Tone Glow 217: Bill Orcutt Guitar Quartet
The last in a series of five interviews with the Bill Orcutt Guitar Quartet. Bill Orcutt, Shane Parish, Ava Mendoza, and Wendy Eisenberg talk about
All week, Tone Glow is hosting five different interviews in celebration of Bill Orcutt’s residency at Roulette and new album Music in Continuous Motion. The series will feature individual interviews with all four members of the Bill Orcutt Guitar Quartet and conclude with a group interview. The other interviews can be found here: Bill Orcutt, Shane Parish, Ava Mendoza, and Wendy Eisenberg.
Bill Orcutt Guitar Quartet
The Bill Orcutt Guitar Quartet is a guitar quartet made up of Bill Orcutt, Shane Parish, Ava Mendoza, and Wendy Eisenberg. After the release of Bill Orcutt’s Music For Four Guitars (2022), he eventually brought on the other guitarists to perform the music live. They’ve since played numerous shows together, and have released two live albums: Four Guitars Live (2024) and HausLive 4 (2025). Orcutt’s newest album, Music in Continuous Motion (2026) was made in continuation of this practice. The Bill Orcutt Guitar Quartet will perform tonight at Roulette, with members also playing in different configurations or solo throughout the weekend. Joshua Minsoo Kim spoke with all four members of the quartet on March 5th, 2026 to discuss guitar solos, the mystery that still exists in through-composed music, and performing live.
Joshua Minsoo Kim: I wanted to start off by asking the non-Bill members, do you remember when you first heard Bill’s music? And for Bill, do you remember when you first encountered everyone else’s music?
Ava Mendoza: I don’t know if I remember the first time I heard his music, but I knew that there was a person named Bill Orcutt who played in Harry Pussy. We both lived in the Bay Area—I was in Oakland and he was in San Francisco. I don’t think I ever saw him play, but we played this multiple-guitar-player thing together with Rhys Chatham’s music—I think it was five or six guitars. That was the first time we met and also my first time hearing you. After that, I’d moved to Brooklyn and kept track of him and listened to solo records. The solo record that starts with “Lonely Woman” [Bill Orcutt (2017)]—I thought that was amazing.
Do you remember your first impression of him?
Ava Mendoza: I thought he was humble and understated and funny. We had people in common so I knew he was a weirdo (laughter). He sounded great in that band—he took an egg whisk or something and used that for his guitar solo.
Wendy Eisenberg: I was following VDSQ a lot, starting around 2012, so I heard Bill’s VDSQ record. But yeah, it’s the same thing—he’s humble and there’s this chill clarity.
Shane Parish: I saw Bill play at The Mothlight in Asheville, North Carolina. Old friends of yours moved to Asheville—Robert [Price] and Priya [Ray]—and I think that’s how I ended up at that show. It was a solo set, and it was cool. And then I think I met you at Brickside Festival in Durham at Duke University. My band Ahleuchatistas was playing and I gave you a copy of my CD, Undertaker Please Drive Slow (2016). You were a man of few words, you were a man of mystery. There was a beard (laughter). And it wasn’t until we were on a Zoom call for the transcriptions that more words were spoken.
Bill Orcutt: My answer is basically the exact same but in reverse (laughter). The first time I met Ava and heard her play was at this Rhys Chatham thing. I remember that everyone kind of knew each other, but Ava invited me to come along, and I thought that was so nice. I got to have a beer outside—otherwise I would’ve just been in the venue doing nothing.
With Shane, I forgot about that Duke Coffeehouse thing, but that would’ve been the first time I saw you play. I remember Churchill’s, when you came to Miami. We actually talked a little bit more. But I do remember that we had known each other and interacted quite a bit for some months, and then at some point you were like, “That’s the first time you’ve ever talked to me!” The six months we had known each other and exchanged words didn’t count as talking (laughter). I wasn’t sharing enough to break through, and then we had a heart to heart. It was probably on the ride down to Atlanta.
With Wendy, I had heard Auto (2020) when it came out. I listened to it and really liked it, and that made a connection. I was really intimidated by the idea of playing with them because I liked the record so much. But then I got to know Wendy and it was fine (laughter). I also think I’d heard their first VDSQ record [Its Shape Is Your Touch (2018)], but that might have been after.
