Craig Walter, a longtime pillar and regular performer in the Colorado Springs music scene, died Sunday, said Randy Block, who played bass with Walter for three decades.

The singer-songwriter was 75. He’s survived by his wife, a daughter and two grandchildren.

“He was a wonderful guy and a great singer,” Block said. “He’d sing Van Morrison better than Van Morrison.”

Walter was a regular performer, either solo or with his Craig Walter Band, at numerous locations around the city and along the Front Range, including the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center at Colorado College, Pikes Peak Center, MeadowGrass Music Festival, Stargazers Theatre, Rico’s Cafe and Wine Bar, and Black Rose Acoustic Society.

“It’s (Colorado Springs) been very good to me,” Walter told The Gazette in 2017. “I’ve worked every weekend that I chose to. I’ve played plenty of originals. I’ve been to L.A. and New York City and played, and that was hard to find venues and places that would pay you enough to keep alive.”

The Springs was a pit stop for Walter in 1973, while en route from where he grew up in New Jersey to Portland, Ore. But the music scene welcomed him, and he decided to stay, spending decades as a software engineer while entertaining crowds in his off-hours.

Starting in the mid-1980s, Walter and Block played for 15 years in their band, Tight Squeeze. The two also owned the now-defunct Green Mountain Studio, where they produced albums, including three by Walter.

Block describes Walter’s contemporary adult rock music as akin to singer-songwriters Billy Joel and Morrison.

“He was a prolific songwriter. He wrote hundreds of songs,” Block said. “Besides the music stuff, he wrote poetry and climbed fourteeners. I don’t know if he got them all, but he was an overachiever in every sense.”