From California, David Nigel Lloyd Performs to support UK's Bert Jansch Foundation

Two noted singer-guitarists, one from far Northern California and one from Leeds, team up with one extraordinary guitar to demonstrate the deep influence the legendary Bert Jansch exerted on their own music.

David Nigel Lloyd, 68, lives in sparsely populated and highly flammable northern California. He has performed in acoustic venues throughout Canada and the United States. Born in Kenya, he lived briefly on the Wirral when he was a boy. DNL plays guitar in modified lute tuning and the 8-stringed octar in standard octar tuning. Spyros Hytiris of Greek Public Radio Corfu called DNL “an iconoclastic loner of acid folk.” 

Chris Brain, 29, is currently touring the UK to support his debut album Bound to Rise. Recorded live to tape, the music of Nick Drake and John Martyn, as well as Jansch, are obvious starting points. The album charted at #22 on the Official UK folk charts. 

When DNL was 17, he discovered Bert Jansch's classic album Rosemary Lane and vowed one day to record an album just like it. In 2018, in commemoration of what would have have been Bert's 75th birthday, the Bert Jansch Foundation sent five Yamaha LL guitars round the world in search of players whom Bert Jansch had influenced. This is the Foundation's still ongoing Around the World in 80 Plays program.

As instructed, DNL videoed himself playing his Song for Bert on the LL guitar that visited him in 2019. Then came the lockdown and, DNL realized, his opportunity to fulfill his fifty year-old vow. The guitar would be with him for six months. Of Service in Rosemary Lane, DNL's sixth album, was hailed by the Hollywood Digest as “one of 2022's best releases.”

Since recording the album, the Yamaha guitar traveled the US for another two years before returning to Lloyd in Yreka, California. He will be performing with the guitar, now covered in guitarist's signatures, at the Black Dyke Mills Heritage Venue. Chris Brain, the most recent inductee in the 80 Plays program, plans to video his song for Bert that night.

The evening will be a fundraiser for the Bert Jansch Foundation. The Foundation seeks to continue Bert Jansch's work and passion in two ways. The second of book of musical transcriptions of Bert's music is due to be released in the next year. The Foundation also supports young acoustic musicians at the beginning of their careers with instruction, counseling and, when possible, funding.

Bert Jansch came to international recognition in the late 1960s with the band Pentangle. He died in 2011.

https://bertjanschfoundation.org/
http://davidnigellloyd.com/
https://chrisbrainmusic.com/