Taihg RIP

While out in Wisconsin a few weeks ago, drifting off to sleep, I suddenly remembered something.

Two much-loved young buskers, Hugo Wenn and Daniel "Taigh" Lloyd, died tragically earlier this year in Canterbury. I didn't know either of them, but the reaction in town was quite overwhelming...an abundance of flowers and chalked messages at various of their favourite busking spots, persisting for 2-3 weeks afterwards, gatherings of buskers, extensive local new coverage. It didn't feel appropriate to blog about this, as I was under the impression I'd not met either of them. But I was puzzled by why, when someone had asked "Have you heard the news about Taihg?" I immediately saw his face (intense eyes, reddish beard) in my mind. Taihg was well known to the people in the house in Wincheap where I play Go on Sunday nights, various bands rehearse, musicians come and go. But as far as I was aware, I'd never known that was his name, and we were never there at the same time.

Anyway, what I suddenly remembered was something that happened at Small World Festival here in Kent in 2009. A couple of happily inebriated women with a camper van parked near one of the walkways had decided that they were going to let the party come to them by setting up their own mini-"stage" and encouraging passing musicians to play on it. I wandered by with my saz and suddenly found myself doing just that. Then this young guitarist wandered past and someone said "He's brilliant, get him up here!" or something like that, and encouraged him to play this particularly entertaining medley of short excerpts of dozens of daft pop songs, very cleverly woven together. I jammed along with that and then asked his name...

Here's from my blog entry from early September 2009:

In the afternoon, after jamming with a character called Tyg(?) on the "Pink Fluffy Stage" (a pink fluoro fake-fur rug outside someone's camper van) surrounded by enthusiastic drinking/smoking types. Most amusing. Later, I ended up playing with I Jah Mo on the Kaplick stage...

So we did meet, briefly, and our communication was (apart from an exchange of names) entirely musical. RIP Taigh.