Bill Kirchen Quartet

The Bill Kirchen Quartet is a touring billing for American guitarist and singer-songwriter Bill Kirchen, born in 1948 in Bridgeport, Connecticut, raised in Ann Arbor, Michigan and based in Austin, Texas since 2011. Kirchen co-founded Commander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen in 1967 and stayed until the mid-1970s, steering the band's top-ten Hot Rod Lincoln; its 1974 album recorded at Austin's Armadillo World Headquarters was later named to Rolling Stone's 100 best albums list. He went on to a decades-long working relationship with Nick Lowe and a solo catalogue that runs from Tombstone Every Mile in 1994 through the Proper Records run of Hammer of the Honky-Tonk Gods, Word to the Wise and Seeds and Stems. Guitar Player dubbed him the Titan of the Telecaster, and he coined dieselbilly for his blend of truck-driving country, Bakersfield twang and roots rock. He has a Grammy nomination for Best Country Instrumental Performance. Kirchen credits his parents' taste for symphonies and Broadway, plus his own school training on trombone, for an approach that favors finesse over volume, and one of his guitars was built from two-hundred-year-old recycled pine floorboards taken from filmmaker Jim Jarmusch's loft. The quartet billing frequently features guitarist Nina Gerber, a fixture of the West Coast acoustic scene since the late 1970s who became Kate Wolf's principal musical collaborator and now works as a teacher, arranger, producer and accompanist to folk musicians. The pairing plays listening rooms and performing-arts centers on the West Coast, including The Landing in Scotts Valley, California.

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