Bill Lloyd

Guitarist, singer, songwriter

Best known as part of Foster & Lloyd, the late 1980s early 1990s country hitmakers, Bill Lloyd is one of Nashville's most prolific songwriters and session men. Although the country music community supplies the majority of his living, the versatile artist has crafted everything from NewWave and Brit Pop to country rock and cowpunk. When his performing career cooled off, his knowledge of music history resulted in the still active songwriter snaring a job as the Stringed Instrument Curator at the Country Music Hall of Fame.

Due to his career in the military, Lloyd's father moved his family around regularly until they settled in Bowling Green, Kentucky, when the boy was six years old. Although Lloyd does not usually discuss his family background, he has admitted his family influenced his choice in becoming a musician, "My dad had been a semi-pro drummer, he had messed with music when he was younger, and my mom played piano," he recalled in an interview. "So, there was music around the house. … My dad was a DJ in the army, too."

After learning guitar and bass—today he is a master of several stringed instruments—Lloyd played around the Bowling Green area, during his high school and then early college days at Western Kentucky University, where he majored in mass communications. Once music got a hold on the young man's heart, he dropped college in favor of the singer-songwriter life. His first band of note was a New Wave/pop aggregation called Sgt. Arms.

During the middle of his stint with Sgt. Arms, Lloyd and his songwriting partner impulsively moved to New York. The time in New York heated up Lloyd's ambitions but did little for Sgt. Arms. Subsequently the aspiring singer-songwriter moved to Nashville in late 1982. He paid the bills by working at a local record warehouse while playing with various bands and pursuing his own variant of the pop rock dream. In the process, roots music worked its way into his musical vocabulary. "I went back and kind of delved into George Jones, Hank Williams, Buddy Holly," he recalled. "It was all part of the same thing for me. … I really started collecting a lot of records back then and playing them all the time."

Always good at networking, Lloyd hooked up with bands that were well-appreciated around Nashville, and he began getting semi-regular calls as a studio musician. His skill as a pop tunesmith and his willingness to co-write secured him a job in 1985 with MTM, a publishing house under the Mary Tyler Moore imprint. During that era country music was undergoing a youth movement, most of which emanated from the industry's publishing houses. Lloyd remembered that "it was one of the few times in the industry when something interesting came from the top down."

Partnered with Foster

During Lloyd's tenure with MTM, he began writing with Del Rio Texas native Radney Foster. "I met Radney early on at the publishing company and he had actually come to town to do more of a country and Christian pop type of thing," Lloyd reminisced. "Then he decided that's not really what he wanted to do and we started writing a whole lot more together. All the demos that we wrote together that featured him singing and me playing guitar and singing harmony ended up sounding like a project, and that's how we ended up signing with RCA. It kind of just came naturally from us writing songs together to pitch to other people."

Just before Foster & Lloyd's self titled debut, Lloyd had released an LP on the independent Throbbing Lobster label, Feeling the Elephant, a collection of jangly guitar pop that, down through the years, has become much prized by fans of the Beatles and the Byrds. However, like most of Lloyd's solo material, it sold only to select audiences. Indeed, Lloyd's greatest commercial success would come from country music as Radney Foster's partner.

Bolstered by constant play of their videos on CMT, Foster & Lloyd scored a small string of catchy hits, including "Crazy Over You" (1987), "Sure Thing" (1987), "What Do You Want From Me This Time" (1988), and "Fair Shake" (1988). The duo possessed a fresh rockabilly-via-the-Byrds sound and made clean, smartly produced records that often featured Vince Gill on lead guitar. However, despite a well received appearance with Little Jimmy Dickens on the Grand Ole Opry, neither singer fit the mold of a traditional country star.

The duo's run of hits quickly tapered off by the time their third, and arguably their best album, Version of theTruth, was released in 1990. By 1992 Foster & Lloyd, already working on solo projects, went their separate ways, with Lloyd spending time in bands where he played guitar and sang harmony. Eventually, the duo reformed for special events on and off throughout the 1990s and early 2000s.

Foster stuck with country music, before settling into a career as a respected independent singer-songwriter. Lloyd took a job as a talent scout at RCA while continuing to play session guitar for the likes of Guy Clark, Steve Earle, Webb Wilder, Ricky Van Shelton, and the Kinks' Ray Davies. Remarkably prolific, he also penned songs for Tanya Tucker, Suzy Boggus, Martina McBride, Sara Evans, and Trisha Yearwood, among others.

Solo Artist Once Again

Lloyd re-emerged as a solo artist with his 1994 LP for East Side Digital Set to Pop, a zany blend of Brit-pop and bluegrass-meets-hard-rock. Equally important was his association with a cult band known as the Sky Kings, which featured Poco's Rusty Young and former New Grass Revival bassist John Cowan. Signed by Warner Bros. in 1994, they enjoyed a minor country chart single with "Picture Perfect" (1996), but despite their popularity among fans of hybrid roots rock, the band never released an album during their time together. Rhino Handmade, Warner's collector's label, belatedly released a disc of studio cuts and unfinished demos in 2004.

