David Nigel Lloyd has intrigued West Coast audiences for over fifteen years. He sings of pumpkin kings, fairy queens, ancient Irish warriors loosed upon dusty oil towns, East African juju men, idiot presidents, divine drunkards, wanderers, and prisoners both great and small. In between he regales his audience with odd bits of erudition, shaggy biography, and the occasional surreal folk tale.

He accompanies himself on an eight-stringed octar (a mongrel mandocello-like instrument); on a steel-stringed guitar with a unique drop-tuning; and on a nylon string guitar tuned regularly.

With his “spirited singing and full-bodied playing” (as Dirty Linen described it), DNL’s musical sensibility takes no backseat to his lyrical gifts. His repertoire blends ancient ballads with his own poetry and an oddball musical taste, which ranges easily from Indian to Peruvian music. According to the LA Weekly, DNL is “some serious traditional fun.”

Music from his four critically acclaimed albums has aired on many college and NPR stations and once on Late Night with David Letterman. In the 1980s, David Nigel Lloyd and His Mojave Desert Ceilidh Band were both LA’s only Celtic folk rock band and the de facto house band of the Celtic Arts Center back in its Hollywood days.

Born in the British East Africa of the Mau Mau uprising, David lived in England and Germany before immigrating to America in 1962. His early music career found him in bands with the likes of Jethro Tull’s Glenn Cornick and Rock n’ Roll Hall of Fame inductee, Billy Bass.

David and his wife live in the Sierra Navada mountains, and are personal friends of Ceridwen and Sybok of the Order of the Mithril Star.