Max is a lifelong musical pioneer. He was born into the traditional Scots-Irish culture of Appalachia, but his cosmopolitan parents surrounded him with jazz, classical, and international music, and he grew up leading rock bands. As a seeker of experience and knowledge working outside established genres, he has discovered resonances between far-flung ethnic traditions, adapting them to contemporary formats to invent new and unique musical fusions. His African-inspired 1987 recording of the old-time country standard "Rank Stranger" has been called an inspiration for the alt-country movement of the 1990s.

Max first learned music as an integral part of life, in families and communities singing, playing, and dancing together to enhance social bonds and facilitate rituals and ceremonies, from courtship to reunions, marriages, and funerals.

Max observes that music lessons generally cause more harm than good, ignoring music's social and egalitarian roots in favor of European individualism, competition, and hierarchy. He is largely self-taught on voice, saxophone, guitar, banjo, mandolin, bass, keyboards, drums and percussion. Since childhood, he has organized and led a long series of bands and collaborative projects to improvise, record, and perform his newly invented genres, from his Midwestern hometown to Los Angeles, San Francisco, and New York, where he headlined the Knitting Factory and was featured in the Village Voice.

In the 1960s, Max's parents' record collection introduced him to jazz, classical, and international music. In the late 1970s, in Los Angeles and San Francisco, he joined the post-punk underground and experimented with synthesizers, sampling and ambient noise. During the 1980s he began working with expatriate West African and North African bandleaders and probed their roots in tribal music. In the 1990s he embraced Native American song traditions. Since the 1970s, his original compositions have rebelled against conventional structures and forms, anticipating future genres like post-rock and math-rock.

Since 2006, living in a remote mountain town in New Mexico, he continues to explore and experiment on new material while occasionally sharing previously unreleased collaborations from his four-decade-long tape archives.

Voice, electric & acoustic guitars, drums & percussion, bass guitar, banjo, saxophone, mandolin, keyboards

Projects

2008-present: Silver City, NM Solo

1993-1995: Oakland, CA: Leader of Wickiup

1981-1990: San Francisco, CA: As Max Klein, leader of Terra Incognita

1984: Los Feliz, CA: Roundhouse

1982-?: CalArts, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Mojave Desert: Didactyl Brothers

1981-1982: CalArts: Our Camp

1980: San Francisco: Poetry Attack

1970-1978: Wet Fur

1964-1965: The Roadrunners

Musical Heroes

Family: Uncle Wib Williamson, Grandma Stella Carmichael, Mamaw & Papaw Ludington, Mother Joan Green, Father Vern Ludington, Brother Jim Ludington

Friends: Mark Norris, Jon Spayde, Katie Rauh, Norman Salant, Benjamin Bossi, Michael Corbett, Reggie Benn

Legends: Ralph & Carter Stanley, King Sunny Ade, DJ Cheb i Sabbah, Alhadji Haruna Ishola, Joy Division, The Cure