Singer – Songwriter David Olney dies on stage during a performance

Well-known Nashville folk singer David Olney breathed his last while performing on stage in Florida. He was 71 and seemingly succumbed to a heart attack. He was performing on Saturday at the 30A Songwriters Festival in Santa Rosa Beach when the tragedy struck.

Fellow musician Amy Rigby

offered a first hand account of the incident through his Facebook post. He was performing live, paused for a while, murmured “I am sorry” and was gone. In fact, the musicians and others on the stage thought that he had taken a pause. But they found it out soon as to what had happened and lowered on the stage from the stool that he was positioned on.

The doctors at the auditorium and among the audience tried to revive him, but to no avail. Olney is survived by his wife Regine, son Redding and daughter Lillian. Born in Rhode Island in 1948, he came to Nashville in 1973 and formed a band labelled X-Rays. He went ton t become a key figure in the American folk rock in the 1980s.

He has 20 records to his name apart from his collaborations with other musicians like Emmylou Harris, Linda Ronstadt, Steve Earle and Steve Young.

He had given a half an hour performance earlier in the day at the festival and it was captured on video and uploaded to YouTube.

His death has “a devastated music community,” and that was the general feeling when the music lovers heard about the death of the pioneer who brought the American folk music to its best standing ever.