
Black Duck are drummer Charles Rumback and guitarists Douglas McCombs and Bill MacKay.
The members of the Chicago-based super trio spent decades pioneering improvised and instrumental rock music. Together, they’ve caught lightning in a bottle with their debut album.
Chicago trio Black Duck’s self-titled debut album is an absorbing collection of atmospheric, even cinematic, Midwestern-noir. The band’s three linchpin instrumentalists—guitarist Bill MacKay, guitarist/bassist Douglas McCombs, and drummer Charles Rumback—conjured the bulk of the music out of studio improvisations, played with a relaxed, nuanced flair that fans of each of these notable free-ranging musicians will recognize.
Lemon Treasure
McCombs is known as a founding member of post-rock pioneers Tortoise, as well as the leader of instrumental Americana group Brokeback. He’s also the longtime bassist for influential alt-rock outfit Eleventh Dream Day. MacKay’s ventures, meanwhile, include guest stints with McCombs’ Eleventh Dream Day and duo collaborations with the likes of banjoist Nathan Bowles, alongside a sequence of solo albums, plus two intricate instrumental LPs made with songwriter-guitarist Ryley Walker. Rumback, who met MacKay in college, also recorded two excellent instrumental discs with Walker, and has released several albums as a leader, too. Perhaps the most compelling is 2020’s standout, June Holiday (featuring extraordinary Windy City pianist Jim Baker). Improvisation has been Black Duck’s initial focus onstage, and studio improv yielded most of the tracks on the new album. But three hook-laced compositions—one brought to the session by each member of the band—serve as sonic tent poles for Black Duck. Inviting opener “Of Lit Backyards,” written by McCombs, is a loping, lyrical number that McCombs describes as “sort of Roy Orbison meets Tom Verlaine.” “Delivery,” MacKay’s growling contribution, builds to something much darker and more volatile, as if Link Wray scored a spaghetti Western shootout. Rumback’s pensive “The Trees Are Dancing” could be the most compelling of the three, with beautiful guitar melodies unspooling over a stalking bassline and clapping drums. Even though each began as a solo composition, McCombs points out that these tracks all ended up as group arrangements when realized for Black Duck.
Bill MacKay's Gear
Black Duck improvises a lot of their music, but guitarist Bill MacKay says there’s usually a theme that their songs center on.
Photo by Jim Summaria
Guitars
- 1975 Fender Thinline Telecaster with Fender humbuckers
- 1976 Gibson Les Paul Custom
Amps
- 1970 Fender Princeton Reverb
Pedals
- • Wampler cata
- Pulp ThroBak Overdrive Boost
- Boss RV-3
- Death By Audio Reverberation Machine
Strings, Picks, & Slides
- Ernie Ball, mixed set of Power Slinky and Regular Slinky (.011-.046)
- Ernie Ball Power Slinky (.011-.048)
- Gibson XH Extra Heavy Standard Pick (1.17 mm)
- Dunlop Gator Grip (1.14 mm)
- Dunlop Gator Grip (1.50 mm)
- Diamond Bottlenecks Pill Bottle glass slides
McCombs, who moved to Chicago in 1980 from small-town Illinois, describes the music community of his adopted city as “having a real openness to adventure.” Black Duck, he says, is a product of its environment. “The various creative music scenes in Chicago, whether jazz and improvisation or electronic music or rock or whatever, sort of intersect in a general swirl of creativity,” he says. “When we first started performing out as a band, we played the Constellation, a progressive, European-style venue here that has a genre-less aesthetic that we all identify with. Eventually, we played the Big Ears Festival in Knoxville, where I think we fit in well as an improvising group.”
Starting out in the ’80s, McCombs was inspired by punk rock, and his band Tortoise earned its renown for studio experimentation. “Bill and Charles have more experience as live improvisers than I do,” he explains. “But the main idea behind Black Duck, for me, was to further develop my guitar playing through improvisation in a group setting, to expand myself as a musician. The three of us don’t rehearse that much or even have a whole lot of discussion, having cultivated our musical rapport on stage. We try to keep things instinctual, intuitive, open. From the first, the trio felt like it had the potential to get really expansive or be more intimate—the music seems to have a lot of pliability.” McCombs says there’s room for Black Duck to “get more ‘out,’” but the more “‘inside’” sound of Black Duck is just what happened when they went into the studio.
