"A David Lindley performance isn't just an awe-inspiring demonstration of string prowess. It's a portal to far-flung realms, a magic carpet ride skittering around the globe offering vivid glimpses of Jamaica, the Mississippi Delta, Madagascar, Turkey and Cuba."
- San Jose Mercury News
 

playing the middle eastern instrument - The Oud
photo by Philip Barlow

"What he played did as much to form my music as my writing those songs...This is one of the great slide players of all time."
- Jackson Browne, Rolling Stone 5/27/10

★2011 GRAMMY Nominee for his collaboration with Jackson Browne, Love Is Strange - En Vivo Con Tino for Best Contemporary Folk Album
A David Lindley and Jackson Browne collaboration CD, released May 11, 2010, as a 2-CD live set capturing a 2006 tour of Spain.

Lindley's "Soul Of A Man" was featured prominently in an episode of AMC's drama series, Hell on Wheels, which aired August 2012 and stars Anson Mount (Third Watch, Law & Order) and Colm Meaney (Con-Air, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine).

A featured performer with Jackson Browne's band of almost 20 years on 2010 Summer tour of Europe and the U.S.

On record and in performance, David and Jackson have a musical association reaching back almost 40 years. David's legendary stringed-instrument virtuosity has been showcased on many of Browne's albums, beginning with 1973's For Everyman, and on classics such as Late For The Sky and The Pretender (the latter two both on Rolling Stone's list of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time). Browne also produced Lindley's 1983 LP, the acclaimed El Rayo-X. (please see DISCOGRAPHY)

Throughout this long and distinguished career, Lindley has been one of the world's most in demand session musicians, lending his skills to the recorded works of Bob Dylan, Rod Stewart, Linda Ronstadt, Crosby, Stills and Nash, Warren Zevon, Ben Harper and many others.

Renowned as a member of the band Kaleidoscope, and leader of his own band El Rayo-X. (please see DISCOGRAPHY)

In 1979, Lindley began working with long-time friend Ry Cooder on Bop Till You Drop and The Long Riders soundtrack, a musical collaboration that lasts to this day, spawning many recording projects and several world tours as an acoustic duo.

The David Lindley electro-acoustic performance effortlessly combines American folk, blues, and bluegrass traditions with elements from African, Arabic, Asian, Celtic, Malagasy, and Turkish musical sources. Lindley incorporates an incredible array of stringed instruments including but not limited to Kona and Weissenborn Hawaiian lap steel guitar, Turkish saz and chumbus, Middle Eastern oud, and Irish bouzouki.

"If David Lindley played just one of the stringed instruments in his arsenal, and concentrated on just one of the styles he has mastered and/or mutated, he would doubtless be considered one of the best and most original practitioners of that one thing. Instead, over the past five decades he has studied, investigated, incorporated, and become an original, prominent voice in styles spanning the globe, on so many instruments he lost count long ago. In the process, he has expanded the parameters of popular music, stylistically and instrumentally, to a degree that few, if any, can claim." - Dan Forte, Vintage Guitar Magazine, October 2006.