Now that you’ve all played multiple shows and have gotten to know Bill more, I’m wondering—do the non-Bill members feel like they’ve learned anything about Bill, whether himself or the music, that is surprising based off those first impressions. And Bill, to you give you a question—do you think there’s anything you’ve learned about yourself after Shane transcribed your work?
Bill Orcutt: Not really, simply because Music For Four Guitars (2022) is different from what I consider to be my native tongue. I know how that album is constructed because I’ve seen it visualized in the Logic window. There are four tracks, I see where the patterns are, and I know how it works. It’s not as much of a mystery to me as when I’m improvising.
Shane Parish: When we were in France last year and doing some rehearsal right before the tour, he said, “Play harder!” I played really hard that whole tour (laughter).
Ava Mendoza: That’s the rehearsal in the hotel room?
Shane Parish: Yeah! I realized that Bill can really make the instrument sing in this incredible way. So much of that comes from the power he’s attacking the strings with, but at the same time he’s very relaxed and in his zone. I was stronger at the end of the tour because I was playing harder than I normally do. Like, fuck all this dynamics shit—I’m just gonna do this thing. And I think it helped me achieve new layers of tone. When I watch his hands I’m just like, where is this sound coming from? And it’s because there’s so much power there. And it’s not forced power either because he’s been playing for so long. Bill, do you think that’s an accurate description of your technique?
Bill Orcutt: Probably yes. I’ve learned something about myself from cooking, actually. I never do anything but put the heat on high, and at one point I was asking my wife, “What am I doing wrong?” “It doesn’t have to be all the way up! You can turn it down a little bit, and it cooks better when it’s not so hot.” (laughter). So I realized that this is my instinct, to turn things all the way up and to hit the strings as hard as I can (laughter).
Ava Mendoza: It’s unique to have that idea but to be relaxed. A lot of people will want things to be at 10 but be tense about it, but you’re not.
Shane Parish: At the beginning of the transcription project, Bill said, “I’m gonna send you a guitar because I don’t want you to fuck up one of your own.” He mailed me this Squier Telecaster that he toured with for a while with Chris Corsano. This guitar… the frets are destroyed (laughter). But since it’s a four-string guitar, the frets are pristine where strings 5 and 4 would be. There’s damage to the fretboard horizontally too, into the wood, because of the grip that’s going on.
Bill Orcutt: No, no, not true! (laughter).
Shane Parish: I’ll show it to you!
Bill Orcutt: I’m sure the damage is there, but it’s because at the last show of that tour with Chris, I attacked that guitar with a folding chair (laughter).
Wendy Eisenberg: Wow, what frets did the folding chair hit, you think?
Bill Orcutt: All of them (laughter). I put the guitar on the ground and I was just running the folding chair over it.
Wendy Eisenberg: That’s why we get into music, probably (laughter). Just echoing what’s been said, it’s all about maximum presence. I’m always thinking about this thing of how when you’re really in the moment, you’re not really there. Sitting next to Bill when he’s in solo mode, you can see “public Bill” vanish and it’s just full, loud stuff. I’m hanging out with the idea of headroom; I wanna play quiet in a loud context to see what will happen—in my solo songs, especially—so being next to someone who’s able to do with that headroom proportion, but with full volume, is inspiring.
What’s it like to play with the four-string guitar? And how has that informed your own solo work?
Wendy Eisenberg: It made me a better country player. It made me hang out more with thirds and sixths more explicitly. I was intervallic and wonky about shit before but because those strings are gone, it’s just taken a more central place in how I think about music.
Shane Parish: When we did that French tour last year, upon returning to Athens, I was hired to play at a funeral of the grandmother of one of my students. I had to do some arrangements for that and one of the songs was “Angel From Montgomery” by John Prine. I’d practice these arrangements in my hotel room at night, and when I was doing that song specifically, I didn’t have the two strings back on so it changed how I did the arrangement; I could only put the bass note on the sixth string. It gave me different voicings. It was probably like how Hendrix does it, with how he voiced certain things with his thumb over the bass. When I got back to six strings, I was playing the songs and my intuition was to go back to these notes on the other strings, but I didn’t like how I arranged them anymore. I ended up digging the arrangement I did on the four strings better, so yeah, I’ve been thinking about arrangements differently.
