
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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John Doe and Billy Zoom keeps things spare and powerful, with two basses and a single guitar–and 47 years of shared musical history–between them, as founding members of this historic American band.
There are plenty of mighty American rock bands, but relatively few have had as profound an impact on the international musical landscape as X. Along with other select members of punk’s original Class of 1977, including Patti Smith, Richard Hell, and Talking Heads, the Los Angeles-based outfit proved that rock ’n’ roll could be stripped to its bones and still be as literate and allusive as the best work of the songwriters who emerged during the previous decade and were swept up in the corporate-rock tidal wave that punk rebelled against. X’s first three albums–Los Angles, Wild Gift, and Under the Big Black Sun-were a beautiful and provocative foundation, and rocked like Mt. Rushmore.
Last year, X released a new album, Smoke & Fiction, and, after declaring it would be their last, embarked on what was billed as a goodbye tour, seemingly putting a bow on 47 years of their creative journey. But when PG caught up with X at Memphis’s Minglewood Hall in late fall, vocalist and bassist John Doe let us in on a secret: They are going to continue playing select dates and the occasional mini-tour, and will be part of the Sick New World festival in Las Vegas in April 12.
Not-so-secret is that they still rock like Mt. Rushmore, and that the work of all four of the founders–bassist, singer, and songwriter Doe, vocalist and songwriter Exene Cervenka, guitarist Billy Zoom, and drummer D.J. Bonebreak–remains inspired.
Onstage at Minglewood Hall, Doe talked a bit about his lead role in the film-festival-award-winning 2022 remake of the film noir classic D.O.A. But most important, he and Zoom let us in on their minimalist sonic secrets.Brought to you by D’Addario.
Gretsch A Sketch
Since X’s earliest days, Billy Zoom has played Gretsches. In the beginning, it was a Silver Jet, but in recent years he’s preferred the hollowbody G6122T-59 Vintage Select Chet Atkins Country Gentleman. This example roars a little more thanks to the Kent Armstrong P-90 in the neck and a Seymour Duncan DeArmond-style pickup in the bridge. Zoom, who is an electronics wiz, also did some custom wiring and has locking tuners on the guitar.
More DeArmond
Zoom’s sole effect is this vintage DeArmond 602 volume pedal. It helps him reign in the feedback that occasionally comes soaring in, since he stations himself right in front of his amp during shows.
It's a Zoom!
Zoom’s experience with electronics began as a kid, when he began building items from the famed Heath Kit series and made his own CB radio. And since he’s a guitarist, building amps seemed inevitable. This 1x12 was crafted at the request of G&L Guitars, but never came to market. It is switchable between 10 and 30 watts and sports a single Celestion Vintage 30.
Tube Time!
The tube array includes two EL84, 12AX7s in the preamp stage, and a single 12AT7. The rightmost input is for a reverb/tremolo footswitch.
Set the Controls for the Heart of the Big Black Sun
Besides 3-band EQ, reverb, and tremolo, Zoom’s custom wiring allows for a mid-boost that pumps up to 14 dB. Not content with 11, it starts there and goes to 20.
Baby Blue
This amp is also a Zoom creation, with just a tone and volume control (the latter with a low boost). It also relies on 12AX7s and EL84s.
Big Bottom
Here is John Doe’s rig in full: Ampeg and Fender basses, with his simple stack between them. The red head atop his cabs is a rare bird: an Amber Light Walter Woods from the 1970s. These amps are legendary among bass players for their full tone, and especially good for upright bass and eccentric instruments like Doe’s scroll-head Ampeg. “I think they were the first small, solid-state bass amps ever,” Doe offers. They have channels designated for electric and upright basses (Doe says he uses the upright channel, for a mid-dier tone), plus volume, treble, bass, and master volume controls. One of the switches puts the signal out of phase, but he’s not sure what the others do. Then, there’s a Genzler cab with two 12" speakers and four horns, and an Ampeg 4x10.
Scared Scroll
Here’s the headstock of that Ampeg scroll bass, an artifact of the ’60s with a microphone pickup. Doe seems to have a bit of a love/hate relationship with this instrument, which has open tuners and through-body f-style holes on its right and left sides. “The interesting thing,” he says, “is that you cannot have any treble on the pickup. If you do, it sounds like shit. With a pick, you can sort of get away with it.” So he mostly rolls off all the treble to shake the earth.
Jazz Bass II
This is the second Fender Jazz Bass that Doe has owned. He bought his first from a friend in Baltimore for $150, and used it to write and record most of X’s early albums. That one no longer leaves home. But this touring instrument came from the Guitar Castle in Salem, Oregon, and was painted to recreate the vintage vibe of Doe’s historic bass.
Reader: T. Moody
Hometown: Myrtle Beach, South Carolina
Guitar: The Green Snake
Reader T. Moody turned this Yamaha Pacifica body into a reptilian rocker.
With a few clicks on Reverb, a reptile-inspired shred machine was born.
