Artist: Bill Orcutt
Album: Made Out Of Sound (Palilalia Records)
It’s difficult to pigeonhole Bill Orcutt’s inimitable, improvised, skeletal style of music, which sees him disregard the A and D strings on his guitar. His current album, Made Out Of Sound, with drummer Chris Corsano, has been described as “not-not-jazz”, whereas his solo acoustic work has veered more towards the blues, albeit in abstract. In the 90s, when he played as one of noise-trio Harry Pussy, his electric playing was full on and aggressive, while more recent records, after a decade-long hiatus, have demonstrated a more reserved side (for Bill), with moments of space and quiet interspersed with slashes of manic picking and howling.
Back On The Horse
When we speak to Bill, it’s the morning after a live solo show in San Francisco, his first in three years. “I certainly learned that I’d forgotten how to put on a show,” Bill laughs. “But then I haven’t played out since 2019. I’ve been recording at home, but that’s a completely different thing to getting up in front of an audience. But it was good. And I realise that this is the process; you have to get back into it to make it happen again.”
Four Strings & The Truth
“My style has changed a lot if you track it,” Bill tells us. “I started playing with four strings in the 80s in a band called Watt [with Tim Koffley], before I started doing Harry Pussy [in 1992] with Adris [Hoyos], but I think the common thread is that I like emotional guitar playing. I love the blues and folk and I like things that are rough hewn.” He stops a moment and laughs. “I hate to use the word ‘authentic’, but I like music that feels like an expression of the person, rather than something that’s technically correct.”
Feeling Deep
Bill’s flat-picked strings are often accompanied by a non-syllabic moaning or howling, evoking plenty of emotion and a sense of spontaneity. “There was no plan behind the four-string thing. My Telecaster, for whatever reason, was missing the A and D strings, so I just started writing songs around that configuration, with nothing in mind other than, ‘This is what I have to work with and I’m going to do it for fun.’ Removing those two strings cuts out a lot of middle frequencies. It also strips the complexity from certain chords and creates a sound that is harmonically much more spare and stark. The isolated low E string can be a drone or I’ll use it in a percussive way as a kind of kick drum, playing it against a pattern on the top strings.”
Hot Strummer
A simple setup drives the music and is centred around either a beat-up Kay jumbo acoustic with a fragile neck or a blonde Telecaster. “I haven’t been playing much acoustic lately,” Bill says, “although I’m currently recording something in my living room on the acoustic to sell on tour. But the challenge with acoustic, for me, is playing live – because you’re at the mercy of the system. With the electric, you have your own amplification and you can control your own sound. I actually came to the Tele via the Stratocaster. My first real guitar was a Strat because I loved Hendrix. But then I went to college and saw Joe Strummer in [1980 film] Rude Boy. Seeing him playing that chunk of wood made me realise it was the guitar I had to have. So I traded the Strat for a Tele – which I still have, although it badly needs refretting. The blonde reissue is just something I bought mail-order from Sweetwater so I could have a guitar that I didn’t love just to take on tour.”
Standout track: Man Carrying Thing For fans of: Derek Bailey, Tashi Dorji, Lightnin’ Hopkins
“I like limitations that force you into making creative decisions that wouldn’t come about otherwise”