Breakdown Lane

Free Solos & Duos 1976 – 1998

Duck Baker feat. Eugene Chadbourne

ESP Disk Ltd. USA
Released: 22 November 2024

Tracklist:

01. Allah, Perhaps – 04:45
02. Peace – 03:30
03. No Family Planning 1 – 02:16
04. Klee – 03:49
05. Like Flies (Requiem For Bobby Fussell) – 05:00
06. Breakdown Lane – 02:23
07. Yewatta – 01:15
08. Buffalo Fire – 04:40
09. No Family Planning 2 – 03:06
10. Eusebia’s Lament – 05:07
11. 47 East Houston St. – 04:28
12. 2-29 In Unleavenworth – 02:27
13. Sonadem Sol – 02:46
14. Breakdown Lane (Duo version feat. Eugene Chadbourne) – 05:13
15. Take The ‘A’ Train (feat. Eugene Chadbourne) – 03:26
16. Straight, No Chaser – 03:59

Duck Baker, flamenco guitar, tracks 1-15, steel string acoustic guitar, track 16

Track 1: Unknown date, 1976, home recording, Richmond, VA
Track 2: Spring 1982, demo session, Richmond, London
Tracks 3-9: August 11, 1982, demo session, home studio of Dix Bruce, Oakland, CA, Dix Bruce, engineer and vocal interjection on “Buffalo Fire”
Tracks 10, 11: March 16th 1993, The Knitting Factory, New York, NY
Tracks 12, 13: June 1998, Los Medanos College Studio, Pittsburg, CA, Riki Feldman, engineer
Tracks 14, 15: July 1978, Bard College, Annadale-on-Hudson, NY, recorded by Lesli Dalaba
Track 16: June 27th 1992, McCabe’s, Long Beach, CA, recorded too hot but included as a bonus for listeners with tough ears

All compositions by Duck Baker except “Peace”, by Ornette Coleman, “Take the ‘A’ Train”, by Billy Strayhorn, and “Straight, No Chaser”, by Thelonius Monk

Mastered by Joe Lizzi at van Alst Studios, LIC, NY
Cover Art by Saana Baker and graphics by Uma Das O’Toole

Produced by Duck Baker

Sleeve Notes

DUCK BAKER SHOULD BE A NATIONAL TREASURE.

HE SHOULD BE AN INTERNATIONAL TREASURE.

Should be? In my book he already is. I first came across his work in the 1970s on early Kicking Mule LPs in my local library in the UK, which was his temporary base then, and is his permanent home now. Many years later I was astounded by Spinning Song, his CD of Herbie Nichols compositions. Around the same time, I made contact with him by way of thanks following a review he wrote of my work on Stuff Smith and, later, other historic violinistic books and CDs. I say that by way of disclosure.

Duck’s knowledge and learning about the ancestry of so many musical genres is prodigious, whether jazz, avant-garde, improvisation in general, various forms of country music, Irish, blues, ragtime, swing, you name it. He draws on so much to make his own unique playing and composing. And none of it is to go by the troublesome term “appropriation.” Duck absorbs, pays tribute, and is himself, wherever his fingers might move across his flamenco guitar, including, of course, its wood body.

This previously unreleased collection consists of fourteen solos and two duos with Eugene Chadbourne. The performances are drawn mostly from demo sessions or live recordings, and were recorded at various locations between 1976 and 1998. They run the gamut of moods and tempos, from the reflective “Peace” and brooding “Like Flies” to burners that rank with Baker’s most animated free playing on record, like the title track, “No Family Planning,” and “Buffalo Fire.” The only so-to-speak standards are Thelonious Monk’s “Straight, No Chaser” and Billy Strayhorn’s “Take the ‘A’ Train,” the latter featuring fascinating and humorous interplay between the two guitarists.

Duck’s fingerstyle playing is unmistakable, in whatever genre. No one else sounds like him. Of guitarists, Duck reveals that Sonny Sharrock was an early influence for his free jazz/ free improv style, and Derek Bailey a somewhat later one.

Technically, the soloing of bass players such as Charles Mingus was a greater influence. But his main influences have been horn players, among them Eric Dolphy, Archie Shepp, Ornette Coleman, Jimmy Lyons, and Albert Ayler, as well as the piano playing of Cecil Taylor, to the extent that it is possible to transfer their intensities to acoustic guitar. We might say that there is an intricate delicacy to Duck’s intensity.

Duck’s catalogue is now vast, including a recent CD release of Thelonious Monk compositions, which beautifully complements the aforementioned Nichols CD. As well as solo efforts, past records include collaborati.ons with the likes of Chadbourne, Roswell Rudd, John Zorn, and John Butcher or, at the other end of the spectrum, Stefan Grossman, John Renbourn, Leo Kottke, Molly Andrews, and Maggie Boyle.

I, for one, never tire of listening to Duck playing in whatever context. He is a master and every recording is a gem.

Anthony Barnett
Lewes, East Sussex
March 2024

Artist Bios

Duck Baker is Richard Royal Baker IV. Born in Washington, D.C., he is an accomplished acoustic guitarist who has made several albums of his music in addition to guitar instruction records. Albums like 1997’s Spinning Song and 1999’s Kid on the Mountain feature his exemplary technique. ~ William Ruhlmann

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. ~ Jason Ankeny