Duncan Wood was born in Banff on the 18th August, 1955, and raised in Cullen. The son of a fisherman, he followed in the footsteps of his great-uncle, Bob Wood, when he took up the fiddle and taught himself to play in his early 'teens.
Though he did not know it until later on in life, his grandfather's sister was Jessie Murray, a singer of great repute and one of the sizeable company of singers who contributed to Hamish Henderson's famous collection in the early 1950's, songs that are now a part of the vast collection held by The School of Scottish Studies at the University of Edinburgh.

Duncan left his home town as a young man to pursue a career in traditional music. He travelled south to Eastbourne where he met up with a band of like-minded musicians who performed Scottish and English folk music around the south of England before heading for Norway where he continued to develop his career in the folk band Vandrene, playing throughout Norway and touring extensively in mainland Europe and the USA.

In addition to his interest in music, Duncan excelled as an artist from an early age and his paintings of his favourite subjects, Scottish landscapes and seascapes, are regarded by many as some of the finest by a contemporary painter. His interest in his routes and homeland have also led to the publication of numerous books on the history of Cullen and the surrounding district.

Duncan's knowledge of the Scottish fiddle and the traditional music of the North East is second to none and when he offered the North East Folklore Archive his services as a musician and author for the Murdoch Henderson project, we, of course, were delighted to accept.