Hello,Mudcat:

I haven't checked in for a long time, but the Rick threads have brought me back. I was visiting with Rick the day he decided to get involved with the Mudcat, and I have been aware that it has given him much in the way of friends and fun in the years since.

About 1980, after a long time away from music, I asked Chick Roberts who was a good guitar teacher. He said there was no one better than Rick. So I went to Rick, but he didn't teach me. He said,"You've been playing that way all these years, why change now?" And it wasn't teaching I needed, but mental stimulation re the music, and that I got from Rick in a big way. He read to me from his wonderful notebooks, his highly detailed (and wryly funny) reminiscences of the Toronto folk scene in the sixties, and that plunged me into my own memories of working in those same clubs and hanging with those same people of whom Rick wrote with such loving acuity.

It was Rick who pointed me towards the Toronto song circle and the Woods music and dance camp, and later encouraged me to brave the recording studio. "Making a CD isn't as hard as you think," he said.
He was right.

Rick's new CD, Acoustic Workshop, is a brilliant addition to a remarkable musical legacy. Of course, so much of his musical legacy lives in the people he has taught and encouraged and befriended.

Happy trails to him.

Joanne Crabtree