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Duck Baker – Not your average fingerstyle magician

Duck Baker – American Fingerstyle Guitarist

Duck Baker Acoustic Guitarist

Duck Baker doesn’t need much of an introduction to anyone acquainted with the art of fingerstyle guitar. He’s been around on the picking scene for a little short of forever. His playing encompasses a wide range of genres and styles: jazz, blues, gospel and folk of various flavours, including Appalachian, Scottish and Irish tunes. In the featured video Baker spins some real fingerstyle magic with a beautiful and expressive rendition of Pretty Girl Milking a Cow. (For something completely different, check out Judy Garland’s big band version here.)

Apart from being an accomplished player, he is also an astute writer on subjects musical, and luckily for us woodshedders a marvellous teacher who passes on the torch with great wit and wisdom. To this day, players still torture themselves with an exercise he came up with called The guitar is not your friend. You can find it in an offering from Stefan Grossman’s Workshop, the aptly titled Guitar Aerobics. If you’re having trouble hooking your thumb over to fret bass notes, this is just the ticket. There are tons of Duck lessons out there in books, on DVDs etc, and you can google the vaults in a trice. Here’s one I like: how to play Mississippi John Hurt’s Make Me A Pallet On Your Floor, a wonderful piece of ragtime in the essential key of C. It’s from Classic American Folk Blues, a DVD you can find here. The YouTube video is here.

A fan recently said of him, ‘One of the greatest fingerstyle guitarists that has ever lived…period. His body or work is stunning.’ That pretty much sums it up for me. He has influenced a great number of modern fingerstyle players, including someone close to the AGW fold – Tim Sparks.

Curiously enough Duck Baker now resides in Reading near London in the UK, a somewhat different environment to his roots in Richmond, Virginia. From here he continues to fly the flag for fingerstyle, writing, playing and giving workshops. For details visit his site – duckbaker.com

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An electric offer for all guitarists

MORE TWANG FOR YOUR BUCK!

At the risk of people crying ‘Judas’, (as they famously did to Bob Dylan when he went electric) I want to talk about electric guitars. The fact is most good guitarists play both electric and acoustic. Personally, I love  both. After playing a lot of acoustic it’s nice to take a rest and pick up an electric – and vice versa. My axe of choice is a Telecaster. I can get a nice twang thing going with it and when recording I often layer acoustic guitars under Tele parts.

A really good Fender Telecaster will set you back between $1500 and $2000. If you have the money and your brand conscious that’s fine. However, if you don’t give a damn what it says on the headstock an option to consider is a Partscaster, i.e. it looks and sounds like a Tele, but it’s not made by Fender. I have just invested in one such which is being made as I write by Koen Klijnsmit at the Dutch Luthier company. You can check out how it sounds by playing the video above. Here’s a pic:

As you can see, it looks in every way like a Telecaster, except it doesn’t say Fender on the headstock. Personally, I don’t give a damn about that. What I want is a great-sounding guitar and I know I’m going to get it from Dutch Luthier. I get a choice of pick-ups, e.g. Fender American Vintage ’52, Fender Pure Vintage 64 Telecaster and more. I can select either a maple or rosewood fretboard, I get a good choice of colours, chrome, gold or black parts and etcetera. And here’s the kicker: instead of shelling out $2000 or so, I’m getting it all (oh, and hardcase included) for just $550.

Dutch Luthier has just launched a campaign on Indiegogo.com where you can find out more details. Click here and get a whole lotta twang for your buck!

 

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Acoustic Guitar ToneWoodAmp – unplugged heaven

Acoustic Guitar ToneWoodAmp – serious enhancement for your beloved box!

ToneWoodAmp

Despite having the word ‘amp’ in its name, the ToneWoodAmp allows you to play acoustic guitar with different effects, UNPLUGGED, ie no amp required – everything emanates organically from the guitar’s sound hole and the body itself.