McCombs plays a Fender Jazzmaster on the record, as well as an Allparts Baritone Telecaster to fill out the bottom end on various tracks, such as “Delivery.” He also overdubbed bass on a few songs with his Guild B-30 acoustic bass guitar. “I’ve never been one of those players in search of the perfect guitar,” McCombs says. “I’ve always been someone who tended to adapt to my instruments. My gateway to the guitar from bass was a Fender Bass VI in the ’90s, which I played a lot in Tortoise and Brokeback. I then went to my Jazzmaster out of my love for Verlaine and his sound. The scale of it felt comfortable coming from bass, and I also love the versatility of the Jazzmaster’s pickup sounds. As for my baritone Tele, it adds more low-end to a two-guitar band. I also love the Duane Eddy twang you can get from it.”
“The various creative music scenes in Chicago, whether jazz and improvisation or electronic music or rock or whatever, sort of intersect in a general swirl of creativity.”—Douglas McCombs
MacKay, a Pittsburgh native who settled in Chicago in 1998, can play with what McCombs calls “a real rock guitar feel, that Stones-y, chooglin’ thing you can hear in ‘Delivery,’ a method that tends to be more chordal than my note-y approach. Our styles are complementary, I think.”
MacKay agrees that he and McCombs occupy different territory. “Douglas is a very different guitarist than, say, Ryley Walker,” says MacKay. “I tend to bob and weave a lot with Ryley, whereas Doug and I will play in more delineated rhythm and lead roles. Or if I’m doing a slide thing, he’ll be pulsing, as happens in ‘Lemon Treasure’ on the album. You can also get an idea of our guitar weave really well on the improv ‘Second Guess.’ We’re both fans of full-frequency guitar playing. As a bassist, too, Doug is keenly aware of the bottom even when he’s playing guitar. His baritone instrument helps with that, of course. Having some low-end emphasis in there means that the music can resonate with a listener’s body as well as their minds.”
Douglas McCombs' Gear
The three members of Black Duck say they’re experiencing an uptick in performing opportunities for improvised music recently, including Big Ears and other notable festivals.
Photo by Evan Jenkins
Guitars/Bass
- 1964 Fender Jazzmaster with Mastery bridge
- Allparts Baritone Telecaster with Fralin pickups and Bigsby tremolo
- 1970s Guild B-30 acoustic bass guitar
Pedals
- Alan Yee Last Temptation of Boost
- Fulltone Full-Drive2
- ZVEX Woolly Mammoth
- Lehle Mono Volume
- Moog Moogerfooger MF-104Z
- EarthQuaker Disaster Transport
- TC Electronic Ditto Looper
- Electro-Harmonix Freeze Sound Retainer
- Moog Moogerfooger MF-102 Ring Modulator
Amps
- 1960s Ampeg B-18N Portaflex
- Victoria Victorilux 3x10 Combo
Strings, Picks, Cables
- D'Addario EJ21 XL Jazz Light (.012-.052), with wound G string for JazzMaster
- D’Addario baritone sets
- Dunlop Orange Tortex picks
- Divine Noise guitar cables
MacKay says Black Duck sounds different than anything the three musicians might do on their own. Having three distinct perspectives bouncing around creates more possibility. “Charles and I know the mutual directions we can go down and follow each other,” says MacKay. “With Doug in the mix, it makes things more combustible.”
Black Duck’s music is spontaneous, but there’s some semblance of order to the spontaneity. “Improvisations seem most successful to me when they have something of a compositional quality,” says MacKay. “With this band, we’re not starting from complete abstraction like more jazz-oriented improv groups. One of us will have a theme or a motif we can center on. For the improvised piece ‘Thunder Fade That Earth Smells,’ I brought out a bit of a riff that I had played before, something heavy and fuzzy that could play off the more ethereal sections. I like having an unheard riff in my back pocket like that, and seeing how the other guys react to it.”
MacKay plays a “pretty stock” 1975 Fender Thinline Telecaster on Black Duck, “except that it has Fender humbuckers, which are powerful,” he explains. “It’s a dream guitar to play, with a lot of great tones beyond the usual Telecaster twang. You can get clear, clean tones, but the pickups are hot, so the Tele can be pushed into some dirty sounds. It’s a partial hollowbody, so it has some real resonance, too. It has been my main performing guitar for a long while.” MacKay also plays a ’76 Les Paul Custom that he’s had for decades. “It’s all stock, except for a new wall cord,” he says. “The Gibson is an excellent all-around instrument, as it has both warmth and bite, with so much color.”
“I’ll see an instrumentalist perform and it sparks something in me. That experience can sort of clear the connections and allow new energy to come through. To me, that’s a kind of transcendence.”—Bill MacKay
MacKay’s key effects pedals for Black Duck included a ThroBak booster (which “is based on the Colorsound Overdriver, for that vintage Jeff Beck/David Gilmour sound”), a Wampler cataPulp (“for nice distortion tones, based on the Orange Rockerverb amp”), and a Boss RV-3 reverb/delay (“which I’ve used for every show and album for more than 20 years”). As for McCombs, he summons an array of atmospheres via his board of delay, fuzz, overdrive, and looper effects, which include Alan Yee’s Last Temptation of Boost pedal (with more details in the gear list below).
The simplicity of the album cover belies the depth of creativity and improvisational transcendence in Black Duck’s recorded debut.
At 43, Rumback is the youngest of the trio, having moved from his native Kansas to Chicago in 2001. McCombs credits the drummer’s “intense knowledge of rhythm and the way his playing balances solidity with a sense of restraint” with building out Black Duck’s sound, and MacKay adds that Rumback “has his own voice on the drums.” “He totally is himself on his instrument, which is easier said than accomplished,” says MacKay. “He places beats with his phrasing in such an individual, personal way. With drums as much as guitar, phrasing is like breathing. It’s a subtle but potent aspect of music.”
Instrumental acts may never be on Top of the Pops, but MacKay takes heart in “how much instrumental music there seems to be, quiet or loud, on festival bills.
“There seems to be an openness to abstraction in music these days,” he says. “Words and the human voice have their own special expressive power, of course, but I think there’s a space in instrumental music where listeners can find themselves. I know that I’ve been in a rut sometimes, but I’ll see an instrumentalist perform and it sparks something in me. That experience can sort of clear the connections and allow new energy to come through. To me, that’s a kind of transcendence.”
YouTube It
Here, a recording of a live set at a record store in Milwaukee captures Black Duck at their most raw and powerful.
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A 6L6 power section, tube-driven spring reverb, and a versatile array of line outs make this 1x10 combo an appealing and unique 15-watt alternative.
Supro Montauk 15-watt 1 x 10-inch Tube Combo Amplifier - Blue Rhino Hide Tolex with Silver Grille
Montauk 110 ReverbThe two-in-one “sonic refractor” takes tremolo and wavefolding to radical new depths.
Pros: Huge range of usable sounds. Delicious distortion tones. Broadens your conception of what guitar can be.
Build quirks will turn some users off.
$279
Cosmodio Gravity Well
cosmod.io
Know what a wavefolder does to your guitar signal? If you don’t, that’s okay. I didn’t either until I started messing around with the all-analog Cosmodio Instruments Gravity Well. It’s a dual-effect pedal with a tremolo and wavefolder, the latter more widely used in synthesis that , at a certain threshold, shifts or inverts the direction the wave is traveling—in essence, folding it upon itself. Used together here, they make up what Cosmodio calls a sonic refractor.
Two Plus One
Gravity Well’s design and control set make it a charm to use. Two footswitches engage tremolo and wavefolder independently, and one of three toggle switches swaps the order of the effects. The two 3-way switches toggle different tone and voice options, from darker and thicker to brighter and more aggressive. (Mixing and matching with these two toggles yields great results.)
The wavefolder, which has an all-analog signal path bit a digitally controlled LFO, is controlled by knobs for both gain and volume, which provide enormous dynamic range. The LFO tremolo gets three knobs: speed, depth, and waveform. The first two are self-explanatory, but the latter offers switching between eight different tremolo waveforms. You’ll find standard sawtooth, triangle, square, and sine waves, but Cosmodio also included some wacko shapes: asymmetric swoop, ramp, sample and hold, and random. These weirder forms force truly weird relationships with the pedal, forcing your playing into increasingly unpredictable and bizarre territories.
This is all housed in a trippy, beautifully decorated Hammond 1590BB-sized enclosure, with in/out, expression pedal, and power jacks. I had concerns about the durability of the expression jack because it’s not sealed to its opening with an outer nut and washer, making it feel more susceptible to damage if a cable gets stepped on or jostled near the connection, as well as from moisture. After a look at the interior, though, the build seems sturdy as any I’ve seen.
Splatterhouse Audio
Cosmodio’s claim that the refractor is a “first-of-its-kind” modulation effect is pretty grand, but they have a point in that the wavefolder is rare-ish in the guitar domain and pairing it with tremolo creates some pretty foreign sounds. Barton McGuire, the Massachusetts-based builder behind Cosmodio, released a few videos that demonstrate, visually, how a wavefolder impacts your guitar’s signal—I highly suggest checking them out to understand some of the principles behind the effect (and to see an ’80s Muppet Babies-branded keyboard in action.)
By folding a waveform back on itself, rather than clipping it as a conventional distortion would, the wavefolder section produces colliding, reflecting overtones and harmonics. The resulting distortion is unique: It can sound lo-fi and broken in the low- to mid-gain range, or synthy and extraterrestrial when the gain is dimed. Add in the tremolo, and you’ve got a lot of sonic variables to play with.
Used independently, the tremolo effect is great, but the wavefolder is where the real fun is. With the gain at 12 o’clock, it mimics a vintage 1x10 tube amp cranked to the breaking point by a splatty germanium OD. A soft touch cleans up the signal really nicely, while maintaining the weirdness the wavefolder imparts to its signal. With forceful pick strokes at high gain, it functions like a unique fuzz-distortion hybrid with bizarre alien artifacts punching through the synthy goop.
One forum commenter suggested that the Gravity Well effect is often in charge as much the guitar itself, and that’s spot on at the pedal's extremes. Whatever you expect from your usual playing techniques tends to go out the window —generating instead crumbling, sputtering bursts of blubbering sound. Learning to respond to the pedal in these environments can redefine the guitar as an instrument, and that’s a big part of Gravity Well’s magic.
The Verdict
Gravity Well is the most fun I’ve had with a modulation pedal in a while. It strikes a brilliant balance between adventurous and useful, with a broad range of LFO modulations and a totally excellent oddball distortion. The combination of the two effects yields some of the coolest sounds I’ve heard from an electric guitar, and at $279, it’s a very reasonably priced journey to deeply inspiring corners you probably never expected your 6-string (or bass, or drums, or Muppet Babies Casio EP-10) to lead you to.
Kemper and Zilla announce the immediate availability of Zilla 2x12“ guitar cabs loaded with the acclaimed Kemper Kone speaker.
Zilla offers a variety of customization to the customers. On the dedicated Website, customers can choose material, color/tolex, size, and much more.
The sensation and joy of playing a guitar cabinet
Sometimes, when there’s no PA, there’s just a drumkit and a bass amp. When the creative juices flow and the riffs have to bounce back off the wall - that’s the moment when you long for a powerful guitar cabinet.
A guitar cabinet that provides „that“ well-known feel and gives you that kick-in-the-back experience. Because guitar cabinets can move some serious air. But these days cabinets also have to be comprehensive and modern in terms of being capable of delivering the dynamic and tonal nuances of the KEMPER PROFILER. So here it is: The ZILLA 2 x 12“ upright slant KONE cabinet.
These cabinets are designed in cooperation with the KEMPER sound designers and the great people from Zilla. Beauty is created out of decades of experience in building the finest guitar cabinets for the biggest guitar masters in the UK and the world over, combined with the digital guitar tone wizardry from the KEMPER labs. Loaded with the exquisit Kemper Kone speakers.
Now Kemper and Zilla bring this beautiful and powerful dream team for playing, rehearsing, and performing to the guitar players!
ABOUT THE KEMPER KONE SPEAKERS
The Kemper Kone is a 12“ full range speaker which is exclusively designed by Celestion for KEMPER. By simply activating the PROFILER’s well-known Monitor CabOff function the KEMPER Kone is switched from full-range mode to the Speaker Imprint Mode, which then exactly mimics one of 19 classic guitar speakers.
Since the intelligence of the speaker lies in the DSP of the PROFILER, you will be able to switch individual speaker imprints along with your favorite rigs, without needing to do extensive editing.
The Zilla KEMPER KONE loaded 2x12“ cabinets can be custom designed and ordered for an EU price of £675,- UK price of £775,- and US price of £800,- - all including shipping (excluding taxes outside of the UK).
