David Lindley (musician)

Lindley joined Jackson Browne for a tour of Spain in 2006. Love Is Strange: En Vivo Con Tino, a 2-CD set of recordings from that tour, was released May 11, 2010, with Browne and Lindley touring together starting in June of that year. The duo also won an Independent Music Award for Best Live Performance Album

Lindley is known for his work as a session musician. He has contributed to recordings and live performances by Jackson Browne, Warren Zevon, Linda Ronstadt, Curtis Mayfield, James Taylor, David Crosby, Graham Nash, Terry Reid, Dolly Parton, Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, Toto, Rod Stewart and Joe Walsh. He has also collaborated with fellow guitarists Ry Cooder, Henry Kaiser and G. E. Smith. Artist Ben Harper has credited Lindley's distinctive slide guitar style as a major influence on his own playing, and, in 2006, Lindley sat in on Harper's album Both Sides of the Gun. He is known in the guitar community for his use of "cheap" instruments sold at Sears department stores and intended for amateurs. He uses these for the unique sound they produce, especially with a slide. In the early 1990s, he toured and recorded with Hani Naser adding percussive instruments to his solo performances, and his instrumental repertoire which he uses in his session work. In recent years, Lindley has also toured extensively and recorded with reggae percussionist Wally Ingram. It is his touring around the world that has exposed him to part of his array of instruments that appear exotic to many Western audiences.

Lindley was a special guest artist on a 1994 jazz CD entitled Wheels of the Sun by the Japanese shakuhachi player Kazu Matsui. He played on each track of the CD.

In 1981, Lindley formed his own band, El Rayo-X. Jackson Browne produced their first album. Their last show before breaking up was December 31, 1989. Since that time, he has toured as a solo artist, and as half of a duo, first with Hani Naser, then with Wally Ingram. He also played on a multitude of studio sessions. Between his work in the studio as a session musician or on tour as a sideman or bandleader, Lindley has worked on learning new instruments. He is famous for having written the only song glorifying (a brand of) male condoms, "Ram-a-Lamb-a-Man," from his album Win this Record!

After Kaleidoscope broke up, he went to England and played in Terry Reid's band for a couple of years. In 1972, he teamed up with Jackson Browne, and played in his band through 1980. During the 1970s, he also toured as a member of the bands of Crosby-Nash, Linda Ronstadt and James Taylor.

From 1966 to 1970, Lindley was a founding member of the all-styles psychedelic band Kaleidoscope which released four albums on Epic Records during that period.

Lindley was a founding member of the 1960s band Kaleidoscope, and has worked as musical director for several touring artists. In addition, he has occasionally scored and composed music for film.

Lindley has a large collection of rare and unusual guitars and other instruments from the Middle East and various parts of the world. Lindley has listed and categorized many of them on his website but admits that he has "absolutely no idea" how many instruments he owns and plays, having gathered them since the 1960s.

David Perry Lindley (born March 21, 1944) is an American musician who founded the band El Rayo-X, and has worked with many other performers including Jackson Browne, Ry Cooder, Bonnie Raitt, Warren Zevon, Curtis Mayfield and Dolly Parton. He has mastered such a wide variety of instruments that Acoustic Guitar magazine referred to Lindley not as a multi-instrumentalist, but instead as a "maxi-instrumentalist."