About GUTBUCKET

Destroying walls between art-rock, avant-squonk, and mathed-out prog, Gutbucket's through-composed charts enter a place of pure sound. The decade-old New York quartet is not only equally comfortable playing in front of 900 sweatily pogo-ing teenage skate-punks, a crowd of cosmic indie-psych freaks, or on an anarchist German art collective houseboat, but most importantly, their music fits right in. Called “stomprovisors” by the Village Voice, the band has spent the past 10 years injecting a shot of glorious spazmitude into the minimalist cool of the New York downtown scene.

The group attacks their music with the ferocity usually reserved for punk, and the humorous abstraction of art-rock, despite having earned their jazz bona fides. Though the band might seem rooted in the genre exploding of New York’s downtown (their 2001 debut, InsomniacsDream, was released on the Knitting Factory house imprint), their shift to louder sounds began with their controversially titled Dry Humping the American Dream (released in 2003 in Europe on the legendary Enja label and domestically in 2004 on Bang on a Can's acclaimed Cantaloupe label).

It was an easier move than it might at first seem - bassist Eric Rockwin claims to have learned every Paul McCartney bassline by heart before his father humbled him with a Ray Brown CD. Guitarist Ty Citerman was “into everything that was Hendrix and Van Halen and Led Zeppelin.” With the release of Sludge Test in 2006 (released on Cantaloupe in the US and NRW Records in Europe), Gutbucket pushed even further into avant-rock with a mix of tunes -- some short, exclamatory bursts of aggression, others long-form sonic explorations with surprising twists and turns -- that kept listeners on their toes, and never receded into the background.

Founded by Rockwin, saxophonist Ken Thomson, guitarist Ty Citerman, and drummer Paul Chuffo between shifts at Columbia University's vital WKCR, Gutbucket built their all-important live rep in New York clubs before spreading across east coast college towns like a hoard of freethinking barbarians. Trips to Europe soon followed, with over a dozen tours in 19 countries. “They think we're jazz over there,” Ty says of the idyllic trips. “We like to go there. We're art over there. I'm not sure what we are over here.”

If Gutbucket themselves don't know, it can be forgiven. Though they've built up an American following in towns from Hattiesburg to Santa Fe, San Francisco to Wichita -- not to mention a few intense passes across the festival circuit -- their work has remained far broader than a simple touring itinerary suggests. They have engaged in numerous projects -- many of them more akin to the art-rock stage antics of The Flaming Lips or even Phish than the somber-minded blowing of the downtown atonalists. While their shows are legendarily frenzied (“Keep all limbs, drinks and small children well clear of manic sax dervish Ken Thomson,” Time Out New York warned), they are also events unto themselves.

For special gigs, the band has sometimes presented its scores to classic films, including the 1936 British doc “Night Mail” and their heralded performance to the French animation “Johnny the Giant Killer” (1950), in which a group of kids take over a giant's castle assisted by a bee army, and “Johnny suppresses his sexual attraction to the Queen Bee and fends off the jealous bee guards.” It is perfectly bizarre and perfectly Gutbucket, soundly capturing the kinds of narratives one might envision while listening to the band's already cinematic charts.

There have been specially prepared collaborations with distortion pedal wielding string quartet Ethel, live volleyball games, blindfolds, Dixie cups filled with rice, and master classes in American high schools, a teacher's college in Serbia, and a self-described “underground workshop” in Germany. There have been live collaborations with British artists at the London Jazz Festival, and a performance at Carnegie Hall with an occasionally disgruntled orchestra. (Gutbucket v. orchestra: Gutbucket wins.) “We like having [musical] conversations with each other and seeing where that goes,” Rockwin says. “But we like engaging the audience in that conversation, too.”

Joined in 2007 by longtime friend Adam D Gold on drums following Chuffo's departure, Gold's musical voice was quickly deemed a necessity. A close comrade, he's also good for van conversation. Which is good. Because there are miles to go before Gutbucket sleeps.