i use the fingers behind the slide for selective damping (i.e. choosing which strings to let ring as i slide and which to dampen immediately), with of course the slide on the pinky. I use a fairly heavy glass slide (Dunlop 210) as metal ones get scratched and that ruins the sound for me. Finger picks have never worked for me. I painted my fingernails and checked the wear patterns and realized that i sweep the backs, the nail sides of my fingers across the strings pretty far up the first joint, which explains why the picks kept catching on the strings. Sometimes i have my nails sculpted, but i think in the long run those chemicals can't be good for he system. Ry Cooder, besides being for my money the best living slide guitarist, is a model for mixing styles of music to create something new. My current cd project is Robert Johnson and RJ-derived songs with female vocalists. If you want to check it out, it's at http://www.joekingblues.com with sound samples. Thanks, i'll check the blues board you mentioned.