With this guitar, I wanted to create a shadowbox-type vibe by adding something you could see inside. I have always loved the Yamaha Pacifica guitars because of the open pickup cavity and the light weight, so I purchased this body off Reverb (I think I am addicted to that website). I also wanted a color that was vivid and bold. The seller had already painted it neon yellow, so when I read in the description, “You can see this body from space,” I immediately clicked the Buy It Now button. I also purchased the neck and pickups off of Reverb.
I have always loved the reverse headstock, simply because nothing says 1987 (the best year in the history of the world) like a reverse headstock. The pickups are both Seymour Duncan—an SH-1N in the neck position and TB-4 in the bridge, both in a very cool lime green color. Right when these pickups got listed, the Buy It Now button once again lit up like the Fourth of July. I am a loyal disciple of Sperzel locking tuners and think Bob Sperzel was a pure genius, so I knew those were going on this project even before I started on it. I also knew that I wanted a Vega-Trem; those units are absolutely amazing.
When the body arrived, I thought it would be cool to do some kind of burst around the yellow so I went with a neon green. It turned out better than I imagined. Next up was the shaping and cutting of the pickguard. I had this crocodile-type, faux-leather material that I glued on the pickguard and then shaped to my liking. I wanted just a single volume control and no tone knob, because, like King Edward (Van Halen) once said, “Your volume is your tone.”
T. Moody
I then shaped and glued the faux-leather material in the cavity. The tuning knobs, volume knob, pickguard, screws, and selector switch were also painted in the lemon-lime paint scheme. I put everything together, installed the pickups, strung it up, set it up, plugged it in, and I was blown away. I think this is the best-playing and -sounding guitar I have ever tried.
The only thing missing was the center piece and strap. The latter was easy because DiMarzio makes their ClipLock in neon green. The center piece was more difficult because originally, I was thinking that some kind of gator-style decoration would be cool. In the end, I went with a green snake, because crocodiles ain’t too flexible—and they’re way too big to fit in a pickup cavity!
The Green Snake’s back is just as striking as the front.
This hollowbody has been with Jack since the '90s purring and howling onstage for hundreds of shows.
Our columnist’s Greco 912, now out of his hands, but fondly remembered.
A flea-market find gave our Wizard of Odd years of squealing, garage-rock bliss in his university days.
Recently, I was touring college campuses with my daughter because she’s about to take the next step in her journey. Looking back, I’ve been writing this column for close to 10 years! When I started, my kids were both small, and now they’re all in high school, with my oldest about to move out. I’m pretty sure she’s going to choose the same university that I attended, which is really funny because she’s so much like me that the decision would be totally on point.
The campus looks way nicer than it did back in the ’90s, but there are similarities, like bars, shops, and record stores. Man, our visit took me back to when I was there, which was the last time I was active in bands. Many crash-and-burn groups came and went, and it was then that I started to collect cheap guitars, mainly because it was all I could afford at the time, and there were a lot of guitars to find.
In that era, I was using an old Harmony H420 amp (made by Valco), a Univox Super Fuzz, and whatever guitar I was digging at the time. I was so proud to pull out oddball guitars during shows and just have this totally trashy sound. Squealing and squeaking and noisy as heck, my style was reminiscent of Davie Allan, Ron Asheton, and Chuck Berry. Of course, I was way worse than all of them, but I did have a frenetic energy and I covered up my lack of skill with feedback. During the ’90s, there was a great punk revival, and I loved bands like the Mummies, Teengenerate, the Makers, the New Bomb Turks, and a bunch of others. Bands were embracing lo-fi, and I was planted firmly in that vein. Plus, the guitars I liked to use already sounded lo-fi.
“This was about the trashiest-sounding guitar, but in a good way!”
For a short spell I was using this Greco guitar and, man, this was about the trashiest-sounding guitar, but in a good way! See, Fujigen pickups (like the ones here) have this echoey voice that I describe as an “empty beer can” sound. My Super Fuzz would just destroy these pickups, and I wish I had some recordings from that era, because it was a real scene! I believe this Greco was a flea-market find but it was much later that I found out it was called a Greco Model 912. This was actually a copy of a German-made Framus guitar, but with a lot more glitz and a crazier headstock. Four pickup selector switches, volume/tone knobs, and a rhythm/lead switch rounded out the electronics. Again, these pickups are instant spaghetti-Western movie tone. Airy and bright, the bridge area is like instant, gnarly surf music. Tom Morello of Rage Against the Machine has a similar guitar and John Barrett of Bass Drum of Death was also fond of these pickups. Interestingly enough, these particular Grecos were made in small numbers, ranging between 500 to 600 in total (including all pickup combinations).
The Greco brand was initially owned by the U.S.-based Goya Corporation, but in the late 1960s, Fujigen bought the brand name (for $1,000) and produced a few truly gonzo guitars, including this Model 912. Originally called the GE-4, the four-pickup version sold for $99.50 in 1967. My particular 912 was sold at Sid Kleiner Guitar Studios in Califon, New Jersey (which I learned thanks to the attached store sticker on the headstock).
Aside from the chrome coolness and the four pickups, this model featured a cute little flip-up bridge mute that was all the rage at the time. The body also had some tasteful German carvings around the edges, and as I write this, I am missing this guitar tremendously! But not even close to the way I’m going to miss my girl in a few months. At least I know that she can shop at the same record stores!