Bill MacKay

Bill MacKay, a guitarist, composer, and improviser of note who calls Chicago home, moves fluidly among experimental folk, rock, and avant-garde circles. His inventive and often surprising guitar technique finds further distinction through an idiosyncratic songwriting style. Active in the studio since 2004, MacKay has built an extensive catalog of collaborations spanning multiple genres. Rock audiences know him primarily as the architect behind Sounds of Now, Broken Things, and Darts & Arrows. For the 2005 release Bill Mackay & Sounds of Now he characterized the music informally as "garage jazz." Its unpolished sonics highlight spontaneous improvisations, sharp ensemble dynamics, and roots in rock, blues, and folk, paving the way for the 2007 album Swim to the River, which fused hard rock with free jazz. MacKay later assembled Darts & Arrows, which delivered two records from 2010 to 2012. He next issued the Tompkins Square tribute Sunrise: Bill Mackay Plays the Songs of John Hulburt. Signing with Drag City, he unveiled Esker in 2017. The 2019 duo project STIR with cellist Katinka Kleijn appeared alongside his own Fountain Fire. In 2021 MacKay and banjoist Nathan Bowles released Keys, while 2024 brought Locust Land.

Born in Tarrytown, New York, on April 3, 1968, MacKay spent his formative years in Rochester, New York, and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, as the child of a trumpeter whose household embraced Broadway show tunes, classical music, and jazz. Early musical touchstones encompassed the Beatles, Frédéric Chopin, John and Alice Coltrane, Jimi Hendrix, and Laura Nyro, while literary touchstones ranged from beat poets Kenneth Patchen and Jack Kerouac to Edgar Allan Poe and Antonin Artaud. In Rochester he received brief classical-guitar instruction from Kevin Morse; in Pittsburgh he enrolled in the music programs at Chartiers Valley High School from 1982 to 1984 and Penn Hills High School, graduating in 1986, and pursued additional lessons with guitarists Eric Susoeff and Joe Negri. MacKay spent the subsequent two years at the Berklee College of Music in Boston and, in 2005, completed a course in improvisation and composition with pianist, violinist, composer, and singer Alice Orpheus at the New England Conservatory.

Upon settling in Chicago he forged connections across disparate musical communities. In 2005 he appeared on vanguard jazz violinist SavoirFaire’s Delmark album Running Out of Time. That same year Sons of Fire issued Bill Mackay & Sounds of Now. Broken Things made its recorded entrance in 2007 with the eclectic Swim to the River, an album that braided soundtrack textures with hard rock and modal and free jazz. The year also found MacKay contributing to Colorlist’s debut Lists and to bassist Jason Ajemian’s Who Cares How Long You Sink on Folk Forms Evaporate Big Sky. In 2010 he helped realize the late songwriter Paul Mooney’s Because of a Woman; after Mooney—who had battled cystic fibrosis—completed vocal and guitar tracks for six songs, his brothers recruited MacKay, Dorian Taj, and Ronda Duvall to finish the project. That year also saw the self-titled debut from Bill MacKay and Darts & Arrows, whose lineup included Matthew Golombisky on bass, Ben Boye on keyboards, and Charles Rumback on drums, with clarinet from Greg Ward on the track “Black Leaves.”

Activity intensified in the ensuing period. MacKay participated in jazz bassist Marc Plane’s self-titled 2011 debut Walk East. Darts & Arrows, now without MacKay’s name, released Eyes of the Carnival in 2012. Two years later the guitarist issued December Concert, a duet with guitarist Matt Lux, and the solo Chatham Park, while also appearing on two albums by singer/songwriter Angela James. In 2015 he collaborated with Ryley Walker on the duet album Land of Plenty, Darts & Arrows delivered its third record Altamira, MacKay performed on Never Enough Hope’s The Gravity of Our Commitment (a large-ensemble project interpreting Toby Summerfield compositions), and Tompkins Square released the solo acoustic Sunrise: Bill Mackay Plays the Songs of John Hulburt.

During 2016 MacKay joined Rob Frye’s (Cave/Bitchin Bajas) Flux Bikes/Sueñolas for a limited-cassette edition. He joined the Drag City roster in early 2017, issuing Esker that May; he described its contents as “spirit guitar played in a polyglot of styles that melt together liquidly, like the glass slide figurations throughout the album. A landscape in song, and modern guitar on a personal high.” The following year he and frequent touring partner Ryley Walker released the Drag City guitar-duet collection SpiderBeetleBee, whose pieces were characterized as “slide blues, Baroque dance, percolating Latin, and deep-focus space” tunes. Drawing on the intimate recording perspective of Esker, MacKay performed every instrument—guitars, requinto, organ, percussion, and piano—on the completely solo 2019 acoustic album Fountain Fire. Later that year he issued STIR, a collaboration with cellist and artist Katinka Kleijn, whose work spans classical, improvisational, and experimental rock settings. Also in 2019 MacKay released the limited-edition cassette Scarf (fifty copies) for solo electric guitar; Drag City reissued it digitally in 2020. In 2021 he partnered with multi-instrumentalist Nathan Bowles on Keys, an avant-garde exploration of folk and roots idioms.

May 2024 marked the arrival of Locust Land, on which MacKay added keyboards and increased his vocal presence. The session featured Janet Beveridge Bean (Eleventh Dream Day, Freakwater), pedal steel player Sam Wagster, and multi-instrumentalist Mikel Patrick Avery.