My friend Dave Evans, who has died aged 80, was an outstanding guitarist and songwriter who recorded several albums from the early 1970s onwards and toured the UK and Europe as a solo performer, as well as with the band Canton Trigg. His guitar style was unique, using complex harmonies and rhythms in non-standard tunings in song accompaniments and instrumentals. When he appeared live on Old Grey Whistle Test on the BBC in 1975, he chose to play one of his most challenging guitar pieces, the aptly named Stagefright.
Although he was known as Dave professionally, he was always called David by family and friends. He was born in Bangor, north Wales, to Mary (nee Heddle) and John Evans. The couple divorced when he was still a toddler; Mary subsequently remarried and moved to France with David’s stepfather, Dickie Daw, an officer in the air force. David boarded at Framlingham college in Suffolk, spending the school holidays at his grandmother’s home in Birch, Essex. After leaving school he joined the merchant navy, spending five years at sea and subsequently attending Loughborough Art College in 1963, sharing a flat with the singer-guitarist Steve Tilston.
After a brief spell working at a pottery in Leicestershire, he moved to Devon to work as a designer at the Honiton Pottery. In 1971 he moved to Bristol, where he started making music full-time. In the 1980s he moved to Belgium, living in Brussels with his partner, Jacobien Tamsma. Although they parted, they remained good friends and she cared for him in his final illness earlier this year.
He always kept on with his music but was increasingly building and repairing stringed instruments of all kinds. For several years in the late 90s he lived on the premises of La Touffe microbrewery in the village of Gentinnes, where he was finally able to have a kiln and could make beautiful pottery again.
Since 2007 he had lived in Brussels, working at Ben’s Guitar Shop, repairing instruments and building harp guitars with the owner, Benoit Meulle-Stef. David gave his first guitar, which he had built in 1968 and used throughout his playing career, to his friend and fellow guitarist Abaji last year, when his hand was affected by Dupuytren’s contracture (his Viking hand, as he liked to call it).
David recalled with great pleasure childhood holidays with his grandmother in Orkney, home to his Heddle forebears, and he continued to visit family there throughout his life. He was buried in Stromness kirkyard by the sea.
He is survived by eight cousins; Mary, Rosemary, Jennifer, Susan, Elizabeth, John, Christopher and Richard.