Heather Aubrey Lloyd & Matt Nakoa – An Evening of Road-tested Songs and Shared Stories

After first sharing a bill nearly two decades ago, Heather Aubrey Lloyd and Matt Nakoa have spent years crisscrossing the country as touring songwriters, occasionally reuniting to trade songs and stories from the road. Nakoa brings his background as a trained pianist and award-winning songwriter, known for moving easily between piano-driven pop, folk, and roots influences. Lloyd arrives with her new album Panic Room With A View, shaped by years of adventurous touring and a voice paired with finger-picked guitar and hand percussion. Their return to Godfrey Daniels offers a rare chance to hear two seasoned performers meet in the middle, sharing hard-earned songs in the close-up setting of a Live Music Listening Room.

Matt Nakoa and Heather Aubrey Lloyd were strangers, touring singer-songwriters far from home when they wound up on the same bill 17 years ago, somewhere down south. Northbound the next morning, they slowly realized they were driving alongside one another. Phone numbers were exchanged via some recklessly scribbled car-window flash cards, and one tourist-trap lunch later … they've been running parallel ever since. Troubadours and road warriors, Lloyd and Nakoa occasionally find a way to cross paths, and share a song or two. And they have plenty to catch up on this visit; Nakoa back from months abroad working on a musical, and Lloyd on tour with her new album, "Panic Room With A View."

HEATHER AUBREY LLOYD
heatheraubreylloyd.com

For two decades, Heather Aubrey Lloyd’s performed anywhere that might make a good story; bait shops, biker weeks, even clothing-optional resorts - a recovering reporter whose love of the journey evolved into equally adventurous songwriting. Her “sing-me-the-phone-book” voice pairs with finger-picked guitar and hand percussion. Best known with Baltimore’s ilyAIMY, Lloyd’s gained national recognition as a Falcon Ridge Folk Fest Most-Wanted Artist and Top-4 Telluride Troubadour. In the DMV, she’s a Grand Prize Winner of the prestigious Bernard Ebb Award, the “Girlfunkel” in a wildly successful Simon & Garfunkel tribute, and even singing for Renaissance lute-rock rebels, Ayreheart, featuring Grammy-nominated Ronn McFarlane. Lloyd just released the “ambitious and unflinching” Panic Room With A View, “an alt-folk symphony, layering acoustic beauty with humor and hope,” says Amplify The Noise and MusicnGear. Expect a live performance that “sits with fear, grief, and even absurdity until they yield not just resolution, but transformation.” Lloyd would especially like to thank Godfrey Daniels for so much recent support; featuring her in its 2025 Philadelphia Folk Fest set after her first performance at the iconic venue itself earlier last year. 

MATT NAKOA
mattnakoa.com

A modern troubadour, Matt Nakoa makes his home on the highways and concert stages of America. “Between his piano chops and heartfelt originals on guitar, he drops jaws,” says The Boston Globe. Born on a small goat farm in New York State, Nakoa trained to be a concert pianist before accepting a scholarship to Berklee College of Music as a vocalist. He developed his dramatic songwriting style with his college art-rock band, The Fens, before landing in NYC. It was in Manhattanʼs all-night piano bars that Matt developed an uncanny ability to command the attention of any audience, along with a reputation as a “hot-handed phenom who can go from Chopin to beer-drenched honkytonk in one set.”

2012 and 2014 saw the release of his first solo albums, garnering multiple songwriting awards, including a win at Kerrville Folk Festivalʼs new folk competition. As if Nakoa’s spellbinding blend of pop and soul were not enough, he stays limber touring as a sideman to Tom Rush (along with producing his most recent album) and fronting raucous tribute act, The Brit Pack. “He’s my accompanist, but he’s so much more than that,” Rush said. “He’s a monster talent. He steals the show and I don’t know why I let him do it.”