LEARN THE BLUES THROUGH LLOYD

Music has to be about something.

A lot of songs ain’t about nothing. They just singing.

In blues, it tells a story. See, it tells a story — and people like stories.

My name is Lloyd Whitley. Been in Santa Cruz for many years. Maybe you heard of me. I’m a blues man.

Living down in Louisiana, we had no electricity. No television. So I couldn’t hear blues on the radio like folks do now. How I got started — my brother bought an acoustic guitar when I was about fourteen. He left it at the house. I started playing on it.

My relatives had little nightclubs. I wasn’t old enough, but they’d let me sneak in the back. “Come on in,” they’d say. “Stay in the kitchen with us.” I’d listen to people like Slim Harpo, Lightnin’ Slim — great guys playing that music. My interest stayed with that, and I followed it up.

Now I’m pretty good with the guitar.

I had a man at a guitar store tell me one time, “Listen to me. Whatever you do, don’t let them change you.” People come along and say, “You ain’t doing that right. Right here it say you ought to be doing this.” He said, “Don’t let them change you.”

I told ’em, if you want to play in this band, this is the way I do. I want to play what I want to play. That’s the way I play it. And that’s why it comes out the way it do.

When we put this band together, folks kept saying, “More. More.” Every time we played. I said, well, I guess this is my calling.

People driving down Highway One, they hear the music and turn around. Come back in and say, “Man, what kind of show y’all got going here?”

A lot of people go home happy because of this music. It gets inside of them. I can see it. They start moving. The music becomes part of them.

And I am the real deal.