Notes From the Underground

It was a year and a half ago, and just another night in the unusual life of underground American icon Eugene Chadbourne. When he took the stage of the Victoriaville Festival in Quebec, a renowned annual gathering place for fringe music and a safe haven for free improvisation, everyone in the house knew to expect the unexpected. His duet partner, after all, was the well-known European drummer Paul Lovens, a sensitive and witty player, whose technique includes dropping cymbals on the ground.

But what brand of the unexpected was the audience going to get? Chadbourne, with his frizzy nest of hair and science-fair-rebel glasses, sat down with tools of the trade. There were guitars with unkempt lengths of string dangling from the tuning pegs--to be manipulated on impulse--and a selection of balloons from which to coax weird sounds. And then there was Patrizio, a hapless toy puppet with a spring-loaded arm, which Chadbourne, on a whim, had dragged into the performance.

A year later, a live recording named after Patrizio was released on the Victo label. Between the nattering musical dialogue, funny and liberating, we catch snippets of familiar ditties popularized by Roger Miller and Peggy Lee, sung in Chadbourne’s scruffy drawl. There are also original songs with titles such as “Disco Stomach” and “Snail Roulette.”

Another recent release in Chadbourne’s bulging, confusing discography is “Boogie With the Hook,” on the Leo label. This is a set of duets with legendary fringe characters.

Who, exactly, is Eugene Chadbourne, and where does he fit in the scheme of American musical culture? It’s a complicated question. He is many things at once: a hillbilly improviser, a self-made raconteur, a pop gemologist and a new music eclectic who mixes up jazz, folk, noise and neo-vaudeville.

He is also a model of self-reliance. Born in Mount Vernon, N.Y., in 1954, he lives with his family in Greensboro, N.C., and books himself into odd places. Take, for instance, two nearby gigs next week, at the Mercury Lounge in Goleta on Tuesday and the Daily Grind in Ventura on Wednesday. Previous stops in Santa Barbara over the past decade have been at the old Rockpile Records in Goleta and Pluto Books in Isla Vista, both now defunct. But Eugene Chadbourne is going strong, and weird.

He has recently released a book, published by Hal Leonard, called “I Hate the Man Who Runs This Club.” As he explained in a phone interview from Phoenix last week, “What they wanted was a kind of survival guide for musicians, a philosophical survival guide if you are interested in playing music, not being cool or becoming rich or something--all these things that society brainwashes you into thinking you need to do.”

The local appearances will be solo shows--no set lists--where anything is liable to happen. While on this coast, Chadbourne is also playing more formal, though improv-enriched, shows in San Francisco. He’ll also hit the Alligator Lounge in Santa Monica on Monday night.

Listening to the way Chadbourne explores the sound possibilities with his instruments--including his trademark electric rake, a lawn rake fitted with a pickup--it’s obvious that he’s a fan of noise.

“One of the things I liked about the music in the ‘60s was how weird it got and how many sound effects were on the records,” he said. “I really missed that when we started weeding that out of rock. That’s one thing I like about rap music. You never know what you’re going to hear next. There’s all this weird stuff mixed in.”

Things are looking up, and with his growing success, Chadbourne feels that “audiences are really receptive to this now.”

“When I was working with Shockabilly . . . we had to present something that . . . looked like a rock band, was electric, played some rock songs, and then I could take it somewhere,” he said.

“It’s like a guy who shows up to work and they say, ‘Wear a suit and tie.’ He has variations on it--maybe he’ll wear a paisley tie and a vest one day. And he has his own personality at work, but he’s got the suit and tie on. Well, now, I don’t even have to wear the suit and tie. I can go play whatever I want.”

BE THERE

Eugene Chadbourne performs Tuesday at the Mercury Lounge, 5871 Hollister Ave., Goleta, 967-0907; Wednesday at the Daily Grind, 607 E. Main St., Ventura.