Duck Baker - Confabulations (2021)

Duck Baker has long been widely regarded as one of the foremost practitioners of the fingerpicking style of guitar, but what makes him one of my favorite fingerpickers is his devotion to bringing life to wildly divergent but commonly neglected styles, and able to breathe life into all of them with merely your basic, acoustic six-string guitar. Baker plays everything from Scottish fiddle tunes and Irish jigs, to American Dixieland and far-out free jazz, or as The Village Voice puts it, “he can go from the Mississippi Delta to the rings of Saturn.”

Baker’s latest offering unquestionably resides nearer the rings of Saturn than Clarksdale, Mississippi. Confabulations is an odds ‘n’ ends collections of demos, club dates and private recordings stretching back to 1994, with Baker in almost exclusively duo or trio settings with a revolving set of almost exclusively British musicians. The plot line of collecting personal recordings made over many years with talented, like-minded friends is pretty much the same as it was for Ducks Palace (2009), only there are more partners in crime this time and thus, more diversity. While everyone involved here are excellent musicians, you could reasonably expect that this collection would be incoherent but it’s far from that. Baker and his ability to instantly adapt to the even the most unpredictable of musicians is the glue that holds it all together.

“Imp Romp 2” is an intimate one-on-one with alto sax player Michael Moore and as the title makes clear, these guys are making it up as they go along. That’s how you know the incredible depth of the telepathy between the two, not just in note choice, but a simpatico in the attitude that they bring.