Dave Evans

British guitarist Dave Evans launched his recording career during the opening years of the 1970s and quickly gained notice as an outstanding fingerstyle player. His initial all-instrumental collection appeared in 1974 under the title Sad Pig Dance; while the album might have seemed destined only for agricultural workers and law-enforcement social gatherings, it nevertheless helped secure his position inside an already crowded category. Evans’s pieces, above all their chordal architecture, diverge from those of better-known figures such as John Renbourn or Bert Jansch, sometimes conveying the impression that he is simultaneously handling every guitar those players own. The instrument responsible for the unmistakably deep resonance is one he constructed personally, so credit for that sonic signature rests entirely with Evans.

His technical command—encompassing alternate tunings and percussive timbres—has remained a fixation for players stretching from the new-age community to experimental noise guitarists, an emphasis that tends to eclipse his parallel achievements as a singer and songwriter. It was in the latter capacity that he first reached audiences with the 1971 album The Words in Between. Critics have accurately noted that the period required any guitarist offering original material to demonstrate genuine instrumental ability rather than simple strumming and humming. Evans’s picking skill, not his voice, caught the ear of fellow guitarist and label manager Stefan Grossman, who during the late 1970s began documenting a range of six-string artists, including Evans, on the Kicking Mule label. The bulk of the guitarist’s strongest 1970s work has since been reissued.