Ava Mendoza: For me, it’s helped me get some voicings that I don’t normally do on the top three strings. More broadly, Bill is a minimalist when it comes to gear. He takes away two strings and maybe uses one pedal, and while I’m not a maximalist, I like my pedals, and I like tone sculpture, but I don’t do it as much with the quartet; I limit myself to much fewer pedals. That’s been great for me because I’m focusing more on my right hand and the way I touch the instrument. So it’s deepened that at the most basic level. And when I go back to playing solo or playing with other people, where I’m using my full pedal board, I have a new appreciation for the stuff that I can do with it now.
Bill, you mentioned how there isn’t much mystery in a lot of this music for the quartet. Is there still room for surprise when you play live?
Ava Mendoza: The arrangements are set, but there is a fair amount of improvising in the set that we play. When we played the first record, we’d play it but then people will open up and solo, or strip it down into an unaccompanied solo. So there’s maybe 20% improvising in the set. My solos are certainly a surprise to me (laughs). I don’t know where they’re gonna go, but it varies with the audience and the room. And then in terms of our phrasing, everyone puts their own style on it, and Bill is very cool with that. He’s never said, “Don’t do that!” And so we keep doing it (laughter). We all have our own way of interpreting the music, and at least for me, there’s improvisation in that. I can put little fills in there every night that are different.
Shane Parish: I really like to be put into these situations where it’s like the way that classical music improvises. I play a lot of through-composed music, but there is something about interpretation that is improvisation. When you’re doing these repetitive figures and they need to lock in, everyone’s still putting their own spin on it, as Ava was saying. And for it to feel alive, you want constant instability or subtle variation on it, whether that’s vibrato, how you attack the string, or what finger you use on your left hand. Jim Hall was really into that, like, “The pinky has a nasal sound compared to the others.” (laughter). So you can get into that. We’re boxed in here because we’re playing this tight, looping thing, but then you can get into timbre and dynamics and articulation—there are things that give it life. It’s cool that we got to do those live recordings [Four Guitars Live (2024) and HausLive 4 (2025)] because there are documents of that vitality of the individual.
Wendy Eisenberg: I think the mystery is the ways that everyone’s interpretations change with the biology and the fact of the room. Another sweeping statement is that I’m always toggling between things that are written and things that aren’t. It often feels like improvisation is the less mysterious thing because it’s a state of being, so you’re kind of just inhabiting that, and that itself is the practice instead of the thing being sounded. When I get to play with the quartet, it feels like such a mysterious thing because it’s bigger than us, so the composition is just the precondition for the mystery rather than the mystery being the thing that you didn’t expect to be played. I want the things that I do to set the stage for what is possible, to be surprised. Every night is different because if you’re in a tiny, tin-ceiling room in Philly versus Roulette in New York versus The Lab in San Francisco, all that shit is its own setting. But also the four of us, phrase by phrase—no matter how repetitious—our hands get tired, some finger gives out, and one will be stronger. You won’t have as much control over that as you want.
Ava Mendoza: There’s a narrow window of improvisation in classical music, but there is always improvisation in terms of the tempo, the amount of rubato that you use, the dynamics. You can choose to lean into those variations, and that’s true for any kind of written, through-composed music. We all kind of know that and play with that every night. It’s subtle things that are different in the way that we groove and gel with each other, whether we play in front of or behind the beat.
Bill Orcutt: One thing that hasn’t been mentioned is the monitor situation and our ability to hear each other. That’s something that can be awesome and great or nonexistent, and then you’re watching Shane’s hands to figure out where we are (laughter).
Ava Mendoza: The sound person causes improvisation every night.
Bill Orcutt: The fifth member of the group (laughter).
Tell me about a time when the monitor situation was rough and how that impacted the music. What was that like?
Bill Orcutt: That happens all the time. I think the Duke Coffeehouse was a show where that happened.
Shane Parish: They’re students, man (laughter).
Ava Mendoza: There’s that show we did in Ghent where we turned our amps backward. That was a sound apocalypse for me.
Wendy Eisenberg: We did that at Roulette and it worked really well.
Ava Mendoza: Oh, it wasn’t backwards—they put baffles in front of our amps to keep us from being too loud, and then they had us only mic’d and going into the house. That was a disaster—just no attack at all, just this big (makes mushy-mouthed sound).
So would you say the consequences of this have only been negative?
