Eugene Chadbourne & David Menestres
Schedule
Thu Dec 08 2022 at 08:00 pm to 10:00 pm
Location
Blue Tavern | Tallahassee, FL
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DECEMBER 2022 TOUREUGENE CHADBOURNE &
DAVID MENESTRES
Eugene Chadbourne
The task of describing the life and work of Eugene Chadbourne (aka Doc Chad) is more than daunting. His music is so unique, and his output over 45 years of music-making is so vast, as to defy description To that must be added so many other skills and important contributions to music. He is truly a Renaissance man, a rebel among rebels.
He began playing guitar at an early age. Noticing that girls liked The Beatles, he thought perhaps learning to play the guitar could lead to getting a girlfriend. Having rejected the other two paths to this desirable outcome, beating people up and being good at sports, he began to teach himself how to play. What began with a simple boyish dream and a Herman's Hermits record turned into a musical odyssey that has connected the dots between the Appalachians and the edges of the known musical universe.
Along the way, he's taught himself the banjo; in the winter of 2017 he was asked to perform his variation on Bach's Goldberg Variations at the Donaueschingen International Festival of Music, one of the most important forums of contemporary music in the world.
In 2021 his painting series based on Olivier Messiaen's "Catalog of Birds" was displayed at the Trinosophes gallery and venue in Detroit, the exhibit concluding with a pair of solo concerts.
Live performance activity began again in the summer of 2022 as Chadbourne and Menestres launched their first extended tour including duet performances in Charlottesville, Washington D.C., Baltimore, Philadelphia and New York City.
The tour, supported by a grant from the South Arts Foundation, also included two festivals devoted to Chadbourne's music. The Stone in the New School rescheduled the series originally set for 2020 including collaborations with David Licht, Jah-Rohm Parker Wells, Jim McHugh, Kresten Osgood, Jeb Bishop and Menestres. In the ensuing week Chadbourne's NYC activities continued at the Brooklyn P.I.T. venue with both a concert series and painting exhibit.
Eugene is a music lover who listens to the world with an open mind, which is reflected in his sets. A typical one could include the music of Thelonious Monk, Eric Satie, Merle Haggard, Phil Ochs, Nick Drake or Willie Nelson along with his own. Some of the departure points may be familiar, but even if you have heard him play a song before, you won't hear it the same way again. Each performance and each listening is unique. It has to be. To paraphrase an old saying "you can't play the same note twice" and at the heart of improvisation is an awareness of music, the instrument, the place and all that has led up to that moment. The improvisational music scene can sometimes get a bit rarefied and oblique, but Eugene's guiding star is his ongoing love for country music. It is not a repertoire customarily heard in New York's The Knitting Factory or the avant-garde festivals of Europe, but Dr. Chad has made it so, and is in fact remembered for launching a version of "Freebird" at the Moers International Jazz Festival.
The list of artists he has collaborated with runs into pages. Camper Van Beethoven, John Zorn, Aki Takase, Jimmy Carl Black,Tony Trishka, Corrision of Conformity, Kevin Blechdom and the Violent Femmes are just a handful, appearing in clubs, galleries and festivals and in one case, a command performance with Trischka for William S. Burroughs. His favorite setting besides solo is in duo with a reliable drummer, a list that from him not only includes the aforementioned Black but Han Bennink, Paul Lovens, Ed Cassady (Spirit), Monty Oxymoron (The Damned), Famoudou Don Moye (The Art Ensemble of Chicago), Manni Neuimier (Guru Guru) and Ernie Durawa (Sir Douglas Quintet, Texas Tornadoes).
He has also written widely about music, inventing the touring diary when he described his travels with Shockabilly in 1984, and creating books including I Hate the Man Who Runs This Bar and the 2016 autobiographical Dreamory. He is one of the founders of the "low-fi" or "low tech" movement that came to see thousands of artists creating and releasing their own cassettes (and now CDs) on their own labels. He has also inspired many as a creator of instruments. His electric rake has motivated many artists to build new instruments and expand the sonic landscape. When you combine all of the above with his penchant for speaking out loud and clear about what exactly the hell seems to be going on, you have an unforgettable artist whose connection to folk, jazz and rock is both deep and wide.
DAVID MENESTRES
David Menestres is a bassist, composer, writer, and radio DJ currently based out of Durham, NC. David is the founder of the long running Polyorchard project. His writing has appeared in Music & Literature, The Brooklyn Rail, Indy Week, Van, Bandcamp, and more. David the is host of the weekly Tone Science program on taintradio.org.
Menestres began playing with Chadbourne while the former was finishing his academic music studies at UNCG Greensboro...early 2000s and there was an enjoyable, for a time, Sunday morning jazz jam at the Tate Street Coffeehouse. Ensembles featuring other locally based musicians including pianist David Fox and percussionist Ian Davis branched out from these meetings to play other gigs with Chadbourne around the area including involvement in a North Carolina "Chadfest" and selections from the Insect and Western composition series.
The "Neptunes" venue in Raleigh became the focal point of different aspects of Chadbourne music for several years including Insect and Western pieces as well as protest songs. Menestres was involved in all of these performances which also included Carrie Shull, oboe; Jeb Bishop, trombone; Dan Ruccia, viola; Chris Eubanks, cello. The 13 Society Band developed during this time highlighting Chadbourne's daughters Molly, Lizzie and Jenny; a smaller version of this ensemble with drummers Aaron Bachelder, Joe Westerlund or Daniel Hall has performed under the name of the Doc Chad Contemporary Rock Band.
With this background, Menestres is an ideal bassist to join Chadbourne in an exploration of a vast, sometimes baffling repertoire. In 2022 the duo released a CD entitled "Children."
https://davidmenestres.com/information/
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Where is it happening?
Blue Tavern, 1206 North Monroe St., Tallahassee, United StatesEvent Location & Nearby Stays:
