Biography

The Bad Blues Band Biography Gallery The Music CDs Influences Lyrics Gigs The Guitar Essentialist (Handbook) Khepera Productions Sorcery Current Gear Contact Guest Book Favorite Links Custom3

LM Barre (bar-ray) has been a working musician virtually all of his life. Inspired by many performances by his favorite artists at Bill Graham’s Fillmore, Lloyd began his professional career playing bass. With this his first band covered material by the Stones, the Yardbirds, the Kinks, the Byrds and other famous groups of the 60's. Picking up the guitar again, he teamed up with an old drummer friend Scott Smith and a young guitar prodigy named John McCrae. Together they explored Blues and Fusion as he learned technique and theory from his much more talented guitarist friend. While J. Scott Smith went on to win the prestigious Yahama SoundCheck drumming award, opening a recording studio, while John found his final challenge in graduating from Berkeley in classical guitar. For his part, Lloyd studied musical formally in high school and college, taking courses, stand up bass, alto saxophone, alto recorder, sight singing, jazz ensemble (guitar), jazz theory and studied the classical music tradition.

When his next move took him to Vancouver BC, he joined a Country Rock "Still Willin'" band headed by a successful Nashville songwriter, Jim Cowan. The band performed as the opening act for Merle Haggard. He then moved to Nashville itself where he worked as a studio musician and was also hired by MCA Records President Tony Brown to tour with a MCA Records hopeful. Here he was fortunate to move among the "cliques" of Emmylou Harris and Ricky Skaggs and met several of Nashville’s legendary musicians.

His next two moves took him to Dallas, TX and then on to San Diego. Here he played with the country group, "Wild Horses", an acoustic band called "The Palomar Mountain Acoustic Review," a R&B unit known as "Whitey and the Bandits" and worked as a musical director for an Elvis impersonator under the management of Total Control in Los Angeles. Playing numerous venues in San Diego country, among which was six performances at the Del Mar Fair. He was the guitarist and producer of "LM Barre and the Retaliation," "Kalama Blue," and The Jazz Heads. His most recent projects are as a guitarist, bassist, vocalist, engineer and primary arranger of the Tom Thornton's "Acid Lounge" project and as lead guitarist for The Denials. He is now forming his own group known as Barre and the White Blues Band, a band dedicated to deep-groovin' Blues and R&B (see play list posted at his website). Lloyd was also highly flattered that Russell Ferante, one of the world’s top keyboard players and leader of the Yellowjackets offered to take him as a student. He was similarly pleased that Garth Webber, former guitarist for the Ford Blues Band and for Miles Davis, purchased his CD, “Becoming.”

To date, "El" has won 15 awards for his original compositions from the prestigious international competition held at Garageband.com, presided over by former Beatles producer--Sir George Martin. He also released a new CD, “Becoming” that contains his studio work as well as his award winning compositions.

Finally, Lloyd has written a handbook designed to allow guitarists to play theoretically rather than merely by ear. It is entitled, "The Guitar Essentialist: Toward a Theoretical Approach," also covers the fundamentals of developing a systematic guitar technique.