Seldom idle, Lloyd continued to balance studio gigs and work for the First Amendment Center with various producing gigs, solo tracks on tribute albums, and sporadic independent albums for Koch International, Def Heffer, Paisley Pop, and New Boss Sounds. During the 2000s Lloyd began taking on less session work and playing more with a live-only contingent known as the Longplayers, a band of like-minded musicians who sought to re-create famous albums from start to finish. Among the albums they performed were the Beatles' White Album, Bob Dylan's Highway 61 Revisited, Layla by Derek and the Dominoes, David Bowie's Ziggy Stardust, and Spiders from Mars.

According to Lloyd, the idea came together for a charity event following the 2001 attack on the World Trade Center, and played off "that positive togetherness thing you get playing some piece of music that everybody knows." He added, "We've done 14 or 15 albums over the last couple of years. We give money off the top to charity and we've got some an amazing talent pool to choose from in Nashville. We get up-and-coming great talents, but we also get people who are known nationally."

Stringed Instrument Curator

Although Lloyd still garners the occasional royalty check for his songs, the singer-songwriter/archivist took a full-time job as the Stringed Instrument Curator for the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum in 2005. Asked what his job entails, Lloyd explained that it meant "going through the collection that's there. Sometimes I facilitate new acquisitions. … If need be, I clean up or re-string the collection that's there, or get it reappraised or repaired. Sometimes I do research, especially on the human interest area—doing research on the original owners." Not only has Lloyd enjoyed the job, but the Hall of Fame has proven very accommodating when he needs time off for a gig or special project.

For the Record …

Born on December 6, 1955, in Killeen, Texas; raised in Bowling Green, Kentucky; father a career military man; married and divorced.

Singer-songwriter, producer, performer, and stringed instrument curator for the Country Music Hall of Fame; member of New Wave/rock band Sgt. Arms, 1979-82; moved to Nashville, signed a publishing deal with MTM, 1982; released first solo album on independent Throbbing Lobster label, 1987; teamed with writing partner Radney Foster and as Foster & Lloyd, recorded for RCA, 1987-90; recorded as part of the Sky Kings, 1992-96; began releasing solo albums through East Side Digital, Koch, and New Boss Sounds, 1991-2004; recorded album with Jamie Hoover for Paisley Pop Label, 2004; established cover band the Longplayers, 2005; became Curator of Stringed Instruments for the Country Music Hall of Fame, 2005-.

Addresses: Booking—Bill Lloyd Music, P.O. Box 158301, Nashville, TN 37215. Office—Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum, 222 Fifth Ave., Nashville, TN 37203, phone: 615-416-2032, e-mail: billoyd@countrymusichalloffame.com.

As of 2007 Lloyd was producing the pop-rock band Secret and, inspired by a cover version of "Crazy Over You" by BMG's Keith Anderson, planned to write with Radney Foster again. Asked what it takes to make it in the music business these days, Lloyd has appeared honest but hopeful. "It's harder than ever, I will say. … I think it not only requires tenacity, but a whole lot of self-belief and ruthless ambition that has to happen in order to make anybody notice you. You also have to put yourself in a place where you are being challenged by the best. … So, you can make what you do stand out while you conform to some really high standards."

Selected discography

Foster & Lloyd

Foster & Lloyd, RCA, 1987.

Faster & Louder, RCA, 1989.

Version of the Truth, RCA, 1990.

The Essential Foster and Lloyd, RCA, 1996.

Sky Kings

From out of the Blue Sky, Rhino Handmade, 2004.

Bill Lloyd

Feeling the Elephant, Throbbing Lobster, 1987.

Set to Pop, East Side Digital, 1994.

Standing on the Shadows of Giants, Koch International, 1999.

All in One Place, Def Heffer, 2001.

(with Jamie Hoover) Paparazzi, The Paisley Pop Label, 2004.

Back to Even, New Boss Sounds, 2004.

Slide Show, Wizzard in Vinyl, 2005.

Horizontal Hold, Bill Lloyd Music, 2005.

Video

Version of the Truth, RCA, 1991.

Sources

Books

Mansfield, Brian, and Gary Graff, editors, Musichound Country: The Essential Album Guide, Visible Ink, 1997.

McCloud, Barry, editor, Definitive Country: The Ultimate Encyclopedia of Country Music and Its Performers, Perigree, 1995.

Stambler, Irwin, and Grelun Landon, editors, Country Music: The Encyclopedia, St. Martin's Griffin, 2000.

Online

"Bill Lloyd," All Music Guide,http://www.allmusic.com (September 1, 2007).

Bill Lloyd Official Website, http://www.billlloydmusic.com, (September 25, 2007).

"Foster & Lloyd," All Music Guide,http://www.allmusic.com (September 1, 2007).

"Sky Kings," All Music Guide,http://www.allmusic.com (September 25, 2007).

Additional information for this profile was obtained from interviews with the artist on June 6, 2003, and August 30, 2007.

—Ken Burke