TICKETS
Doors 7 // Music 8
75 Dollar Bill was formed in 2012 in New York City by percussionist Rick Brown and guitarist Che Chen. Played on a deeply resonant plywood crate, Brown’s earthy, elemental rhythms are both the foundation and foil for Chen’s ecstatic, modal guitar style. The group’s electric, richly patterned music can shape shift from joyful dance tunes to slowly changing trance minimalism, an uncategorizable hybrid which draws on the modal traditions of Africa, Asia and the Middle East, early electric blues, Sun Ra’s space chords and the minimalist and No Wave histories of their hometown. While Brown and Chen are always at the band’s core, the band frequently expands into different configurations live and on record, from small combos and "street" bands to their multigenerational "Little Big Band" whose 2020 album Live at Tubby’s struck a chord by capturing an exuberant pair of sets recorded just days before the pandemic sent everyone into lockdown. 75 Dollar Bill's last studio album I Was Real was named #1 record of the year by WIRE magazine in 2019.

Jim Pugliese grew up listening to and playing soul music and rhythm and blues. He went on to study percussion with Raymond Des Roches and by the age of eighteen he had recorded the music of Edgar Varese and Charles Wuorinen for Nonesuch Records. He spent twelve years as a member of Dean Drummond’s Newband and The Harry Partch Ensemble, studying and performing microtonal music. During this same period he developed an interest in Afro-Cuban music and studied drumming and rhythm with Master Drummer Pablo Landrum. For the last twenty years, while living in the East Village of New York City, Jim has been improvising, recording and touring with many of downtown's NY’s most prominent composer/improvisers including John Zorn, Marc Ribot, Zeena Parkins, Bobby Previte and Anthony Coleman. His latest projects are a continuation of his vision to combine his diverse performing experiences into a single new sound with its base in rhythm. His music skirts and shifts along the edges of free improvisation, deep groove and New Music. The music reflects Jim’s ongoing quest to explore the powerful, enlightening and spiritual secrets of rhythm and drumming and is inspired by his association and work with Nii Tettey Tetteh, master musician from Ghana, with Milford Graves, learning drumming and healing through the heartbeat and his continued study of the spiritual songs of the Mbira Dzavadzimu from Zimbabwe.