For more information, please visit kemper-amps.com or zillacabs.com.
The author in the spray booth.
Does the type of finish on an electric guitar—whether nitro, poly, or oil and wax—really affect its tone?
There’s an allure to the sound and feel of a great electric guitar. Many of us believe those instruments have something special that speaks not just to the ear but to the soul, where every note, every nuance feels personal. As much as we obsess over the pickups, wood, and hardware, there’s a subtler, more controversial character at play: the role of the finish. It’s the shimmering outer skin of the guitar, which some think exists solely for protection and aesthetics, and others insist has a role influencing the voice of the instrument. Builders pontificate about how their choice of finishing material may enhance tone by allowing the guitar to “breathe,” or resonate unfettered. They throw around terms like plasticizers, solids percentages, and “thin skin” to lend support to their claims. Are these people tripping? Say what you will, but I believe there is another truth behind the smoke.
It’s the shimmering outer skin of the guitar, which some think exists solely for protection and aesthetics, and others insist has a role influencing the voice of the instrument. Builders pontificate about how their choice of finishing material may enhance tone by allowing the guitar to “breathe,” or resonate unfettered. They throw around terms like plasticizers, solids percentages, and “thin skin” to lend support to their claims. Are these people tripping? Say what you will, but I believe there is another truth behind the smoke.
Nitrocellulose lacquer, or “nitro,” has long been the finish of choice for vintage guitar buffs, and it’s easy to see why. Used by Fender, Gibson, and other legendary manufacturers from the 1950s through the 1970s, nitro has a history as storied as the instruments it’s adorned. Its appeal lies not just in its beauty but in its delicate nature. Nitro, unlike some modern finishes, can be fragile. It wears and cracks over time, creating a visual patina that tells the story of every song, every stage, every late-night jam session. The sonic argument goes like this: Nitro is thin, almost imperceptible. It wraps the wood like silk. The sound is unhindered, alive, warm, and dynamic. It’s as if the guitar has a more intimate connection between its wood and the player's touch. Of course, some call bullscheiße.
In my estimation, nitro is not just about tonal gratification. Just like any finish, it can be laid on thick or thin. Some have added flexibility agents (those plasticizers) that help resist damage. But as it ages, old-school nitro can begin to wear and “check,” as subtle lines weave across the body of the guitar. And with those changes comes a mellowing, as if the guitar itself is growing wiser with age. Whether a tonal shift is real or imagined is part of the mystique, but it’s undeniable that a nitro-finished guitar has a feel that harkens back to a romantic time in music, and for some that’s enough.
Enter the modern era, and we find a shift toward practicality—polyurethane and polyester finishes, commonly known as “poly.” These finishes, while not as romantic as nitro, serve a different kind of beauty. They are durable, resilient, and protective. If nitro is like a delicate silk scarf, poly is armor—sometimes thicker, shinier, and built to last. The fact that they reduce production times is a bonus that rarely gets mentioned. For the player who prizes consistency and durability, poly is a guardian. But in that protection, some say, comes a price. Some argue that the sound becomes more controlled, more focused—but less alive. Still, poly finishes have their own kind of charm. They certainly maintain that showroom-fresh look, and to someone who likes to polish and detail their prized possessions, that can be a big plus.
“With those changes comes a mellowing, as if the guitar itself is growing wiser with age.”
For those seeking an even more natural experience, oil and wax finishes offer something primal. These finishes, often applied by hand, mostly penetrate the wood as much as coating it, leaving the guitar’s surface nearly bare. Proponents of oil and/or wax finishes say these materials allow the wood to vibrate freely, unencumbered by “heavy” coatings. The theory is there’s nothing getting in the way—sort of like a nudist colony mantra. Without the protection of nitro or poly, these guitars may wear more quickly, bearing the scars of its life more openly. This can be seen as a plus or minus, I imagine.
My take is that finishes matter because they are part of the bond we have with our instruments. I can’t say that I can hear a difference, and I think a myth has sprouted from the acoustic guitar world where maybe you can. Those who remove their instrument’s finish and claim to notice a difference are going on memory for the comparison. Who is to say every component (including strings) went back together exactly the same? So when we think about finishes, we’re not just talking about tone—we’re thinking about the total connection between musician and instrument. It’s that perception that makes a guitar more than just wood and wire. The vibe makes it a living, breathing part of the music—and you.