David Lewis

Since the mid-'90s British singer/songwriter David Lewis has maintained parallel paths, one devoted to reflective jangling folk-pop and the other to an international academic career that includes his current post as Professor of Social Policy and Development at the London School of Economics and Social Science. Because his principal vocation was settled early, Lewis enjoyed the liberty to approach music strictly as an avocation, issuing recordings and scheduling tours solely according to his own timetable. A durable collaboration with fellow singer/songwriter and university acquaintance John Wesley Harding produced several carefully shaped independent releases, among them 2001’s For Now and 2014’s Old World New World. Maintaining a pattern of issuing new material every five to seven years, Lewis has sustained a consistent secondary career whose cumulative results have remained satisfying; his fifth album, Among Friends, appeared in 2020.

Raised in Bath in southwest England within a musical household, Lewis took up guitar and keyboards as a teenager in the mid-'70s, absorbing the work of Joni Mitchell, Bob Dylan, the Strawbs, Al Stewart, the Clash, and Patti Smith. While studying anthropology at university he broadened his listening further and briefly played synthesizer in the band Zero Option. During subsequent graduate work at Cambridge University he encountered another postgraduate, Wesley Stace—later known professionally as John Wesley Harding—and the two, sharing wide-ranging tastes, began performing traditional folk and blues material drawn from Ry Cooder’s recordings; together with future comedian David Baddiel they also busked locally. Ultimately Lewis’s scholarly focus prevailed as he finished his degree, yet while conducting fieldwork in Bangladesh in the late '80s to complete his doctorate he started composing original songs that he exchanged with Harding via tape and fax. Three of their joint compositions—“The Red Rose and the Briar,” “Ordinary Weekend,” and “Cupid and Psycho”—later appeared on Harding albums.

By the time Lewis turned to his own recording project in the mid-'90s he had already published his first book and was advancing in academia. Working on music in his spare time, he tracked his debut, No Straight Line, in San Francisco under the production of Harding and Scott Matthews, with additional contributions from Robert Lloyd and R.E.M.’s Peter Buck; the album surfaced in 1996 and established his melodic, jangling folk-pop approach. Harding and Lewis promptly began a follow-up, although the sessions for what became For Now stretched across three separate periods and five years because of Lewis’s teaching obligations and Harding’s own schedule. The finished record, issued by Appleseed in fall 2001, featured a guest vocal from longtime influence Al Stewart, after which Lewis toured the United States supporting Harding. His third album, Ghost Rhymes, emerged in 2007 following another extended interval; again co-produced by Harding, the sessions took place in Seattle and yielded a blend of earthy folk-rock and quieter solo pieces, after which Lewis returned primarily to his professorship at the London School of Economics and Political Science, performing only when time allowed.

Seven further years elapsed before Lewis had assembled a sufficient body of work, resulting in the spare 2014 release Old World New World, whose intimate tone nevertheless preserved the steady craftsmanship and reflective character of his earlier output. For his subsequent project he rejoined Harding, this time recording a full-band set at Daniel Smith’s (aka Danielson) New Jersey studio with guests including Dag Juhlin of Poi Dog Pondering and Patrick Berkery of the War on Drugs. Titled Among Friends, Lewis’s fifth album was released in 2020.