NICK JONAH DAVIS

THE LATEST ALBUM FROM DERBYSHIRE GUITARIST NICK JONAH DAVIS, WHEN THE SUN CAME, WAS RECORDED IN A CHURCH AND RELEASED JUST BEFORE LOCKDOWN–AND IT COULD WELL BE HIS FINEST YET. WE FIND OUT ABOUT THE RECORD’S ORIGINS, WHILE DISCOVERING MORE ABOUT NICK’S INFLUENCES, INSECURITIES AND EXPLORATIONS INTO “WEIRDNESS”...

- Glenn Kimpton

When fingerstyle guitar and lap-steel whiz Nick Jonah Davis isn’t teaching guitar, playing on other artists’ recordings or working as part of the District Musicians organisation, he makes albums that explore the art of solo acoustic instrumental music. When The Sun Came is his fourth album and his most refined and fully realised yet, leaning more heavily on his Weissenborn guitar to produce a set of beautifully played, intricately written pieces, self-recorded in his local Atlow church.

Because of the record’s long gestation period, it’s refreshingly free of current anxieties. “It’s a strange time to release an album,” Nick says, “but I’m glad the recording was finished by early 2020. I had it all in the can, as they say, before lockdown happened, which means the actual creative process wasn’t informed in any way by the pandemic, which is really good, because it feels like part of a sequence that has been going on for a longer time. Some of the tunes on the record have been bubbling for eight years.”

The patience surrounding the writing and release of