Nick Evans, who has died aged 50, was a talented singer-songwriter, acoustic guitarist and author. He started playing while still at school in Kent, and was influenced by the folk singer Ralph McTell, and his schoolfriend Robert Naylor, a virtuoso guitarist whose death at the age of 21 spurred Nick on to improve his own skills.
I met Nick in the early 1980s, when he came to our recording studio in Sheerness; our paths crossed intermittently for several years. Then, around 1990, he joined me in the Americana band, Small Town Romance. When the band broke up, we carried on playing and recording together as Backstreet Slide; later we formed Heartland Publishing and published several music-related books, including a well-received biography of Guy Clark and autobiographies by Nanci Griffith and McTell.
Nick had substantial health problems throughout his life - he suffered a heart attack in 1993 - and in 2003 he brought his family back to his Welsh roots in Pembrokeshire, where for 18 months or more he took his beloved guitar around the pubs and folk clubs of the county, building up an appreciative following.
The songs he wrote ranged from the wryly humorous (Time Spins Around) to the deadly serious (Natural Disaster), but it was when they told stories that they stood out as truly special. Songbuilder and Another Space on the Benches, while coming from different times in his life, each spoke a truth about his experience and connection with others, and Children of Freedom, about the war heroine Odette, was taken up by the services' charity, the Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen and Families Association.
Nick's working career took quite a few odd turns: he spent some time in the rag trade; he joined P&O, rising to become sales manager for the Canberra cruises, but found his vocation as a counsellor specialising in addiction, which he continued until shortly before he died. Latterly he was involved with other charity projects, including a CD for victims of the tsunami. He is survived by his wife Sally and children Neil and Rhia.