Biography
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Members
- Che Chen
- Rick Brown
75 Dollar Bill was formed in 2012 by percussionist Rick Brown and guitarist Che Chen. They immediately embraced an exhaustive local gigging schedule that found them playing at rock clubs, DIY spaces, weddings and on the street, quickly gaining a reputation in New York for their hypnotic, immersive live shows. Brown’s earthy, elemental rhythms, played on a deeply resonant plywood crate, are both the foundation and foil for Chen’s searchingly abstract guitar playing. Often using a custom quarter tone guitar, Chen’s improvisations are forays into a modal, microtonal sound world. The duo's electric, richly patterned music can shape-shift from ecstatic dance tunes to slowly changing polyrhythmic trance minimalism, an uncategorizable hybrid which draws on early electric blues, the modal traditions of West Africa, India and the Middle East, Sun Ra’s space chords and the minimalist and No Wave histories of their home town. After a series of self-produced cassette/digital releases, and their first LP (Wooden Bag on Other Music Recording Company), their 2nd album, WOOD / METAL / PLASTIC / PATTERN / RHYTHM / ROCK, was released on Thin Wrist Recordings in 2016 to wide critical acclaim. The record features a more layered, ensemble sound, with collaborators contributing string and horn parts to create an organic collective extension of the duo’s basic concept. While Brown and Chen are always at the band’s core, the duo frequently expands into other configurations live, from trio with saxophone to 25-piece marching band.
Percussionist/horn-blower Rick Brown has been in bands in NYC since the late 70s, including, among others, Blinding Headache, V-Effect and Run On. Also a singer and electronic music-maker, he performs solo as brownout and has been in a few duos: with Mark Howell in Inconvenient Music, with Guigou Chenevier in Les Batteries and in the very longstanding Two Mule Team partnership with Sue Garner.
Che Chen is a musician based in Brooklyn and Stony Brook, New York. For the most part a self-taught musician, Chen plays guitar, violin, tape recorders and other musical and "non-musical" objects. In 2013 he traveled to the Islamic Republic of Mauritania, where he received a crash course in the Moorish modal system from Jeich ould Chigaly. He has collaborated with improvisors in the US and Japan including David Watson, Amirtha Kidambi, Jozef Van Wissem, Tetuzi Akiyama, Chie Mukai, and Tori Kudo and was also in the band True Primes. He runs a small record label, Black Pollen Press, that will release Catherine Lamb’s shade/gradient in early 2017.
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