Search - John/Davey Williams Corbett :: Humdinger

Davey Williams and John Corbett have a lot in common. They're both freely improvising guitarists and important music community organizers (Williams in Alabama and Corbett in Chicago and Berlin, as guest director of the prestigious 2002 Berlin Jazz Festival). They also share a common temperament; the rarified sounds of free improv aren't exactly overflowing with laughs, but both of these guys have no shame about going for the funny bone. Corbett plays turntable, synthesizer, radio, and keymonica as well as acoustic guitar, while Williams confines himself to electric guitar. The former's spiky steel-stringed figures twist themselves through the holes in the latter's electrified splatter like nutmeg going through a grater, but things get wildest when Corbett spins the tuning knob or drops the needle down on some unlikely LP. Williams's responses are as warped as they are imaginative; on "When We Jammed with El Rushbo" he matches Corbett's onslaught of FM static and talk-radio chatter with a spectacular array of jagged, distorted tones, and he complements the tiki bar kitsch of the lounge music Corbett spins on "Playing Along" with sickly sentimental Hawaiian slide licks. I guess you just can't keep a good Southern boy out of the corn. --Bill Meyer