Greensboro, NC · avant-garde · free improv · country-jazz

Eugene Chadbourne

1 upcoming festival

Legendary avant-garde banjo and guitar iconoclast — five decades of gleefully deranged country-jazz-noise improvisation, electric rake included.

Eugene Chadbourne is an American guitarist, banjo player and improviser who has been recording since the mid-1970s and is long based in Greensboro, North Carolina. He came out of the free improvisation scene, working with figures including John Zorn and Henry Kaiser, and later co-founded Shockabilly with Mark Kramer. His own music mixes free jazz and noise with country, bluegrass and protest song, often turning standards and covers inside out.

He is known for building and playing improvised instruments, most famously the electric rake, and for a prolific self-released discography. His performances typically move between virtuosic improvisation, deadpan humour and political commentary.

avant-gardefree improvcountry-jazz