1 Every Last Coffee Or Tea 11:00
2 C. or T. – verso 3:03
3 Tetuzi Akiyama 3:57
4 I Was Real 16:55
5 WZN3 – verso 6:08
6 I.New New II.The Worm III.Like Laundry 9:45
7 There’s No Such Thing As a King Bee 5:20
8 WZN4 4:05
9 WZN3 8:23

Having emerged as a vibrant musical force with their previous effort WMMPRR (tak:til/Thin Wrist), 75 Dollar Bill have spent the last few years bringing their music to new places and people, delivering what NYC locals have known for years, with their dedication to performance in venues of all shapes and sizes. The fruits of this work can be heard here on their expansive new double LP I Was Real. The album, its title’s origin a jumbled misremembering of the lesser-known Motown song “He Was Really Saying Something”, is 75 Dollar Bill’s third, featuring new directions accompanying the band’s previously established interest in sprawling, unusual grooves and microtonal melodies. The record is enhanced by the presence of eight additional players in various combinations over its nine tracks – but also shows off the duo’s strength when stripped down to the core. Requiring a variety of approaches, the album was recorded over a four-year period, in four different studios, with the band’s closest associates and collaborators in a range of different ensemble configurations. The album also features several “studio as instrument” constructions that harken back to the collage-experiments of the band’s early cassette tapes, while at the same time pointing to territories altogether new. The players involved highlight the “social” aspect of the band and the eight guests that appear on the record are some of the band’s closest friends and collaborators. While Che Chen and Rick Brown are always at the core of 75 Dollar Bill, the band is much like an extended family, changing shape for different music and different situations.  Some pieces were conceived in the band’s very early days and others are much newer, but the music is unmistakably 75 Dollar Bill. As Steve Gunn said about the previous record: “Strings come in underneath Che Chen’s supreme guitar tone. Rick Brown’s trance percussion offers a guiding support with bass, strings, and horns supporting the melody. They have gathered all the moving parts perfectly.”

Rick Brown: plywood crate, hand and foot percussion, crude horns
Che Chen: 6 and 12-string and quarter-tone guitars, percussion
with:
Sue Garner: guitar and bass guitar
Cheryl Kingan: alto and baritone saxophones
Andrew Lafkas: contrabass
Karen Waltuch: viola
Jim Pugliese: percussion
Barry Weisblat: signal processing, casio sk-1
Steven Maing: quarter-tone guitar
Carey Balch: hi-hat

Notes regarding individual tracks from band members Rick Brown (comments in bold) and Che Chen (comments in italics).

1 (A1) Every Last Coffee or Tea…………………..10:58
one of the very first 75$Bill songs, orig. duo version on our first release “Cassette”
Here arranged for a sextet with Sue Garner (rhythm gtr), Cheryl Kingan (baritone sax), Andrew Lafkas (upright bass), Karen Waltuch (viola). A “classic” 3 against 2 rhythm with unison melody line in the head. Lots of great rhythm vamping from auxiliary players.

2 (A2) C or T (verso)…………………………………….3:00
a ghost/inversion of intro, reference to backwards intro bits on orig cassette “CorT”
Rick made this out of spare parts we’d recorded for the intro to “Every Last Coffee or Tea.”

3 (A3) Tetuzi Akiyama…………………………………..3:55
tribute and emulation – rhythm from riff, also ref. to Miles’ Jack Johnson titles “Duran”, “Willie Nelson”, etc.
Miles had a series of tunes titled after boxers he liked. We had the idea of doing the same with guitar players. So far, Tetuzi is the only one we have. His “Don’t Forget to Boogie” is incredible and I think it (and playing/recording duo with him) had some subliminal influence on my guitar playing.

4 (B1) I Was Real……………………………………….17:11
earliest “compound rhythm” piece, 21=3×7 = 7×3 = 5+5+5+6
For a long time we ended our sets with this tune. Live, 25 or even 30 minute versions weren’t unheard of, so by those standards this recorded version is pretty short. It’s always interesting to hear what sounds came to the surface during the long fadeout at the end (which we always played live). Ceiling fans, ice machines, traffic, people talking, would take on a musical texture. Maybe people will have a similar experience at home with the LP?

5 (C1) WZN#3 (verso)………………………………… 6:10
pupa or chrysalis? Inside out? “version”
The “verso” version that starts the record is actually a “ghost” of the double guitar/bass quartet version at the end of the record. We took this quartet recording and had 6-7 players do overdubs on it and then removed the original tracks, so you hear the new instruments w/o hearing what they were playing along to…

6 (C2) New New/Worm/Like Laundry Suite…….9:44
fragment > invention > respite (and return to maracas a la Wooden Bag and “Cummins Falls”)
A “suite” of three shorter pieces collaged together: a brief rhythm heavy opening by the same double gtr/bass quartet heard on WZN#3 (“New New”), followed by one of the more esoteric moments of the record, a massed “chord change” of sliding, microtonal ebow tones (“The Worm”). It occurred to me to connect two songs or sections of the album in different keys with a very prolonged “chord change”. The drone chord starts off in the tonality of “New New” and “WZN#3”–D with quarter tone 3rds and 7ths–and over the course of several minutes, slowly glides to the B tonal center of one of our more melancholic tunes, the maracas & guitar tune “Like Laundry”.