The device connects via a magnet system to the back of your acoustic guitar and plugs into the jack input (yes, you need one of those!). And it only takes 5 minutes to install. No tools necessary and it makes no permanent impact on your guitar, which means you can use it with all your acoustic guitars. The unit produces an array of lush effects including reverb, echo, delay, tremolo and more, which interact with the natural sound of the guitar itself. Check out this demo by Maroon 5 guitarist James Valentine.

It’s also a multi-effect processor – connect it to any Amp/PA system. It’s an iDevice interface too, allowing you to experiment with audio and MIDI apps. This really is a revolution in acoustic guitar amplification that’s taken great players such as George Benson, Al Di Meola, Vince Gill, James Valentine, Andy McKee, Kakki King and Mike Dawes by storm. More details of the acoustic guitar ToneWoodAmp – ‘the best thing ever to happen to your acoustic guitar’ – at tonewoodamp.com

The video here is an official ToneWoodAmp demo by Becky Langan, an up and coming young British fingerstyle player, a real acoustic groove warrior.

More videos here..

“The ToneWoodAmp just makes me wanna play all day. Love the way it makes my guitar sound” – Andy McKee

“I think it is the single best product add on for the acoustic guitar that I’ve ever encountered.
My favorite thing about it is that you can record with it and you don’t have to add any reverb that might affect the noise floor of the room you’re in. So all the small pops and squeaks–even an arm brushing the top of the guitar–that you hear on a natural acoustic recording aren’t affected. It’s a sound that hasn’t ever been heard before, truly.” – Kakki King

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AGW presents Steve.E’s Acoustic Cut

Steve.E – Acoustic Cut 

Steve.E Acoustic Cut

Steve Elliott (Steve.E), has released an EP of acoustic material through AGW and Bandcamp.com – ACOUSTIC CUT is a four-track compilation: two acoustic guitar instrumentals and two songs featuring strong acoustic guitar accompaniment. It’s a cool blend of folk, acoustic rock and fingerstyle.

The opener, Lucy’s Song Instrumental, is  an instrumental version of a lullaby Steve wrote for his daughter when she was born. Legend has it that Steve was compelled to pen the tune in order to get Lucy to sleep, apparently an almost impossible task! Then the writer had the tune for 25 years, always playing it, singing it on piano and guitar, but never actually recording it until 2016. The two acoustic guitars on Acoustic Cut weave together beautifully with the lead lines supplying filigree flourishes of fingerstyle, played by the great Russian fingerstyle guitarist Ilya Truhanov. They are supported by bass and a cajon to give it a percussive push. The arrangement also features wonder highlights from a squeeze box providing a haunting refrain. The next track is the vocal version of Lucy’s Song, which firmly nails that this is lullaby, a pretty beautiful one. The lyrics have a classic quality of radiant simplicity. Lucy’s Song is a wonderful modern lullaby underpinned by great acoustic guitar work.

The third piece on Acoustic Cut, Goodbye Mr Lenin, is a kind of modern folk song, except the hero isn’t a person or anything – it’s a city, Moscow! How everything changed so fast after Perestroika in the early 1990s. Before that Russia was a communist fortress, ruled with a rod of steel behind a curtain made of iron. The next 20 years saw a sea-change as the place opened up to the fleshpots and the mercantile interests of the West. The song reflects on these changes, in verses that see an old comrade ‘turn in his grave’ when he sees today’s Moscow girl with all her female charms and warpaint on full beam, immodest to some and beguiling to others. A story of East meets West! Musically the two acoustic guitars, played by Steve Elliott and Sasha Badajkov, combine to create a solid backing with a great piece of lead acoustic towards the end. All in all, Goodbye Mr Lenin is a real jewel of a song.

The last track is Lora’s Theme, a solo acoustic guitar outing that really captures a mood with its bold D minor arpeggiated opening. The Minor intro develops into a gorgeous A Major smoochy slow groove, the melody recapitulates via an interesting chord change and the tune ends with a beautiful descending cadence.