Bill Orcutt: It’s never really positive. So one possible result is that I’m watching and seeing where we are, but I also might say “fuck it” and go off on my own, and ignore everyone and let them follow me (laughter).
Ava Mendoza: If there’s somebody I can’t hear, it’s usually Bill, and that’s because Shane and Wendy are on either side of me. It’s a better show if I have Bill in my monitor really well. I’m trying to think of a positive and it’s like… less hearing loss? (laughter).
Wendy Eisenberg: I can think of a positive. It makes me believe in the directionality of things. I feel like I’m an idiot because in most bands, I could always hear most things fine. If I was in Editrix, I’d be like, okay, the bass is loud—sure, things are different each night. While the directionality of an amp being important was something that I knew was true—I’m not that insensate—now I can feel it. The reason we can’t hear things is because of direction, so that’s a mystical way of thinking about it.
I learned when I was talking with Bill that all four of you sit in the same order every time you play. Why not switch things up and cause more—
Ava Mendoza: —improvisation (laughter).
Shane Parish: So that was literally the first way we ever sat down at our rehearsal in Brooklyn before our very first gig. It was just how we happened to sit down, and I’m kind of a Capricorn so it’s like, that’s how I do it now. It just felt really good. I have a direct line of sight to Bill because we’re in a semicircle and on different ends. I’m sort of the timekeeper—I guess we’d defer to my foot tap if we were confused—so I guess it makes sense for me to be seen by everyone.
Ava Mendoza: We all have a good eyeline on you.
Wendy Eisenberg: With where I’m sitting, I feel like I have the cheeky reverence of a viola player. It’s kind of a post-hoc analysis, but I relate to my seat (laughter).
Bill Orcutt: I was just looking up if string quartets change positions, and they don’t! Also, the truth is that I’m completely unadventurous so if I find something that works, I’ll do it over and over. I’m not really interested in surprises, at least when it comes to things like that.
Ava Mendoza: It seems really normal to me. Every band that I’ve played in has a stage plot that we do every night. I don’t think it’s unique to this band. There are bands I play in where if there’s a unique situation, we’ll say, okay we’ll switch tonight. I played in one band where we did it differently every night and it was phenomenally frustrating and time-consuming (laughter). That was in my 20s. But every ongoing project I’m in, there’s just a way we do it.
Shane Parish: Now that you’ve mentioned that, I’m always stage right.
Ava Mendoza: I usually am too. I think that’s normal as a guitar player. If you’re playing any kind of jazz-related music, the bass wants to be on the hi-hat side of the drummer, which is stage left.
Earlier you were talking about different audiences, so I’m wondering what your experiences have been with playing in different cities. How have the audiences’ behaviors and demeanors impacted your playing? Does that energy play a role?
Bill Orcutt: We’ve had pretty good audiences. I don’t think we’ve ever had a bad response.
Wendy Eisenberg: I think it’s more the room because the audience is always excited.
Shane Parish: I think that show we did in Los Angeles at 2220 had a particularly high vibration. Somehow it felt crowded and hot, like you could feel the body heat in the room. I also think it was because our Tiny Desk Concert had just been released and I remember when we came out, that one guy announced us by saying, “And a band that needs no introduction!” And I was like, oh, that’s new (laughter). So that was a high-energy situation.
Ava Mendoza: The audience definitely changes it for me, like if they’re more hyped up, but we’ve never had a dead or cold audience. The LA show was especially amped. That was the happiest I’ve seen LA in 15 years, period (laughter). And I had old friends there so it was an emotional show for me anyway.
Wendy Eisenberg: I think it also depends if we’re on a platform or not. In Victoriaville, we were on a platform that felt like we were at a convention center, and no disrespect, but it was harder for me to get into the catharsis of it. My entire life, if I’m going to a conference, I’m not supposed to get hyped (laughter). If we’re lower to the ground or there are people above us, then the vibe is usually higher. Roulette felt like that. At 2220, it’s a slanted-up audience. That’s my instantaneous theory about it.
Ava Mendoza: You want the panopticon (laughter), with the audience staring down at us.
Shane Parish: Kings Place in London was like that. The audience was seated but there was a balcony that circled the stage so there were people behind us, actually.
I wanted to ask about the new record, Music in Continuous Motion (2026). What are you noticing that’s different about this record compared to the last in your practice? Is something new coming out of your playing? What’s different about your parts this time around?
