
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.
- How to Turn Fender Guitar Amps into Bass Rigs ›
- Top 10 Hooked Videos of 2021 ›
- Reader Pedalboards 2023 ›
Well-designed pickups. Extremely comfortable contours. Smooth, playable neck.
Middle position could use a bit more mids. Price could scare off some.
$2,999
Ernie Ball Music Man StingRay II
A surprise 6-string collaboration with Cory Wong moves effortlessly between ’70s George Benson and Blink-182 tones.
Announced at the 2025 NAMM show, Cory Wong’s new collaboration with Ernie Ball Music Man scratched an itch—namely, the itch for a humbucker-loaded guitar that could appease Wong’s rock-and-R&B alter ego and serve as complement to his signature Fender Strat. Inspiration came from no further than a bandmate’s namesake instrument. Vulfpeck bassist Joe Dart has a line of signature model EBMM basses, one of which uses the classic StingRay bass body profile. So, when Wong went looking for something distinctive, he wondered if EBMM could create a 6-string guitar using the classic StingRay bass body and headstock profile.
Double the Fun
Wong is, by his own admission, a single-coil devotee. That’s where the core of his sound lives and it feels like home to him. However, Wong is as inspired by classic Earth, Wind & Fire tones and the pop-punk of the early ’90s as he is by Prince and the Minneapolis funk that he grew up with. The StingRay II is a guitar that can cover all those bases.
Ernie Ball has a history of designing fast-feeling, comfortable necks. And I can’t remember ever struggling to move around an EBMM fretboard. The roasted maple C-shaped neck here is slightly thicker in profile than I expected, but still very comfortable. (I must also mention that the back of the neck has a dazzling, almost holographic look to the grain that morphs in the light). By any measure, the StingRay II’s curves seemed designed for comfort and speed. Now, let’s talk about those pickups.Hot or Not?
A few years ago EBMM introduced a line of HT (heat-treated) pickups. The pickups are built with technology the company used to develop their Cobalt and M-Series strings. A fair amount of the process is shrouded in secrecy and must be taken on faith, but EBMM says treating elements of the pickup with heat increases clarity and dynamic response.
To find out for myself, I plugged the StingRay II into a Fender Vibroverb, Mesa/Boogie Mark VII, and a Neural DSP Quad Cortex (Wong’s preferred live rig). Right away, it was easy to hear the tight low end and warm highs. Often, I feel like the low end from neck humbuckers can feel too loose or lack definition. Neither was the case here. The HT pickup is beautifully balanced with a bounce that’s rich with ES-335 vibes. Clean tones are punchy and bright—especially with the Vibroverb—and dirty tones have more room for air. Individual notes were clear and articulate, too.
Any guitar associated with Wong needs a strong middle-position or combined pickup tone, and the StingRay II delivers. I never felt any significant signal loss in the blended signal from the two humbuckers, even if I could use a bit more midrange presence in the voicing. The midrange gap is nothing an EQ or Tube Screamer couldn’t fix, though. And not surprisingly, very Strat-like sounds were easy to achieve for having less midrange bump.
Knowing Wong’s love for ’90s alt-rock, I expected the bridge pickup to have real bite, and it does, demonstrating exceptional dynamic range and exceptional high-end response that never approached shrill. Nearly every type of distortion and overdrive I threw at it sounded great, but especially anything with a scooped-mid flavor and plenty of low end.
The Verdict
By any measure, the StingRay II is a top-notch, professional instrument. The fit and finish are immaculate and the feel of the neck makes me wonder if EBMM stashes some kind of secret sandpaper, because I don’t think I’ve ever felt a smoother, more playable neck. Kudos are also due to EBMM and Wong for finding an instrument that can move between ’70s George Benson tones and the hammering power chords of ’90s Blink-182. Admittedly, the nearly $3K price could give some players pause, but considering the overall quality of the instrument, it’s not out of line. Wong’s involvement and search for distinct sounds makes the StingRay II more than a tired redux of a classic model—an admirable accomplishment considering EBMM’s long and storied history.
Ernie Ball Music Man StingRay II Cory Wong Signature Electric Guitar - Charcoal Blue with Rosewood Fingerboard
StingRay II Cory Wong - Charcoal BlueAdding to the company’s line of premium guitar strapsand accessories, Fairfield Guitar Co. has introduced a new deluxe leather strapdesigned in collaboration with Angela Petrilli.
Based in Los Angeles, Petrilli is well-known to guitar enthusiasts around the world for her online videos. She is one of the video hosts at Norman’s Rare Guitars and has her own YouTube lesson series, the Riff Rundown. She also writes, records and performs with her original band, Angela Petrilli & The Players, and has worked with Gibson, Fender, Martin Guitars, Universal Audio, Guitar Center and Fishman Transducers.
Angela Petrilli's eye-grabbing signature strap is fully hand cut, four inches wide and lightly padded, so it evenly distributes the weight of the instrument on the shoulder and offers superb comfort during extended play. The front side features black "cracked" leather with turquoise triple stitching. The "cracked" treatment on the leather highlights the beautiful natural marks and grain pattern – and it only gets better with age and use.The strap’s back side is black suede for adhesion and added comfort, with the Fairfield Guitar Co. logo and Angela's name stamped in silver foil.
Features include:
- 100% made in the USA
- Hand cut 4” wide leather strap with light padding -- offering extra comfort for longgigs and rehearsals.
- Black suede back side avoids slipping, maintains guitar’s ideal playing position.
- Length is fully adjustable from 45” - 54” and the strap has two holes on thetailpiece for added versatility.
The Fairfield Guitar Co. Angela Petrilli signature strap is available for $150 online at fairfieldguitarco.com.
Tube Amp Doctor has reissued one of the company’s mostsought-after products: the TAD 6L6WGC-STR Blackplate™ small bottle power tube is back inproduction after a 5-year absence.
The TAD 6L6WGC-STR Blackplate™ is the tube that has made TAD so popular with boutiqueamp manufacturers and vintage tone enthusiasts since 2003. A direct replacement for 6L6 and5881 tubes, it’s a remake of the small bottle GE6L6GC and has the same warm lower midrangeand silky top end as the classic GE versions of the 1950s and 1960s. Like the historic RCA5881, this tube features exclusive Blackplate anodes and a side getter.
The TAD 6L6GC-STR Blackplate™ and the TAD 6L6WGC-STR Blackplate™ feature TAD’sexclusive black-plate designs, gold grid wire, double getter construction, no-noise filaments and1.2mm thick heavy duty glass. This tube is approximately 80mm high (without pins) and canreplace 5881 and 6L6WGB tubes.
The newly reissued tubes feature the original design and raw materials from old stock, availablein limited quantities as long as the old stock raw materials are available. They’re the perfectchoice for vintage tweed and black panel amps such as the 1960 Bassman, Twin, Showman orSuper Reverb. The complex midrange and sweet heights are a class of its own. The TAD6L6WGC-STR is recommended for classic tone with warm cleans and rich, sweet mids whenpushed – and it’s great for fat jazz or blues tones.
- Delivers classic sound of the 1950s and ‘60s - excellent tone, maximum lifespan
- Tube Type: 6L6/5881
- Socket: 8 Pin(Octal)
- Identical construction, even tighter tolerances with improved production quality
The TAD 6L6GC-STR Blackplate™ and the TAD 6L6WGC-STR Blackplate™ are each priced at$48 (does not include VAT) / €46.50 (includes VAT) and are available at tubeampdoctor.com.
In challenging times, sometimes elemental music, like the late Jessie Mae Hemphill’s raucous Mississippi hill country blues, is the best salve. It reminds us of what’s truly essential––musically, culturally, and emotionally. And provides a restorative and safe place, where we can open up, listen, and experience without judgement. And smile.
I’ve been prowling the backroads, juke joints, urban canyons, and VFW halls for more than 40 years, in search of the rawest, most powerful and authentic American music. And among the many things I’ve learned is that what’s more interesting than the music itself is the people who make it.
