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Album Spotlight: Lloyd Thayer’s ‘North Star’

A graceful, crowning solo statement from a master of acoustic slide.

Ted Drozdowski
By Ted DrozdowskiOct 11, 2019
Ted Drozdowski

Editorial director Ted Drozdowski is an award-winning journalist and music historian, and a musician, songwriter, producer, and film consultant. He’s a maniac for slide and psychedelic guitar, and has toured and taught workshops internationally. Ted is also the proprietor of Coyote Motel, his psych-roots band, who star in the film The River: A Songwriter’s Stories of the South. Connect with him at ted@premierguitar.com.

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Lloyd Thayer

North Star

Lloyd Thayer is revered in the New England acoustic music scene and among deep slide guitar devotees for his melodic intelligence, ceaseless invention, graceful composition, and glorious tone. His new album illuminates those qualities in 70 minutes of solo instrumentals played on Dobro, Weissenborn, and Chaturangui—an instrument with 20 to 24 strings designed by Hindustani music giant Debashish Bhattacharya to take the middle ground between a slide guitar and a sitar. Simply put, North Star is an essay in contemplative beauty illuminated by lightning flashes of slide, dissonant surprises, and a radiant warmth that emerges from every note. And while this may sound strange, there’s a sense of humility that extends across the vastness of Thayer’s global-music landscape. —Ted Drozdowski

Must-hear tracks: “The Boss Universal Sutra,” “Last Right Whale”

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