David Nigel Lloyd taught himself guitar when he was 16. His goal was to write songs like Robin Williamson and play them like Bert Jansch — two giants of the mid-60s UK folk scene. So, naturally, in 1975, he headed to Los Angeles to become a new wave / punk rocker.

This was not entirely counter-intuitive. Producer Phil Kemp had written to him in Toronto about doing something big. “Big?" DNL wrote back. "How about this: the Who Sings My Generation meets Myrhh." [Robin Williamson’s strangest and most personal album ever]. "Good idea!" Kemp replied.

Remember, in 1975, punk rock was mostly an ugly rumor, a general dissatisfaction with prog-rock, country rock, and dreaded disco. New wave —whatever that was— seemed only a wide-open door of possibility. DNL, Stratocaster in hand, arrived at the downtown Los Angeles Greyhound station on Friday the 13th of June, 1975.

Within a year, he and drummer Patrick Meehan had recorded about two albums worth of DNL’s punk-oscura songs for Wat Rock Records, Kemp’s very independent label. Ex-Motels Richard “Raw Terra” d’Andrea agreed to play bass as soon as time permitted. That wouldn’t be for 40 years, however. The tapes were shelved.

Instead, bassist John Bugbee was enlisted. “Old Rockers Never Die,” a 7” EP, was released. Reconfiguring as BLaM (Big-B, Loud and Mayhem), the trio stormed what was left of the LA new wave scene. Last Days of BLaM, a documentary short, chronicled their final performance.

David then got married and went acoustic. Dark Ages, released on vinyl in 1984, would be re-released in 2008 as a neglected classic by the boutique label Yoga Records. It included his first forays into meta blues: blues about blues. "The album was about a dark period of my life," DNL would quip, "that went on for ages."

An Age of Fable [1987] by David Nigel Lloyd and His Mojave Desert Ceilidh Band featured jazz folk fiddle and DNL’s explorations into modified lute tuning. The influence of Bert Jansch was at last evident. Blending the personal with the traditional, the album debuted the trad/DNL ballads that are now his specialty. For several years, DNL and HIS MDCB were LA’s only Celtic folk rock band.

David and his wife Gita spent the 1990s raising their daughter in a tiny Southern Sierra village, far from the internet. When Phil Kemp, David’s former producer and patron died, he inherited Wat Rock’s master tapes and recording equipment. DNL descended from his mountain to join the likes of Kay Lenz, Buck Henry and Mark Mothersbaugh in Shakespeare’s Plan 12 from Outer Space, the strangest feature-film adaptation of Twelfth Night ever made. He also rewrote the music to all of the play’s songs. Every other April, during this decade, DNL became Robin Williamson’s West Coast driver, ferrying the legendary musician and poet from gigs from San Diego to Seattle.

It was like getting paid to take a master class — DNL said. In 1996, with Wat Rock’s recording equipment, DNL produced Death in Los Fumos, an album darker than Dark Ages, and in 1998, How Like Ghosts Are We, a CD more traditional than An Age of Fable.

A village high up among the sequoia groves is a great place to raise a child but a lonely place for a teenager. The Lloyds left the mountains for Bakersfield where their daughter could attend high school and where DNL took a dream job with the local arts council’s artist in residence program. He and his 8-stringed octar were placed in classrooms throughout a county larger than the nation of Belgium. He taught approximately 3,000 children, most of whom were Hispanic, to sing old British ballads.

In 2003 he began work on Rivers, Kings and Curses. Released in 2008, the album’s guest musicians included West Coast Blues Hall of Famer Nat Dove and Robin Williamson. It was featured on “the Best of 2008” episode of NPR’s weekly affiliate program Celtic Connections.

With their daughter married and the arts council work coming to a sudden halt, the Lloyds relocated to far Northern California to escape the smog. Shortly after returning from a Pacific Northwest tour in 2015, DNL’s friend, the flamenco guitarist Michael Olsen, died. A voice in his head kept repeating — Finish Your Work. It was time to take a serious look at his

career. David had just turned 60.

There were the two albums of proto new-wave songs begun by Wat Rock Records in 1975. As if only months had passed since they had last communicated, Richard “Raw Terra” d’Andrea began the meticulous task of arranging and recording bass guitar tracks for the project in his Los Angeles studio. The first of these, WatThe? L was completed in 2022. Two albums of old songs never recorded were completed in 2023: Ballads and Blues and More Recent Songs.

In 2020, David Nigel Lloyd was accepted into the Bert Jansch Foundation’s Around the World in 80 Plays program, a worldwide celebration of what would have been Bert’s 75th birthday. This and the COVID lockdown resulted in Of Service in Rosemary Lane [2022], DNL’s response, played on one of Bert’s favorite guitars, to Bert’s 1971 classic, Rosemary Lane.

Returning the guitar to the foundation in London in September of 2022, the foundation videoed DNL performing the title song of both albums at the grave of Bert Jansch.

"I can’t think of a greater honor." — said DNL.