Shane Parish: I finished transcribing it at the end of January, maybe February 1st. It feels like a blur now though because I’ve been following this other stuff so much.
Bill Orcutt: When Tom Carter was writing the one-sheet, he was like, “Give me something, you’re not giving me enough.” And I said, “No triplets,” which is a flippant way of saying that it didn’t have any jig and reel rhythms that the other record had.
Ava Mendoza: It’s got some, though. But it feels less jig and more rock and roll.
Wendy Eisenberg: It’s less sweaty. There’s less of a Celtic sweat (laughter).
Ava Mendoza: Yeah, there’s less friendship with Morocco and Gnawa music, and less friendship with Celtic music, and more friendship with rock and roll.
Shane Parish: There is a song in 15/8, but we’re not playing it at this upcoming gig. It’s almost like a jig for part of the measure, if you think about it.
Bill Orcutt: I didn’t know what it was gonna sound like, and that’s one of the reasons I was reluctant to do it. I figured out a process, but I didn’t know what the process would produce. I was reluctant to put another quarter in and see what would come out (laughter). I’m happy with it, it’s different, and it’s surprisingly fun to play. I can’t wait to play with these guys. I think “Unexpectedly heavy” is going to be unexpectedly heavy when we play it at Roulette (laughter).
Shane Parish: To speak to my experience of transcribing it, when I transcribed Music For Four Guitars, it was all new to me because I hadn’t toured the Bill Orcutt Guitar Quartet yet. And on the guitar, there are multiple ways to finger things, though taking away two strings reduces that a bit. When I did this new transcription, I just felt that I categorically knew how Bill was playing them with 99% accuracy. I knew what his hand was doing. So it was neat to put that quarter in. I think of different left-hand and right-hand techniques as like a dremel tool where you can attach different heads for different jobs, and it’s like I was screwing on my Orcutt hand (laughter). There’s all these fingerings that he does and I knew them! So this time, I wasn’t on the learning curve of style. As Susan Sontag said, style is what is repeated. When Bill first hired me, he said, “I basically have one lick I play over and over again.” (laughter). But you were quoting B. B. King or something.
Bill Orcutt: A musicologist did a study of B. B. King and said that he had 10 licks and that he was a master of putting those all together to tell a story.
How do you guys feel playing in this band versus other ones? Is there a specific posture you’re in when playing in this quartet?
Ava Mendoza: I try to compose the rhythm section with Shane. He’s the conductor and I’m sitting next to him and I think of us as the “hold it down” part. That’s not all the time, but I try to think of myself as that.
Wendy Eisenberg: It’s hard to think about how it’s different because it’s already written and all you have to do is show up and play it well and listen to everybody. I do think it’s iconic that we all have our own actual postures—there’s a shape that we form (laughter). Bill’s hunched over or leaning back.
Bill Orcutt: I have horrible posture (laughter).
Wendy Eisenberg: And then there’s the dork shit I’m doing. There’s the sway of Mendoza, and it feels like you’re on a different axis than Bill. And then Shane, I feel you have fabulous posture. My guitar neck is up and then yours is lower; our necks are up at different angles. Mine is highest, I think Ava’s is second, and then Shane’s and Bill’s are similar.
Ava Mendoza: They’re horizontal!
Shane Parish: Everyone’s pick grip is a little different too. When we’re in the zone when we’re playing for a while, I notice a lot of subtlety about posture and grip and what’s going on in people’s hands.
Wendy Eisenberg: It’s especially cool when you talk about this Shane because you’re such a scientist of the instrument. It’s so convivial. When you’re in a band, you usually don’t have someone saying, “Oh, it’s cool how loose you are on the pick in this way.”
Bill Orcutt: One of the things that comes across is that Shane is a teacher. You can tell he is one by how generous he is in his interpretations.
Do you guys mind talking about your relationship to guitar solos? How has that changed over the years and how do guitar solos show up for you in this band? What makes a guitar solo successful? Are all guitar solos successful?
Ava Mendoza: No, god no. (laughter).
Bill Orcutt: As a listener, I love them and sometimes all I wanna do is listen to the solo. Most of them aren’t great, but when you hear one that is, it’s special. As a player, I didn’t really get to play any! When I’m playing with Corsano, there’s no soloing—it’s a dialogue. I spit out some little thing and he kicks it back. Part of the reason I wanted to play with Steve Shelley and Ethan Miller was so I could do guitar solos.
