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Inside Dave Van Ronk – Fixin’ to Die and the Art of the Folk Guitar

By on December 6, 2013 in Acoustic Guitar, Country Blues, Dave Van Ronk, Fingerpicking, Fingerstyle Blues, Fingerstyle Guitar, Fingerstyle Guitar Videos, Folk Blues, Folk Music, Great Folk-Blues Players, Guitar Technique, Piedmont Blues, Ragtime Guitar

In the spring of 1962, Prestige Records produced sessions with Dave Van Ronk, singing and accompanying himself on acoustic guitar. It was prestigious enough, for a scruffy denizen of the cafés of Greenwich Village’s MacDougal  Street, to be recorded by the label that released the work of Miles, Monk, Coltrane and many others. But the […]

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How Simple Folk Guitar Accompaniment Really Works

By on March 13, 2013 in Acoustic Guitar, Dave Van Ronk, Fingerstyle Guitar Videos, Folk Blues, Folk Music, Great Folk-Blues Players, Guitar Technique

In this video, Folk-blues artist Mokai performs “Poor Lazurus” from the repertoire of 1960s folk-icon, Dave Van Ronk, demonstrating how a simple folk guitar accompaniment works to enhance the drama in telling a story.

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Coen Brothers Take on 60s Greenwich Village Folk Scene

By on February 17, 2013 in Dave Van Ronk, Folk Blues, Folk Music

Mokai is a devotee of the music and the persona of Dave Van Ronk, hotly anticipating this Coen Brothers’ film “Inside Llyewn Davis” since it was announced a few years ago. The film is loosely based on Van Ronk’s autobiography “The Mayor of MacDougal Street”.

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Jorma Acoustic Live on the M-30 Custom Martin Guitar

By on February 13, 2013 in Acoustic Guitar, Best Fingerstyle Guitar, Country Blues, Fingerpicking, Fingerstyle Blues, Fingerstyle Guitar, Folk Blues, Great Folk-Blues Players, Guitar Obsession, Guitar Technique, Jorma Kaukonen, Piedmont Blues, Ragtime Guitar

I guess every aficionado of folk-blues has a story about where they were when they realized that Jorma Kaukonen existed. For many, the original Hot Tuna album was the crack in the pavement that showed us there was something outside electric music. The roots of the music, roots which went deep down to someplace true […]

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Duck Baker–Thumbs of Fury

By on January 17, 2010 in Acoustic Guitar, Celtic Fingerstyle, Duck Baker, Fingerpicking, Fingerstyle Blues, Fingerstyle Guitar, Folk Blues, Folk Music, Guitar Technique, Modern Fingerstyle Players, Piedmont Blues, Ragtime Guitar

Since I often talk about right hand technique on this Blog, you might think ‘Thumbs of Fury’ refers to the right hand thumb.* Yes, the fingerpicker’s Jedi force surely resides in the right hand thumb, but in the case of long-time fingerstyle master Duck Baker, there’s a lot going on with the left hand thumb. […]

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Duck Baker-Modern Fingerstyle for the Ages

By on January 8, 2010 in Acoustic Guitar, Dave Van Ronk, Duck Baker, Fingerstyle Blues, Fingerstyle Guitar, Folk Blues, Modern Fingerstyle Players, Ragtime Guitar

I’m pretty much obsessed with guitar technique, especially fingerstyle, so I was excited to get a chance to hear the legendary Duck Baker perform and catch one of his teaching workshops. Duck Baker jumped on the instrumental guitar circuit in the early 1970s, at a time when the glow was still warm on the 1960s […]

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