Hi Dick, of course fingerstyle guitarists are in the minority - just as they always have been. After all it takes a lot of dedication to hone those skills and I guess a lot of people are happy to be able to bash out a few chords, which is fine if it works for them. But that's not the point I'm making, which is simply that at the moment there are a lot of good ones out there, who have clearly been listening to Basho, Fahey, Kottke, Lang, Renbourn, Jansch and so on, as well as more recent reference points like Jack Rose and Glenn Jones.

Very few of the new generation of players have anything to do with folk clubs - it probably wouldn't even occur to them. I rarely see any buskers anymore, though there is a very good fingerstyle guitarist who sometimes plays in my local precinct. Mostly it's kids doing Arctic Monkeys covers, though, bless 'em.

And who said anything about it being fashionable? Though Daniel Bachman is pretty hip at the moment: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=44ZiWkQl_bE