Ava Mendoza: Now you’ve turned into a monster. You have guitar solos in BOGQ and Orcutt Shelley Miller is like you having all the guitar solos.
Bill Orcutt: I have one in the quartet. Playing in a trio, I get to do a lot of solos, it’s not a dialogue it’s a monologue.
Ava Mendoza: I like guitar solos but I also like anti-guitar solos. I like Robert Quine, who I think is as good as it gets for his type of guitar playing. And he hated guitar solos, and the stuff he plays on Lou Reed records or The Voidods’ records, he has traditional chops but he’s trying to deconstruct what people play and not do the things that usually happen in solos. I love how a guitar player who hates guitar solos sounds when they do one. Coming out of that, I love them and I’m always trying to deconstruct and reconstruct while doing them. There’s all kinds of terrible and wonderful things you can do in a guitar solo, and you can combine them every night.
Wendy Eisenberg: I think they’re the perfect opportunities for some combination of pastiche and transcendence—I’m always interested in that. I really love soloing in BOGQ. And in Editrix, whenever I’m playing a rock-hero solo it’s kind of like an anti-guitar solo in a way because I’ll be making fun of it, but it’s also the best thing you could be doing with your time. The older I get, the closer I get to the latter (laughter). Irony is a cage. When you play one ironically, you realize you have to get good at it, and then you realize you like it for itself.
Shane Parish: I like guitar solos. I like playing variations on a theme and exploring thematic material more than scale and arpeggio knowledge. When I took the soli in “Only at dusk,” it basically became a deconstruction of that riff and seeing where it goes. I like shreddy solos but I don’t like to play them; I want to harken to some material that I’m working with, and then I can find my way into some other zone. That’s my take on monophonic improvisation.
Do you guys feel like there’s an influence with how you approach the guitar that would maybe be unexpected?
Ava Mendoza: For me it’s so intertwined with the drum set. The electric guitar and modern drum set are around the same age, and they’re both these renegade instruments that we’re still trying to figure out—there’s all these happy accidents happening all the time. And in terms of the actual strings being pieces of the drum set, and being able to play rhythmically and polyrhythmically over all six strings—there’s no other instrument I relate to as much as the drum set. The more I get to play with awesome drummers, the more I feel that.
Shane Parish: I just like the way the guitar sounds. I know that’s very simple, but seriously, the way the strings sound… when we do this band, I’m always like, “That sounds good,” even if we’re just making noise. I’ll take that into a lesson where I’ll try to have them dial into what it is to just make a sound on the instrument. Someone’s inclination might be like, well this is really boring to just play one note. But this is what you do, you play guitar—listen to the sound of this thing. You can almost do no wrong with the instrument. I feel that way with “Barely driving,” which is this sprawling, open thing. Bill says it’s our “Sister Ray.” It has riffs but it deconstructs over 10 minutes and it becomes pure timbre. It’s a very transcendent feeling, and it’s really just the sound of the instrument.
Wendy Eisenberg: I like that it means a lot. It means something very different all over the world and people do different things with it everywhere. It feels like this symbol of a populist and honest instrument. It’s something everyone can find. And because it’s a physical experience to play it, it’s more than what it means but it’s also only exactly what it means. The guitar is such a global force.
Is there an example of a dishonest instrument? (laughter).
Wendy Eisenberg: It’s lying to you but it sounds like it’s not, and it’s telling the truth to you like it’s fucking with you (laughter).
Bill Orcutt: Unlike the harpsichord (laughter).
Wendy Eisenberg: It’s honest to me in the way that people say humble, not honest in the sense that it’s not lying.
Ava Mendoza: It’s meat and potatoes. With guitar, it feels like you’re equals—maybe you’re friends, maybe you’re enemies, but you’re equal. When you play the clarinet, you’re the clarinet’s bitch (laughter) for like the first half of your life with it, and then when you become good, then you’re equals.
Wendy Eisenberg: And that’s not a question of honesty, but power relations.
Ava Mendoza: Exactly. The clarinet is a top (laughter) and it’ll be a diva.
Wendy Eisenberg: And it’s not honest. It’s a top that sounds like it might be a bottom (laughter).