7 (D1) There’s No Such Thing as a King Bee… 5:21
ignorance, Slim Harpo, see… I don’t hate hi-hat – I just need somebody else to do it.
An impromptu jam during an afternoon at Wild Chorus in Knoxville. Carey Balch on hi-hat. A rebuke to Slim Harpo’s “I’m a King Bee”.

8 (D2) WZN#4…………………………………………… 4:03
“the happy 6”
The most recent of the WZNs. A dance tune in a mixed mode that shuttles between microtonal major and minor intervals.

9 (D3) WZN#3…………………………………………… 8:27
the deep 6, most variously played 75$Bill piece (duo, w/Jeiche, these 4, almost everyone)
A nod to my time in Mauritania studying with Jeiche Ould Chigaly, this song is probably our most often played, and has had the most people sit in on it.

01. Earth Saw
02. Beni Said
03. Cummins Falls
04. I’m Not Trying to Wake Up

The NYC based duo of Rick Brown and Che Chen, creates hypnotic, pulsing music that weaves an ecstatic line from raw electric blues, Arabic modes and entrancing folk minimalism back to the streets of New York.

We are proud that W/M/P/P/R/R is the first release on Glitterbeat’s new label imprint: tak:til.

NOTES ON W/M/P/P/R/R FROM RICK BROWN

I feel very lucky to have wound up playing in 75 Dollar Bill with Che. I’ll take some credit for the early setup, as I pursued the idea of us jamming together for a few years before we actually made some music together. But when it comes to focusing our sound, putting together a good set- list, imagining how to expand the group with guests and designing almost all of the visual/package aspects, Che has taken the lead. Obviously, he is responsible for his own parts and playing and his interest in the Arabic modes of Mauritanian music has marked our sound quite a bit but I have brought some things, too. The plywood crate I play is a big factor, defining, by its positive qualities (a nice warm “boom” sound) as well as by its simplicity, what we’re likely to do in the percussion realm.

WMPPRR, this new record, differs quite a bit from the previous one, notably in the rhythmic “tone.” Wooden Bag (released in 2015 on Other Music Recording Co.) was all forward momentum, stomping and shaking, but the new record explores a long-standing interest of mine: odd and “compound” meters. In most of my previous musical activities, I’ve convinced my partners to delve into this, but in 75 Dollar Bill it has just felt natural and I believe Che’s modal investigations and melodic/harmonic tendencies enhance (and are enhanced by) this combination.

The current record differs from the last in another big way: reinforcements! Over our few years together, Che and I have frequently had friends play with us at some of our gigs. There have been all sorts of permutations of instruments and some great friends/players who don’t all appear on this record but here we are lucky to have a bunch of them: Cheryl Kingan (of The Scene Is Now) on baritone and alto saxes, Andrew Lafkas (of Todd Capp’s Mystery Train) on contrabass, Karen Waltuch (of Zeke & Karen) on viola, Rolyn Hu (of True Primes) on trumpet and Carey Balch (of Knoxville’s Give Thanks) on floor tom. 75 Dollar Bill’s plans for the future involve much more playing with these friends and others in bigger and smaller combos – as well as me and Che stripped back to the core guitar and crate duo.

For the present, though, please enjoy WOOD/METAL/PLASTIC/ PATTERN/RHYTHM/ROCK.

***

EARTH SAW is one of our earliest tunes and, I think, the first result of this ‘compound meter’ approach. It’s a slow 9 beat phrase Che came up with for this odd groove (it’s aksak, meaning “limping”, as such rhythms are called in Turkish). BENI SAID, after its intro, has no fixed rhythmic cycle but a roughly unison melodic phrase and a pulsing, loose feeling of 3s and 4s played using a box full of bottle caps. CUMMINS FALLS, named after the beautiful Tennessee State Park and swimming hole you hear at its end, features Carey Balch on Diddleybeat floor tom and me reprising the maracas that were very prominent on Wooden Bag. I’M NOT TRYING TO WAKE UP is another of our compound meter songs, this one using an 18 beat scheme. The sax, guitar and percussion parts are built in layers of patterned variations of measures adding up to 18, while the trumpet wails above us, uncounted.

Rick Brown:
plywood crate, maracas, shakers, bells, a drum
Che Chen: 12 and 6 string electric guitars, bass, shakers

with guest musicians:
Carey Balch: floor tom
Rolyn Hu: trumpet
Cheryl Kingan: baritone & alto saxophones  Andrew Lafkas: contrabass
Karen Waltuch: viola

“New York’s 75 Dollar Bill are an astonishingly potent next stage in an ongoing cultural exchange…magnificent; like a gnawa ritual that’s been convened by Junior Kimbrough.” – Uncut (75 Best Albums of 2016, #32)

“The instrumental duo of Che Chen and Rick Brown have been blowing minds on the East Coast live circuit with little more than an electric guitar and a wooden crate rhythm section.” – The Wire (Releases of the Year, #16)

“Gloriously mind-frying, ritualistic splatter of Zen blues and Arabic and African music-influenced riff-rock repetition that shows Brown and Chen expanding their lineup with sax, violin, bass and second guitar. The sound may be bigger with a sweeter shine yet it remains unmistakably 75 Dollar Bill: epically shambolic, thrifty and jazzy guitarscapes dripping of ecstatic hypnotism.”
– The Observer (The Best Experimental Albums of 2016 – So Far)

“It’s hard not to slip into ridiculous hyperbole when it comes to 75 Dollar Bill. Best band in New York City? Best band in the USA? Best band in the universe?…they’ve definitely nailed down a thrillingly original sound. — Aquarium Drunkard