Oriolo Guitars
Lazer Lloyd.
A 1980s-era, guitar-god concert at the old New Haven Coliseum featuring Jeff Beck and Stevie Ray Vaughn helped propel a then-teenaged boy toward a musical career of his own — and, eventually, an intertwined Jewish spiritual quest.
That boy was Lazer Lloyd. He grew up in Madison, now lives in Israel, where he’s considered the country’s leading blues guitarist. He tours the world as a singer-songwriter and recording artist, at ease in jazz, klezmer, electric blues, folk, and acoustic blues.
Lloyd returns home this Sunday, Aug. 6, to headline the annual Shoreline Jewish Festival on the Guilford Green. Then he’s en route to Nashville to finish recording his next album.
By phone from Israel, joined by festival organizer Rabbi Yossi Yaffe, Lloyd discussed the upcoming event and told the story of his own musical and spiritual journey during the most recent episode of WNHH radio’s “Chai Haven” program.
The journey began in a Jewish home that didn’t observe Jewish law but embraced its values. Lloyd’s dad took him to concerts that changed his life, including the 1980s shows at the Coliseum as well as a Santana concert in New York.
Watching Carlos Santana improvise on the guitar, “I just thought he was praying. That’s what he sounded like, what he looked like,” Lloyd recalled. “It really spoke to my soul.”
Lloyd burnished his own guitar chops and songwriting. By 16, he performed in local bars (under the condition that a parent be present). He broadened his blues and folk skills to jazz, which he majored in at Skidmore College. After graduation, he was growing into a successful performing career in New York when a prominent producer lined him up to record an album in Nashville.
But first Lloyd’s mom, concerned over his choice of non-Jewish girlfriends, convinced him to visit his sister in Israel for her birthday. (His sister had since become an observant Jew.) There Lloyd spent his first observant Sabbath, without guitars or electronics or car rides. He balked at first. “I was on vacation! I had my guitar!” Then he was hooked on the power of the ritual weekly departure from weekday work life. “Something happened to me. I felt it right away.”
Back home, he began observing the Sabbath and exploring his tradition. One day, while reading a book about Jewish thought, he met a homeless man in Central Park who told Lloyd he, too, is Jewish. The man invited Lloyd to a daily minyan, or prayer service — where the rabbi, learning of Lloyd’s musical career, introduced him to a personal friend: the famous Sumer of Love musician Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach, who invited Lloyd to perform with him.
Soon, Lloyd was immersed in Jewish music as well as other genres. He moving to Israel, instead of Nashville, to live an observant religious life while developing his career.
He played with a psychedelic jam band called Reva L’Sheva. A folk-rock group. A blues-rock group. He wrote and performed acoustic numbers. He made albums, toured, developed a following.
Along the way, he saw a connection between the music he was playing and the liturgy he was praying.
“Music is the deepest channel,” he said. “Every note is a prayer for me. It’s tapping into the soul. Music is very powerful.”
Decades after beginning his journey on the Shoreline, Lloyd plans to be back on Sunday for the festival along with similar religiously observant jam-band and klezmer musicians like Chillent and Zev and The Klezmen. The festival runs from noon to 6 p.m. Click here for festival details.
Click on or download the above audio file to hear the full WNHH radio “Chai Haven” interview with Lloyd and with Rabbi Yossi Yaffe, who discusses the history of the festival as well as the state of Jewish life on the Shoreline.