Shane Parish: The guitar is always kicking my ass—I don’t feel equals with it. I guess it depends on what we’re playing.
Ava Mendoza: I feel like it’s different with different guitars.
Bill Orcutt: I’ve been playing for a while so I think of it as something that’s part of me more so than something I have to force into submission. I was gonna say earlier that talking about influences on the playing, and the starting point for me was realizing that it’s just me. If you accept yourself, you can play whatever you want and it doesn’t matter what anybody thinks. When you’re being yourself in your day-to-day life, more of it will come out when you play guitar.
Is there anything we didn’t talk about today that you wanted to mention?
Shane Parish: I’m really excited to reconstitute as a guitar Voltron. We haven’t done this in over a year.
Wendy Eisenberg: It’s bittersweet. I’m really excited to play at the end of the month. It’s gonna feel invigorating.
Bill Orcutt: Thank you for asking us to do this.
Well, I have one more question that you’ve already heard, but there’s a twist: Do you mind sharing one thing you love about the other band members?
Shane Parish: I don’t ever feel like there’s too many cocks on the block in this situation. It’s a very supportive environment. And everybody, excluding myself, really shreds. I’ve never felt like there’s some kind of ego struggle with the four of us, which seems kind of rare in guitar land, in the realm of shred guitar gods. Everyone’s a team player.
Bill Orcutt: Each of us has our own zone so carefully carved out that there’s not a lot of overlap. If there were two players playing in a similar style, maybe there would be. There’s also the disorienting factor of playing with only four strings, which kind of makes you all the victims (laughter).
Bill, were you initially choosing the members of the band knowing that they all played in their own way?
Bill Orcutt: No, I wasn’t that smart. I got Shane to do the transcription, and then we did a duo version. And then the whole thing really started because Ava wrote to me and said, “If you ever do it live, I’m interested.” Shane knew Wendy, and I know their music, and Wendy’s music came up immediately. And that was it. It felt right from the get-go.
Wendy Eisenberg: I wanna round-robin compliment everyone. The thing that I like most about Bill is the clarity of every thought in speech and in playing. You can tell what the flavor of the thing is before it’s even coming out, but it’s never like he’s doing the thing that I do, where I’m constantly editing—you hear the straight thing, and it’s so grounding as a band member. Just really good stewardship as a band leader, and it’s of a piece with how he plays. I never get the sense that there’s any hedging. It’s just, “This is what I need right now.”
Bill Orcutt: I have no filter, sorry (laughter).
Wendy Eisenberg: But the flavor of your “no filter” is generous. And Ava, there’s this searching aspect. You play only like Ava, but you only play like Ava because you’re interested in the history of extreme head shit. You’re a researcher. Your playing comes out informed—you’re not a mimic—and you’re trying to prolong the things that are interesting to you. Combing through your discography, it’s so wide, and it’s because you do things like email Bill and ask him to be a part of this. You’re an active citizen in this world in that way. For me, I can be a passive songwriter, so I look to you and am inspired by how you seek things out. That’s a bold way to live in the musical world; it’s not alienated, and it’s not paying fealty to some idea of a lone genius. Shane, I mentioned the generosity of your observational prowess, but you also never think the work is done, which can maybe feel like a sentence to some people, but for you it opens up the world. And then you approach the world in this way without narrowing the focus. It’s amazing to see you engage in repertoire, and then also do the Autechre thing; you’re showing that you can’t be satisfied with one depiction of the thing you love, you have to touch it too. I think if more people did that, it’d be a more empathetic world.
Ava Mendoza: I find this band to be a nice combination of people who work really hard, learning the music backwards and forwards, but also trying to grow. Even though the music’s through-composed and we’re playing what on paper looks like the same set, everybody always does something that feels like healthy growth. Hearing everyone play unaccompanied solo, it’s such distinct styles, and everyone is so secure in what they are and how different they are—everyone’s really confident in their style, but also not an asshole. If we have to address anything about the music, everybody’s willing to work and be open with each other. It makes it possible for the band to continue.
Bill Orcutt’s Music in Continuous Motion is out now. Two live albums have also been released: Four Guitars Live (2024) and HausLive 4 (2025).
Thank you for reading the 217th issue of Tone Glow. They pronounce BOGQ as “Bach,” by the way.
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