Hi, Duck
I just wanted to say how much I enjoyed your gig at the Kings Head, Crouch
End Hill on 8th April. Unfortunately I had to leave before the end to make sure I got the train home. If you have a mailing list, please put me on it.
Hopefully, next time I will catch the whole set.... Collapse

Howdy, Duck

I am in immanent danger. I missed seeing your performance in the B.A., and we have this Cultural Death Squad up here in Berry Creek. This is a deadly serious branch of our local militia and they don't accept excuses (I forgot!). Unless you grant me a full pardon they're sure to kill me or tell Michael.

On the other hand (the one without the broken thumb) maybe I'll see you in Napa. I sure hope so. My best, Reynold... Collapse

Duck ... ole buddy. how you been doing.. Long time since out Leesburg days. Steph and I are in Phlia now.. I still play that blasted flamenco guitar you got me hooked on. My technique is still good ..... but hell if I can get that alternating thumb thing to work for me....

Let me know if your in the Phlia area...

Bill... Collapse

Duck,

Thanks for a great workshop. It was great to be able to hang out and learn from a player I've been listening to for years. One of the very first songs I learned years ago was your arrangement of "The Duke of Fife's Welcome to Deeside". I really liked the way you tied in a music history lesson with everything you taught. You showed a respect for the art that's not seen very much.

Thank You,
John P... Collapse

I have your first ever album, and I've still got the tab book that came with it. I'd forgotten all about your wonderful playing until I went into Guitar works in Reading to buy a guitar with the intention of reliving some of my lost youth. One of the guys in there mentioned your name as a local guitar teacher and it all came flooding back. I've not played guitar for about 10 years and I shall certainly be dipping into that Something For Everyone in America tab book while I get my fingers working again. It's just a pity I don't have an old-fashioned record player any more.... Collapse

I 've enjoyed your style of pickin' for years. I am a long-time gospel guitar player... Collapse

A fine treat...

...it was with great surprise that I read the poster on the bullletin board in the hall outside the bursar's office at Harris Manchester College on Sunday, July 4 announcing your July 8 lecture/recital at HMC. There at Oxford while my partner attended an academic conference, I was looking for interesting things to do while occasionally on my own. That Thursday evening was to be our last night of a nine day stay in Scotland & England. She had a formal dinner to attend. I was reluctant to get back into the suit coat & tie I never otherwise wear. Your poster gave me my out!

I confess I hadn't heard much about your music for many years after first hearing it on that 1970's Kicking Mule recording "Something for Everyone in America". In those days I was playing almost exclusively fingerstyle arrangements after John Fahey & Mississippi John Hurt stylings I'd picked up from a couple of college pals. Your music--and the nylon guitar sound--caught my ear. The tab book for that record is still around here somewhere. I never could quite do justice to your arrangements on my steel strings...and I'm addicted to fingerpicks.

I'd spent most of the summer of 1976 hanging out upstairs at Acoustic Music on Haight Street in SF working with guitarmaker Rodney Albin learning to build Martin style guitars. I had romantic delusions of leaving my elementary school teaching job and becoming a famous maker. Though that insanity was eventually drummed out of me...or maybe just surpressed under obligations to home and family...I've never stopped playing a wide range of acoustic music on guitar, 5-string banjo and mandolin. It didn't come to pass but all that summer I'd heard it rumored you occasionally dropped by that shop. I'd hoped we might cross paths so I could tell you how much I was energized by your playing on that first record.

And even though my own repertoire and stylistic interests also range far and wide from Gypsy Jazz to Old Time String Band tunes & traditional Irish country dance music, I remain a diehard kitchen musician...mostly. As far as my band goes we are folk music millionaire poster boys but we have a whole lot of fun and do get the occasional local gig to supplement the First Fridays With Mom's Chili Boys House Concert series we've run in the Stockton/Sacramento area the last two and a half years. You've got an open invite to join us if you're ever planning to be in our area on a first Friday of any month between September and June.

I do also still enjoy building, restoring and repairing acoustic instruments though the two D28 inspired dreadnoughts I began under Rodney's tutelage remain works in progress all these years later. I am working my way through a long list of postponed projects though; they are on the short list now.

So...in a way...hearing you play live for the first time last Thursday evening there in the chapel at HMC brought me full circle. I've retired from teaching after what eventually became a fulfilling 33 years. I have lots of time and a little bit of disposalble cash from my teacher retirement income for travel...one of few economic trade-offs from a day job life spent in public education. I now play a lot more music again, do a lot more art and photography and get into the shop to build toys for a two year old grandchild pretty much anytime I want...and I get to spend more time going to live shows and being inspired by the musicians of my generation I've come to admire & respect.

What a treat to stumble across you & Helen there in Oxford. Your lecture/recital approach was spot on. Though I was maybe more familiar than some of the audience with the roots & branches of American "folk" music your spoke of, your take on it encouraged some new insights. Helen's songs complemented them perfectly and were a wonderful bonus.

It dawned on me later that it really was a scholarly and wide-ranging lecture but you never stumbled off the path into dry, pedantic, preachy or stuffy territory...a great risk when talking about "the people's" music.

I've got your site bookmarked now. I'm looking forward to catching up with you again some time in the not too distant future. Contact me if you'd be interested to do a House Concert in my area of the Central Valley.

Thanks for an outstanding final evening in Oxford town.

Be well & take care,

Jim Marsh... Collapse

Brilliant Corners – review by Chris Rich , December 24th 2009

http://brilliantcornersabostonjazzblog.blogspot.com/2009/12/small-duck-trove.html... Collapse

The Sunday Times November 8, 2009
Duck Baker: The Ducks Palace
Stewart Lee



Best known in jazz and bluegrass circles, the guitarist Duck Baker is also an adept improviser, and collaborates here with players that test his limits. Two trios with the saxophonist John Zorn and the percussionist Cyro Baptista seem uncertain. Two blues with Roswell Rudd, the trombonist, alternately embrace and interrogate the familiar form. And three duets from 2002 with the guitarist Derek Bailey exploit the much-missed innovator’s catalytic properties. Initially, Bailey burrows obstinately beneath Baker’s more tonal intonations, until a common language is agreed upon, validating the philosophical inferences of free improvisation as an ethos, an artistic choice and a way of life.

Incus INCUSCD59... Collapse

Review by Chris Kelsey, October 8th 2009

http://chriskelsey.com/blog/?tag=ken-filiano... Collapse