Santa Rosa musician Levi Lloyd turns actor in ‘Lost Highway’

Guitarist and singer Levi Lloyd is no stranger to Sonoma County stages.

He has played at a long list of local nightclubs since he moved here from Oakland in 1995, but his supporting role at the 6th Street Playhouse in the musical play “Hank Williams: Lost Highway” is his first outing as an actor.

“I’ve never done live theater,” said the 69-year-old Santa Rosan. “I’m playing a character as part of a story. It’s not like I’m up there saying, ‘I’ve just got these many tunes to play.’”

In “Hank Williams,” Lloyd plays the part of early-20th-century African American blues musician Rufus Payne, known as Tee-Tot, who served as a mentor to young Williams before he became a country music legend, in exchange for meals and money.

Acting is a challenge, Lloyd said, even though stage presence is not an issue for a man who started singing in public before he even reached adolescence.

“I just try to stay on top of what everybody else is doing and not foul up,” he said. “I was asked to come and do it, but I’m a rookie and I’m getting a lot of good help.”

“Hank Williams: Lost Highway,” with Steve Lasiter playing the title role, previews Thursday at the 6th Street Playhouse in Santa Rosa’s Railroad Square district. It opens the following day and runs on weekends through April 24.

Lloyd’s own history, although not as widely known as Hank Williams’, is far from commonplace.

“I was born in Fort Lee, Virginia, but I was an army brat so I grew up all around the world,” he said. “I got into music while I was living at an army base in Stuttgart, Germany. I was invited to sing with a band. I was 12 years old. I was just a singer then, but my voice was changing so I taught myself to play guitar.”

One of the contacts Lloyd made during his long musical career in Sonoma County was with Johnny Otis, the rhythm-and-blues music pioneer who wrote the classic 1958 hit, “Willie and the Hand Jive.” Otis lived and worked in Sebastopol, starting in the early ’90s. He died in 2012.

When Lloyd started his long-running band, it was Otis who suggested the name Levi Lloyd and The 501 Band, a pun based on the clothing brand name Levi’s 501 Jeans.

“It was Johnny who coined the name,” Lloyd recalled. “I played for a short time in his orchestra. He was a good friend and mentor.”

The 501 band dissolved about five years ago, Lloyd said. His current band is Levi Lloyd and Friends, which performs at Reel & Brand in Sonoma and has appeared at Brewsters Beer Garden in Petaluma and other local venues.

“I’m also doing trios and duets,” Lloyd said. “I’m playing music for a living. I’ve been playing all over the place.”

All that experience doesn’t necessarily make playing a musician onstage in a theater production any easier.

“This is major for me. I get butterflies every time I go out there on the stage,” Lloyd said. “Sometimes I have to sit in the parking lot and chill out. But if it wasn’t fun, I wouldn’t be doing it.”

You can reach Staff Writer Dan Taylor at dan.taylor@pressdemocrat.com or 707-521-5243. On Twitter @danarts.