Bill Baker
Keyboards & Vocals
Started Playing:
Bill has been playing music since the age of ten, when he began to teach himself to play piano (which really annoyed his brother who was taking lessons at that time and getting nowhere).
Though junior high and high school he concentrated on brass - baritone horn, tuba, trumpet and trombone – basically anything with three valves and spit. Side interests led him to pick-up guitar, bass guitar, harmonica, Irish pennywhistle, flute, upright bass, mallet percussion, and tenor sax.
Now he plays most anything with keys, plus a side interest in acoustic and electronic percussion and programming.
What he does in DA:
Bill has played Keyboards for Diamond Alley since 1987; programming and playing synthesizers with Diamond Alley. “I’m really proud that we do everything live - even complex stuff with hits and multiple parts going on. What you hear in the audience is what real musician are playing in real time, not what was perfected in studio and lipsync’ed on stage.”
Vocally, Bill is “the funny voice guy” for Diamond Alley. “If there’s a singer out there with a quirky style that we cover, I’m gonna be the one that ends up doing it.” Bill’s “tribute” voices are as varied as they get and include The B-52’s, Frank Sinatra, Shaggy, AC/DC, Elvis and Bob Marley. “A friend from a previous band wanted to know what effect I was using to get the distortion on the AC/DC vocals – It’s just me. Many times I have had people come up after a set and tell me how surprised they were to hear those voices from the same guy. So I just tell them we have a special knob on the board that makes me sound that way... “turn the Jamaican effect to 11 !!”
Bill is also Diamond Alley’s unofficial linguist, singing in Spanish, Polish, Italian, German, Hebrew, Latin, Ukrainian and Czech – “Sometimes at weddings I get the feeling someone’s channeling great-Grandma and picking hot tunes from the old country.”
Education / Musical Training:
Bill has a degree in Music Education from De Pauw University in Indiana. He also has a large and very strange CD collection... including electronica, classical, film scores, ska, funk, pop, jazz, big band, celtic, world music, latin and hardcore industrial. “Hearing different genres and styles gives me new things to use in my playing. I find I’m playing better too - for instance listening to big band arrangements gives me a better sense of how real brass and sax sections work together. I’m playing guitar sounds like a guitarist, and strings like a string player. Everything you listen to comes out in your playing.”
Performance:
In addition to Diamond Alley’s eclectic mix of musical styles, Bill has played in a wide variety of other genres, including opera, oratorio, orchestra, brass ensemble, choir, musical theatre, Dixieland, classic jazz, big band and German traditional folk music.
Musical Preferences and Influences:
“... Let’s start at the very beginning...” A’s: ABBA, Aerosmith, Alvin Lee, Alvin and the Chipmunks, After the Fire, Ah-Ha, AC/DC, Afro-Celtic Sound System, America, Alicia Keys, Alice Cooper, Alien Ant Farm, Allanah Miles, Alan Sherman, Allman Brothers, Amy Winehouse, Animotion, Aphex Twin [B through Z supplied on request - Webmaster] .
Diamond Alley High Point:
The things I like best are when I can stretch out on some tune we’ve done the same way for years and get a new take on it - some aspect that I hadn’t been able to express before.
I also like dropping something unexpected into the mix – doing jazz versions of Door’s tunes in the dinner set or putting musical quotes from other tunes where you don’t expect them... like quoting the Beatles ‘Norwegian Wood’, ‘Rhapsody in Blue’ and ‘The Blue Danube’ waltz into Miles Davis’s ‘All Blues’.
Diamond Alley Low Point:
“Lowest? Getting my truck broken into during a gig at the Vista Hotel in D.C. I suppose I can understand someone taking the gear. But I mean who in their right mind steals half a pack of cough drops, beat up sneakers, and contact lens solution? And then I had to pay everything I made that night to fix the freaking window that they shattered getting in? Grrrrr! “
Quotes about his playing:
- “!”
- “That’s great – can you make it sound more – I dunno - dangerous?” – real quote - Nils Lofgren.
- “OK. You’ve got the 2nd and 3rd guitar parts, as well the strings and brass hits perfect, but what about the all important xylophone part?”
- “Man, do it again - you have to nail the sqeal!” (extra points if you know that one)
- “Jeez, where did THAT sound come from?”
- “So what’ll it be - Deal or No Deal?“
Other:
Bill is also pianist, cantor and choir president at St David’s Episcopal Church - in case you wondered what “die hard” musicians do on Sunday mornings after that late Saturday night gig.
. . . more info than you need:
In his spare time Bill watches too much TV. He devours science fiction novels and cooks and eats food that is bad for him. He listens to his collection of film scores, which are always played loud enough to annoy his neighbors. He surfs the net looking for conspiracy theories that will substantiate his conviction that he is a superior being from the planet Klatuu who was fostered by Earthlings. He does not go into direct sunlight. No one knows where he buys his clothes, or how he keeps them so black.
