David Lindsay Interview by Michael Diamond of Music and Media Focus for a featured article on his site that spotlights artists!
Excerpt of David Lindsay Interview
The term “second wind” might be a good one to describe the newly invigorated music career of acoustic guitarist David Lindsay. From 1985 to 2000, David recorded and performed in concert, as well as on live radio and TV in Canada. In the time between then and now, he practiced law and studied the lute. Currently in 2015, his new album, Nightbound, marks his triumphant return to writing and recording music. I use the “triumphant” partly because David went all-out to work with one of the ultimate producers of acoustic guitar music in the world, Windham Hill Records founder and GRAMMY winning producer Will Ackerman at his iconic Imaginary Road Studios. Co-producer, engineer, and multi-instrumentalist Tom Eaton also played a major role, as he does on all Imaginary Road projects.
In my interview with David, he shared some reflections and back-story about the album: “Most of the pieces are new, with a couple of older ones taken out of moth balls to fit in with the project overall. I really didn’t expect to be writing again after fourteen years. My conception originally was to do an album with Will of my best older stuff. I was inspired by the experience of meeting Will, talking about music and life, working at Imaginary Road Studios, and a new guitar that seems to be blessed by the Muse!” He goes on to say: “When I think back to how I felt just before starting the recording (nervous, unsure), and to how I felt when Tom Eaton had mastered it (elated), I felt that I had overcome a huge emotional divide between the distant past and the future. I am really excited to be back into music, and to have such fortuity in working with probably one of the best producers on the planet.”
David’s journey to this point has been a “long and winding road,” so to speak. He describes his early days as: “a boy, sneaking into his sister’s bedroom, playing her Beatles albums, and pretending to be John Lennon, complete with the bedroom mirror and a tennis racket! Like so many of us, I was weaned musically with Lennon and McCartney.” David originally planned to go to art school, but eventually found music to be “more powerful and compelling.” He studied at the Royal Conservatory of Music in Toronto and Dalhousie University, where he discovered and was influenced by classical composers such as Chopin and Satie. After a while, however, he had enough of the academic classical world and got a steel string guitar and began writing his own music. Back in 1981, he was turned on to the music of Windham Hill, which he immediately felt a kinship with. Now, all these years later, for David to be working with the founder of Windham Hill is a dream come true. And of course, working with Will Ackerman also means having access to his roster of world-class studio musicians, a number of whom accompanied David on this album.