Lazer Lloyd

In the early 90?s Lazer Lloyd and his band The Last Mavericks were showcased by Atlanic Records in NYC. The powerful Blues/Rock Guitar sound and Soulful Singing combined with heart felt lyrics were an appealing combination for Atlantic. After hearing the demo of The Last Mavericks the band was brought in to showcase and was taken on by A&R at Atlantic and Lloyd was asked to record for them more material which he did and at the same time moved from Connecticut where he grew up to NYC in order to make his impression on the Blues scene there.

Lazer grew up on the Blues. His father was also a musician who always had BB King and Kenny Burrell and other Blues/Jazz music playing on the stereo. As an early teenager Lazer would go to see concerts such as Stevie Ray Vaughn, George Benson and Santana in NYC with his father.
He had formed already in High School a very popular band called Legacy that had a manager and was performing a few times a week up and down the CT Shoreline with alot of press exposure. Lazer was sure that being a Blues Guitarist / Singer Songwriter was the only way to go.
His parents very much wanted Lloyd to drop the band after High School and to go to college. So a compromise was made and Lazer ended up spending 4 years at Skidmore College where he majored in Music Performance and Composition and had the opportunity to play with some big names such as Randy Brecker, Milt Hinton, Gene Bertoncinni as well as warming up for Johnny Winter and Prince. All the time still deep in the Blues.
After graduating Skidmore and returning to CT to form the Last Mavericks, Lazer was still feeling that the Blues music was so deep yet the messages in the songs were someone elses Blues and not his own. He wasn't exactly sure what was missing but something was.
That's when by miracle while recording for Atlantic in NYC someone hooked up Lazer a gig playing in a Beit Kenesset with Rav Shlomo Carlebach. Until then Lazer was not a big fan of Religion or Judiasm or Beit Kenesset's, he grew up as a totally secular American hick Jew. Shlomo really loved Lazer's playing and asked him to come play with him in Israel and told him about his Moshav, Mevo Modiim.
After playing with and listening to Shlomo at that first concert which was so powerful and deep musically with such real soul combined with teachings and stories inbetween the songs, Lazer immediately realized he had found the missing piece to his Blues.
Lazer left the whole thing he had built in NYC and the recordings with Atlantic and took Shlomo up on his offer and went to check out Israel. Unfortunately Rav Shlomo never made it, he passed away only a few months after that, but Lazer stayed. Israel was his place. The deepest Blues ever.
Lazer was quickly discovered on the music scene in Israel both in the Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. He was immediately playing with the major students of Rav Carlebach such as Chaim David and he then joined the famous Jam Band -Reva L'sheva, which was like the Grateful Dead plays Carlebach. For eight years they toured all over the world and recorded four very successful albums.
At the same time Lazer was playing the Blues in Tel Aviv and was discovered by Ofir Leibowitz from Nechmat Hatractor who decided he wanted to record and produce Lazer's first Blues album in Israel-Higher Ground. Higher Ground was a big success in Israel and was played many times on 88FM, but sold much better outside of Israel and was internationally distributed and still sells well on CD Baby.
After Higher Ground Lazer was asked to play the Givatayim Blues Festival with Dani Sanderson in 2005 and that's when Lazer first started playing with Israel's biggest fan of the Blues, the Bass player Ilan Hillel from Gan Yavne, who is now the Bass player for The Lazer Lloyd Blues Band. Lazer was having trouble finding people in Israel who really sounded like they grew up on the Blues. From an early age Ilan was addicted to Johnny Winter and Buddy Guy and when Lazer heard Ilan play he knew he had found his match.
At this same time, from Lazer's exposure with Reva L'sheva and having performed with Shlomo Gronick and Ehud Banai and Arcadi Duchin, there was a big demand in Israel and in the Jewish World outside of Israel to hear more of Lazer's unique jamming guitar Hendrix style.
That's when Lazer formed the famous Power Trio Yood with the well known Drummer Moshe ?Russian Percussion? Yankovsky and power Bass player Yaacov Levcoe. The project quickly took off and Yood recorded two very successful albums that Lazer wrote and sang and they had four major tours to America playing famous clubs in NYC and Colleges all across America as well as major clubs in Israel warming up for Barry Sakarov and Meir Banai.
Lazer had already met and played with Yankovsky back in 2000 with Avi Piamenta and they immediately new they had a special connection. People who come to the shows don't know how Yankovsky knows what Lazer is going to play before he plays it, there is a special chemistry between them that is rarely found.
After leaving Russia and before moving to Israel Moshe spent a few years in NYC playing the Blues scene and other projects that were heavily influenced by Cream and Band Of Gypsies and that helped form the marriage between the two.
Moshe and Lazer had started playing the Blues with Ilan already back in 2005 and from the first meeting it was magic. Lazer had always wanted to define his original Blues as being pushed in to the realm of Band Of Gypsies, James Gang, Stevie Ray and CCR? without becoming Pop and that's exactly what this trio-The Lazer Lloyd Blues Band has produced.
Although Yood was a big success Lazer felt it was developing too much on the Heavy Rock/Grunge/Pop side and the Blues were taking a back seat. So it's back to the Blues full time with Lazer Lloyd and the band.
The band has just finished it's first album and is in the middle of it's first Israeli Tour from Zfat to Beer Sheva. They have been chosen by The Israeli Blues Society to be the Israeli representative at The Memphis Blues Challenge in Memphis, they have performed with Roy Young in Tel Aviv and at 40 years to Woodstock in Jerusalem and they have been asked to play major festivals in Israel such as the upcoming Country Folk Fair on April 1 near Modiim and Boombamella on April 2nd.
Two major breakthroughs have happened in the last month. First Lazer went to America to meet with a record company that heard and loved the album and who has distribution with Sony Records and want's to promote Lazer and the band as the Blues Messenger's of Israel around the World, and Lazer and the band were chosen as the opening act for Snowy White in Tel Aviv on March 27th.
The single War is already becoming a big hit from the shows and on Myspace and Lazer and the band just had three professionally produced videos finished which are popular on Youtube-Mad Dog, Feel The Power and Love Song.
With the albums release Lazer and the band are looking forward to spreading the tour to major festivals overseas.