Courtesy Still Standing Media House
Chances are you’ve seen guitar-slinger Johnny Lloyd around town even if you don’t realize it—he’s the gentleman with the huge beard kicking out country/rock-adjacent Americana tunes from brewery patios, flatbed train cars and anywhere else folks need a good dose of acoustic guitar. Lloyd came to Santa Fe from Michigan as a horse wrangler and ferrier in 2009. And though music remained a hobby, it wasn’t until he lost his job to COVID in 2020 that he started plying his trade professionally. And it wasn’t until 2025 that this writer sat up and thought, “Dang, I know nothing about Johnny Lloyd.” With a show slated at Nuckolls Brewing this week (4-6 pm Saturday, July 5. Free. 1611 Alcaldesa St., nuckollsbrewing.com), I spoke with Lloyd to get the scoop on his deal. This interview has been edited for clarity and concision. (Alex De Vore)
I’ve found that people get into music in one of three main ways—through church, to impress someone they think is hot or because they didn’t know what to do with all their feelings. Which are you?
Number one, man. My mother was my big influence in music. She was the keyboard player for our church and in charge of the choirs and quartets. She herself was in a trio with two other ladies, too, and she was self-taught. My mother was just amazing, and she was bound and determined that her oldest son was gonna be a musician, so she kind of pushed it on me. Then The Beatles came out in 1964 and you couldn’t keep track of me, I was doing music so much. My mother…she played that country gospel, and she had a choir and needed a bass player, so she bought a bass when I was 16 and said, ‘Here, I want you to play this.’ So I became a bass player in the choir within a couple weeks. I loved it, though. I was a bass player and keyboard player. She kind of showed me, y’know, C, F, G, and you meet guys as you go and you play a little bit, and you learn from them and it snowballs from there.
I just wanted to play. My first band, I was 12. I met some neighborhood kids, and I remember we played at our county fair—we were all 4H members, and it was so fun. I played drums then, but I didn’t stay with drums too long. I mean, the six-string’s got my name on it, man. You can go off under a tree somewhere and play until you get tired.
People tend to assume a lot of things about music when they see a guy in a cowboy hat playing an acoustic guitar. What do you tell people you do musically?
Y’know, they ask me what kind of music I do, and my first answer that I’ve learned to say is that ‘I play good music.’ I had a bar manager once tell me they didn’t think I’d fit in with their agenda solely because of my looks. What’s funny is I eventually got an invitation to play there—and I won’t name it—but we brought the house down. But I am judged by my looks. I’m older, and I know we have a tendency to judge a book by its cover; we all do, but I’ve surprised a few people. You want to give ‘em some kind of answer about the music, but you don’t want to sit there and give a statement all day. I do a lot of originals, I have almost 40. I try to do a smorgasbord and try to get something out there that most people like, so that’s about it. I try to be true to what I’m feeling at the moment, or what the thought is at the moment. How it comes out is how it comes out. I do have people who I use to make a band. I don’t have an official band, but I do have some people I lean on when I have a band situation. I have this guitar player, and when he’s involved, it’s more rocky. And I have two fiddle players, and when they’re involved it’s a different sound. I like to break it up, I really do.
You’ve become a bit of a mainstay in Santa Fe and you play a lot of shows. What’s up for you next? Stay the course, or do you have big plans for a next phase?
Well, I’ve got to maintain what I’m doing because I’m making a living at it. But you’ve always got bigger plans. I was thinking about going to Nashville, because my son lives there, and making the big step of playing on some guy’s doorstep and maybe that would do something. There’s always that dream, but there’s not much opening for that here. In winter…there’s not much going on here, so I’m thinking of going out there.
I’ve also got some originals, so I want to go into the studio, but I don’t have a production company, so everything is out-of-pocket. I have two CDs already—one I did with [producer] Baird Banner out in Cerrillos, and the second one was at Frogville with Jason Reed. But I have new songs, and I’m writing songs. With me, it’s just bits and pieces and you hope you get a song out of them. I heard when John Lennon died he had bags full of bits and pieces, and that’s just kind of the way it works with me. If I get enough bits and pieces together to make a song, then I go with that. I like to put at least 10 songs on a CD. For me, it’s about inspiration, so I’ve got a little personal recorder with a notebook everywhere I go. When I get a thought, like a chorus, or I’ll get a bridge, I get it down. Then sometimes it’s a year later, and I realize I’ve gotta work on this thing.