One of the most interesting people I’ve met is the late Jessie Mae Hemphill. By the time my wife, Laurie Hoffma, and I met Jessie Mae, on a visit to her trailer in Senatobia, Mississippi, she’d had a stroke and retired from performing, but we’d been fortunate to see her years before at the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage festival, where she brought a blues style that was like quiet thunder, rumbling with portent and joy and ache, and all the other stuff that makes us human, sung to her own droning, rocking accompaniment on an old Gibson ES-120T.
To say she was from a musical family is an understatement. Her grandfather, Sid, was twice recorded by Alan Lomax for the Library of Congress. While Sid played fiddle, banjo, guitar, harmonica, keyboards, and more, he was best known as the leader of a fife-and-drum band that made music that spilled directly from Africa’s main artery. Sid was Jessie Mae’s teacher, and she learned well. In fact, you can see her leading her own fife-and-drum group in Robert Mugge’s wonderful documentary Deep Blues(with the late musician and journalist Robert Palmer as on-screen narrator), where she also performs a mournful-but-hypnotic song about betrayal—solo, on guitar—in Junior Kimbrough’s juke joint.
That movie, a 1982 episode of Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood (on YouTube) where she appears as part of Othar Turner’s Gravel Springs fife-and-drum band, and worldwide festival appearances are as close as Jessie Mae ever got to fame, although that was enough to make her important and influential to Bonnie Raitt, Cat Power, and others. And she made two exceptional albums during her lifetime: 1981’s She-Wolf and 1990’s Feelin’ Good. If you’re unfamiliar with North Mississippi blues, their sound will be a revelation. The style, as Jessie Mae essayed it, is a droning, hypnotic joy that bumps along like a freight train full of happily rattling box cars populated by carefree hobos. Often the songs ride on one chord, but that chord is the only one that’s needed to put the music’s joy and conviction across. Feelin’ Good, in particular, is essential Jessie Mae. Even the songs about heartbreak, like “Go Back To Your Used To Be” and “Shame on You,” have a propulsion dappled with little bends and other 6-string inflections that wrap the listener in a hypnotic web. Listening to Feelin’ Good, it’s easy to disappear in the music and to have all your troubles vanish as well—for at least as long as its 14 songs last.“She made it clear that she had a gun—a .44 with a pearl handle that took up the entire length of her handbag.”
The challenge I’ve long issued to people unfamiliar with Jessie Mae’s music is: “Listen to Feelin’ Good and then tell me if you’re not feeling happier, more cheerful, and relaxed.” It truly does, as the old cliché would have it, make your backbone slip and your troubles along with it. Especially uptempo songs like the scrappy title track and the charging “Streamline Train.” There’s also an appealing live 1984 performance of the latter on YouTube, with Jessie Mae decked out in leopard-print pants and vest, playing a tambourine wedged onto her left high-heel shoe––one of her stylish signatures.
Jessie Mae was a complex person, caught between the old-school dilemma of playing “the Devil’s music” and yearning for a spiritual life, sweet as pecan pie with extra molasses but quick to turn mean at any perceived slight. She also spent much of her later years in poverty, in a small trailer with a hole in the floor where mice and other critters got in. And she was as mistrustful of strangers as she was warm once she accepted you into her heart. But watch your step before she did. On our first visit to her home, she made it clear that she had a gun—a .44 with a pearl handle that took up the entire length of her handbag and would make Dirty Harry envious.
Happily, she took us into her heart and we took her into ours, helping as much as we could and talking often. She was inspiring, and I wrote a song about her, and even got to perform it for her in her trailer, which was just a little terrifying, since I knew she would not hold back her criticism if she didn't like it. Instead, she giggled like a kid and blushed, and asked if I’d write one more verse about the artifacts she’d gathered while touring around the world.
Jessie Mae died in 2006, at age 82, and, as happens when every great folk artist dies, we lost many songs and stories, and the wisdom of her experience. But you can still get a whiff of all that––if you listen to Feelin’ Good.