From the liner notes by Andy Wiersma:
During the last thirty years or so, the guitar has moved into the forefront of modern jazz. It seems that everywhere you look a new guitarist is popping up that you'd never heard, or heard of, for that matter. Over the past decade, guitarists such as Ben Monder, Kurt Rosenwinkel, Adam Rogers, have expanded the instrument's capacity exponentially, especially in regard to its harmonic potential. And of course Gene Bertoncini has been quietly revolutionizing fingerstyle jazz for far longer than that. Both the quality and the quantity of new talent on the instrument is, at times, awe inspiring and daunting for aspiring guitarists. For critics, it must be just as bad. Superlative after superlative gets piled up after the latest "new" thing comes along. And then you hear a new recording by Duck Baker, and its sort of like an atomic bomb going off in your ears! Not that Baker, or anyone else, can really be that much more impressive instrumentally – but he can and is that different.
One way in which jazz guitarists may still be lagging behind, for instance, their piano playing peers, is as composers, and this is one of the things that's special about Baker. Another is his deep love for and a knowledge of the music, which no doubt accounts for a repertoire that seems to span all of jazz history from ragtime, to swing, to modernists like Thelonious Monk and Herbie Nichols, all the way to free improvisation. In fact, it's somewhat adequate to call Duck simply a jazz guitarist – he has had professional experience performing all kinds of American music ranging, it would seem, all the way back to the beginning of time. This broad range of influences can be seen in both his guitar technique and his writing. His basic right hand technique, for example, is something of a cross between Chet Atkins and Merle Travis, while his compistions can remind you of anything from Jelly Roll Morton to Ornette Coleman. That's what I call a broad range!
Duck is heard here in a trio context with clarinet and double bass, without a drummer, which might lead us to expect sound something like Jimmy Giufree's late 50's trio with Jim Hall and Ralph Pena, and in some ways one the comparison is useful. Both groups incorporate folk influences with notable success and manage an awful lot of contrapuntal interplay for just three instruments. But the similarities end as soon as we compare instrumental styles; Alex Ward is essentially a hot, not a cool, player, and Baker's guitar style represents altogether a different approach from Hall's.
Alex Ward studied classical music as a youngster. taking up the piano at age 5 and clarinet at 9. Finding Ornette's "This Is Our Music" was a deciding moment in his journey towards jazz and improvised music, and meeting Derek Bailey in 1986 got him involved with one of the primary figures in the free music world. Besides working with Derek, Alex has also been heard with Tony Oxley, Butch Morris, Eugene Chadbourne, Joe Morris, and a host of others. But his playing here, in what is definitely a jazz context, is something of a revelation. Ward shows himself to be a very agile soloist, undaunted by unusual key signatures (“Friday” is in B major) and advanced harmonic schemes.
Joe Williamson is the bassist who really holds the recording together. Born in Canada in 1970, Joe has lived in Berlin, Amsterdam, and London, and now resides in Stockholm. He has toured the world playing in a variety of musical contexts, compiling an impressive list of associations along the way, including Han Bennink, Tristan Honsinger, Alexander von Schlippenbach, and John Butcher. It's interesting that a musician of such impressive avant-garde credentials can sound so convincing in this context. Joe's big, booming sound is a throwback to the earlier era, and vital to the needs of the group.
In listening to this record you may find yourself wondering how anyone could create such a dynamic variety of moods with only three instruments. I would say that its every guitar player's dream to be able to comp like a pianist and solo like a horn player, and I think that Duck is taking giant steps towards that goal with this recording. Even more significant is his adaptation of folk fingerpicking, which enables him to play in a more contrapuntal style than any jazz guitarist before him. But it's as a composer that Baker may be making his greatest contribution.
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