Freak Scene #18: Bill MacKay
A Guide to Music in Western Mass. (and sometimes Connecticut)
This week in Freak Scene, we’re trying something a little different: Bill MacKay comes from outside the Freak Scene coverage area (he’s from Chicago), but his new album is great, he’s playing Saturday in Turners Falls and he graciously answered some questions in advance of the gig. Would you be into more concert preview stories like this from artists who aren’t necessarily from the area? Let me know! Also this week, the Western Mass.-Connecticut trio Perennial release a new album that is lively, to say the least.
This much is certain: Bill MacKay plays guitar. Everything after that is harder to pin down. He’s a solo artist, and a collaborator. He plays in a folk style, but also immerses himself in an experimental avant-garde approach. His songs can be simple and straightforward, or knotty and complex. His new album Locust Land comprises all of that, and more.
Locust Land is MacKay’s first solo album since Fountain Fire in 2019. He spent the intervening years working with a broad roster of other musicians, including recording duo projects with Katinka Kleijn (resulting in the album STIR), banjo player Nathan Bowles (Keys) and keyboardist Cooper Crain of Bitchin Bajas (Foreign Smokes, as BCMC). MacKay has also contributed to recordings by Steve Gunn, Ryley Walker and the Bill Callahan-Bonnie Prince Billy project Blind Date Party. In other words, MacKay is a head for the heads — a go-to guitarist for a certain kind of exacting musician looking for an inventive collaborator with a unique sensibility.
Working so extensively with other artists helped shape his new album, MacKay says, by bringing “a sense of the drama and definition those projects had. I wanted every song on Locust Land to make a statement, be unlike each other, but merge with the others.”
They’re certainly distinctive. With its rolling bass notes on an acoustic guitar and MacKay’s hazy vocal melody, “Keeping in Time” has a ’70s singer-songwriter feel, while “Radiator” features organ and slightly overdriven electric guitars as it reels and swaggers for nearly five minutes. Guest musicians augment a handful of songs on Locust Land, which is a change from MacKay’s usual practice of playing all the instruments himself. Sam Wagster contributed bass to three tracks, Mikel Patrick Avery added percussion on two and Janet Beveredge Bean (of the alt-country group Freakwater) sang on “Neil’s Field,” her wordless vocals floating chimera-like through a curtain of keyboard textures.
“It really helped expand the songs they appear on,” MacKay says. “Sam Wagster, Mikel Patrick Avery and Janet Bean are special artists with unique sensibilities. They gave of themselves something individual that I never would have dreamt up or made on my own.”
Though MacKay is sometimes mentioned in conjunction with the “American guitar tradition” that includes players like John Fahey, Glenn Jones and Steve Gunn, he’s not so sure the tag fits.
“I love all of those players, but no, I don’t see myself belonging to any particular tradition,” MacKay says. “I think in terms of melody and writing, and the kind of statements a musician makes. Though as instruments go, the guitar is definitely a great and wide-ranging vehicle for creativity.”
MacKay performs Saturday at Abandon Dream, which appears to be a house at 39 K St., Turners Falls, next door to Grace Church. The lineup also features Dmitri Samarov, Peter Gizzi, Junk Orbit, Wednesday Knudsen, Olana Flynn & Matt Krefting, Ron Schneiderman and Cycles Inside. Reliable information about the show is scant, but doors are said to open at 4 p.m.
Perennial Take You to School on Art History
Perennial have been the subject of some far-fetched descriptions that say more about the writer than the group, so let’s just go with the one the Massachusetts-Connecticut trio uses on Bandcamp: “Modernist punk.” Really, that sums it up. The group’s new release, Art History, is a riot of whiplash guitars, grinding organ, shouted vocals and bottomless energy. With 12 tracks, it’s technically an album, but one that flies by in 21 minutes of relentless mayhem. (The group plays an album release show tonight, June 7, at Arts Center East in Vernon, with Minus Points and DJ Steady Habits.)
For all the chaos of their sound, organist Chelsey Hahn, guitarist Chad Jewett and drummer Wil Mulhern play together with deceptive tightness on their third LP, as if they’re all linked into the same central processing unit. Mulhern hits the drums hard, hurtling through the songs with taut, speedy beats that can stop suddenly and then accelerate like he’s ignited an afterburner. Jewett flings sharp-edged, geometric guitar riffs while swapping vocals with Hahn, whose organ vamps add textures that aren’t usually part of the punk aesthetic.
Hahn sings first on “Tambourine on Snare,” hollering over a springy guitar part that shifts into a frontal assault when Jewett takes over vocals on the chorus. A caustic guitar riff anchors “Tiger Technique,” while whirls of organ build into an electrifying surge of keyboards and guitar on “The Mystery Tone,” the longest song on the album at 2 1/2 minutes.
Even with a pair of more subuded instrumental interludes, “A Is for Abstract” and “B Is for Brutalism” (art history, get it?), Perennial pack a truly impressive amount of gleeful volatility into these songs. Word is their lives shows are even wilder, but if a trip to Vernon isn’t in the cards, Art History has everything you need for 21 minutes of bombastic catharsis wherever you are.
New Concerts
M. Ward performs July 29 at the Iron Horse in Northampton, where it will be totally acceptable, or maybe even required, to reminisce fondly about his album Post-War and how huge it was in indie circles in 2006. Also, the BoDeans are there Aug. 23, Daniel Nunnelee performs Sept. 15 and local star Kimaya Diggs headlines Sept. 20. Tickets for all four shows are available here.
Juliana Hatfield Three plays Nov. 2 at the Drake in Amherst; DSP Shows has your tickets for that one.
If you can’t make it to Billy Bragg’s July show in Northampton, he’ll be at the District Music Hall in Norwalk, Conn., Oct. 15. Godspeed You! Black Emperor plays there Nov. 22 with Alan Sparhawk of Low. Manic Presents has tickets and more information here.
Next week: Northampton’s Carrie Ferguson tells us about their new song and day-long video shoot for “The Many I Am.”
Do you know a musician you’d like to read about in Freak Scene? Let me know! To submit your (or their) music for coverage consideration, send a note to erdanton at gmail or reply to this email. Check out these guidelines first. You can find previous issues of Freak Scene in the archive.