the time of their third album, 2019's Illegal Moves.
Sunwatchers is centered around Jim McHugh, who plays guitar and electric phin, as well as alto sax player Jeff Tobias, bassist Peter Kerlin, percussionist Cory Bracken, and drummer Jason Robira. Other musicians who contribute to Sunwatchers include McHugh's wife Katie Eastburn (formerly of Young People), guitarist/keyboard player Dave Harrington (formerly of DARKSIDE), guitarist Ben Greenberg, keyboard player Dave Kadden, and fiddle player Jonah Rapino. Originally from North Carolina, McHugh first became known as one of the founders of the wild, improvisatory Athens collective Dark Meat before moving to New York City and becoming involved with its experimental music scene. He formed the acclaimed psychedelic rock group Nymph and played with free jazz legend Arthur Doyle, in addition to solo performances and sound installations.
By 2013, Sunwatchers had begun to take shape, performing at new music festivals and small venues in New York, and the group's self-released cassette Tomb Howl appeared in late 2014. Sunwatchers' self-titled debut full-length arrived on Castle Face in March 2016. They moved to Trouble in Mind for their second album, II, which was released in early 2018. 3 Characters, a double-LP collaboration with Eugene Chadbourne, was issued by Amish Records later in the year. They quickly returned the next year with Illegal Moves, their most charged effort to date. The album included a cover of Alice Coltrane's "Ptah, the El Daoud." HausLive 1, documenting a gig at Chicago's Cafe Mustache, appeared on Hausu Mountain in September of 2019. After several rounds of international touring, the band quickly returned with fourth album Oh Yeah? in the spring of 2020.
_______________
Elysium Furnace Works is a cooperative project co-led by Mike Faloon and James Keepnews. EFW seeks to present the work of vanguard artists in settings as dedicated and uncompromising as the art itself, focusing primarily although not exclusively on live music performances in and around New York's vibrant Hudson Valley. Follow us on Facebook — http://www.facebook.com/elysiumfurnaceworks — and on Instagram @elysiumfurnaceworks.
Advertisement
Where is it happening?
Cunneen-Hackett Arts Center, 9 & 12 Vassar St,Poughkeepsie,NY,United StatesEvent Location & Nearby Stays:
