24 Dec Lloyd Landesman On Composing Top Jingles, His “The Eleventh Album” Solo Album & More

Lloyd Landesman grew up in Forest Hills, Queens, New York alongside other musical luminaries, including The Ramones, Mountain’s Leslie West and Simon & Garfunkel. He began playing in bands in the mid-1960s culminating with the self-titled release Haystacks Balboa in 1970. He was signed to Polydor Records with an album produced by the legendary George “Shadow” Morton, and went on a national tour opening for Jethro Tull, The Faces (including Rod Stewart), Ten Years After, Savoy Brown, Eric Burden and War. His 1970s were spent playing and recording in top-notch studios around New York and Florida, ultimately rubbing shoulders with the likes of Crosby, Stills & Nash, Robin Trower, and The Bee Gee’s; the Brothers Gibb were making music for Saturday Night Fever at this time.

In the early 1980s, Landesman worked and toured with Clarence Clemons and The Red Bank Rockers, Edgar Winter, Todd Rundgren and many others. A chance meeting with an old friend, Frank Aversa — who later produced The Spin Doctors — in late 1984 eventually led to a staff writer/producer job for Landesman at Sicurella/Smythe, a successful “jingle” company. It was then that his career took off, writing and arranging music for ad campaigns for Budweiser, Visa, Chevrolet, Ford, Mennen, Pepsi, and hundreds more. This commercial work includes the Nestle White Chocolate theme known as “Sweet Dreams” and the CBS NCAA College Football theme, which is in its 33rd broadcast season. He moved to another jingle company, Crushing Music, in 1987 and would pen work performed by Carl Perkins, Sam & Dave’s Sam Moore, Johnny Winter, Lonnie Mack, The Fabulous Thunderbirds, Los Lobos, Foreigner’s Mick Jones and Lou Gramm, and Squeeze; and that is just a short list of notables.

Landesman started his own production company, Red House Music, in 1993 and success continued. In 1999, Landesman added sound engineering to his resume, still engineering in his own Pro Tools studio this day. All the while in the 2000s, he wrote music for Sears, Subway, Kia, Fisher Price, Hasbro, Kay Jewelers (“Every Kiss Begins With Kay”), Subway (“Eat Fresh”) and Edible Arrangements.

But in 2007, on a whim, Landesman answered a Craigslist ad seeking a keyboardist for a jazz-fusion band. The results were a 2010 release of Meridian Voice’s Atypical Symmetry, as well as a long-standing relationship with bassist Paul Briscoe and guitarist and solo artist Randy McStine. In 2012, Landesman began work on what turned out to be a solo album, The Eleventh Hour, as released in early 2020.

On December 24, 2020, I had the pleasure of speaking with Lloyd Landesman via Zoom, as embedded below. We covered many facets of his career, including what led him to make The Eleventh Hour. More on Landesman, music included, can be found online at www.lloydlandesman.com.