Bill MacKay

Bill MacKay is an acclaimed guitarist, composer, and improviser based in Chicago whose music ranges freely across the experimental folk, rock, and avant-garde scenes. His creative, unpredictable approach to the guitar is augmented by his original method of songwriting, and he's also a prolific collaborator with artists across the musical spectrum. He's best known to rock fans as the founder of the bands Sounds of Now, Broken Things, and Darts & Arrows, and he melded hard rock and free jazz on 2007's Swim to the River. He found time to release a tribute acoustic offering on Tompkins Square, 2015's Sunrise: Bill Mackay Plays the Songs of John Hulburt, worked in a duo with Ryley Walker on 2017's SpiderBeetleBee, and released Esker solo. STIR, with cellist Katinka Kleijn, and Fountain Fire were issued in 2019. Keys, a duo recording with Nathan Bowles, arrived in 2021. MacKay followed with Locust Land in 2024.