Black Duck

Three veteran figures from Chicago's experimental music community make up Black Duck, a group whose spontaneous performances move fluidly between grounded tunefulness and unstructured discovery. Guitarist and bassist Douglas McCombs, guitarist Bill MacKay, and drummer Charles Rumback issued their first instrumental album, Black Duck, which merges jazz-derived spontaneity with rural psychedelia, in 2023.

McCombs, co-founder of Tortoise, Brokeback, and Pullman, has joined MacKay in multiple projects over the years, among them guest spots with Eleventh Dream Day, the band McCombs has supplied with bass since 1985. MacKay and Rumback have maintained a similarly deep partnership that stretches back to the 2000s, illustrated by the drummer's appearance on 2005's Bill MacKay & Sounds of Now and MacKay's contribution to a recording by Rumback's jazz outfit Colorlist. The three players had already shared numerous improvised performances before they entered the studio with engineer and producer John Hughes III to shape their debut. Each member arrived with a single pre-written piece, leaving the balance of the material to be developed during the sessions. Thrill Jockey released Black Duck, which drifts between jazz improvisation and distorted, abstract roots rock, in 2023.