75 Dollar Bill

75 Dollar Bill was formed in 2012 in New York City by percussionist Rick Brown and guitarist Che Chen. Played on a deeply resonant plywood crate, Brown’s earthy, elemental rhythms are both the foundation and foil for Chen’s ecstatic, modal guitar style. Long time collaborator Andrew Lafkas’ driving double bass completes the sound. The group’s electric, richly patterned music can shape shift from joyful dance tunes to slowly changing trance minimalism, an uncategorizable hybrid which draws on the modal traditions of Africa, Asia and the Middle East, early electric blues, Sun Ra’s space chords and the minimalist and No Wave histories of their hometown. While Brown and Chen are always at the band’s core, the band frequently expands into different configurations live and on record, from trios like this one to the Little Big Band to 25-piece marching band. 75 Dollar Bill has released a string of digital releases, cassettes and four LPs. Their most recent studio album, I Was Real, was released on Thin Wrist in North America, and on tak:til/Glitterbeat, in Europe and the UK, and was named record of the year by WIRE magazine in 2019. Live at Tubby’s captured a particularly raucous live show by their expanded Little Big Band on the eve of the pandemic that would come to define the last two years of all our lives.