The EP offers up three very varied tunes and yet they unify here into a satisfying whole. Steve. E  Acoustic Cut… Add it to your digital music collection today for… Steve.E’s EP is priced at 2 pounds sterling, but apply the code – lora – to the order and you’ll get it for just a pound! Sound fair enough?

Listen to Steve E’s Acoustic Cut here on Bandcamp.com

 

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Lifetime Achievement Award for Sarah McQuaid at Ards International Guitar Festival

Sarah McQuaid - DADGAD Queen of Folk

At last week’s Ards International Guitar Festival, Sarah McQuaid was presented with the festival’s annual Lifetime Achievement Award. Previous recipients over the festival’s 20-year history include legendary guitarists Davey Graham, John Renbourn, John Martyn, Arty McGlynn, Martin Simpson, Gordon Giltrap, Pierre Bensusan and Martin Carthy.

Sarah recalls her initially annoyed reaction when compère Ralph McLean of BBC Radio Ulster and festival director Ernie McMillen of Avalon Guitars came out to present the award:

“I’d just finished my set and left the stage, and the crowd was calling for an encore, but before I could come back out from the wings, Ralph McLean and Ernie McMillen walked onstage and started talking about the Lifetime Achievement Award. 

“I just thought, ‘Oh, rats, now they’ll bring out some big-name guitarist to accept this bloody award and I won’t get to do my encore!’ Never in a million years did I think it would go to me. I was totally and completely floored. It’s a very, very big deal to be placed on a level with so many of my musical heroes.” 

And she did get to do an encore after all, performing a cover of Ewan MacColl’s ‘The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face’, which she also recorded on her fourth solo album Walking Into White (Waterbug, 2015).

“Every year since 1999, Ards International Guitar Festival has awarded a Lifetime Achievement Award to an artist performing at the Festival,” explains the Ards Arts Centre’s Emily Crawford, co-director of the festival along with Ernie McMillen and Darren Porter. “There has never been a female recipient of the award, and with an artist of the calibre of Sarah McQuaid on our bill, it was an easy decision to make in 2017! 

 “A favourite of local audiences in Ards, Sarah has a true gift and captivates the audience with seamless playing and an effortlessly enchanting voice,” Crawford continues. “She and her guitar become one beautiful sound, and her goosebump-inducing rendition of ‘The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face’ was the perfect end to an outstanding performance.”

 Ernie McMillen agrees: “It is rare in the guitar world to find a player who displays genius without arrogance, and who shares their hard-won skill and knowledge so selflessly,” he says. “I get to see many specialist guitarists up close, and many over-perform. It’s honey for the soul to witness Sarah McQuaid perform.”

Sarah McQuaid is currently hard at work writing songs for her fifth solo album, to be produced by folk icon Michael Chapman and released in 2018 (once again on the US-based Waterbug label) with album launch tours in the UK, Ireland, Continental Europe and the USA. 

She also hopes to pen a sequel to The Irish DADGAD Guitar Book, the popular tutor she authored on the alternative guitar tuning she uses exclusively – originally published in 1995 and still the standard reference on the subject, selling worldwide through Novello & Co./The Music Sales Group and Hal Leonard Corp.

In addition to her Ards appearance, April sees Sarah performing at the prestigious Costa del Folk Festival on the Spanish island of Ibiza and donating her services to a charity concert to benefit her local village hall in Cornwall. Summer and early-autumn appearances include an outdoor concert at Penzance’s Penlee Park, the Llangollen International Musical Eisteddfod, Stainsby Festival, Evesham Arts Centre, Faversham Hop Festival, Southdowns Folk Festival, Stroud Folk Weekend and Rye Arts Festival.

Details of all events can be found at http://www.sarahmcquaid.com/tour and http://www.facebook.com/sarahmcquaidmusic/events/.

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