Justin Lavash has been working in music for more than twenty years. After his indie band fell apart in 1990 he moved to France and started performing in local venues, playing blues and busy learning fingerstyle guitar from Marcel Dadi records as well as learning some chanson francaise. He then moved back to London and started working on the burgeoning jazz scene of the early 90s. After that he found himself performing on cruise ships, backing stars of yesteryear in cabaret venues, session playing and transcribing. The strange mixture of styles that this work exposed him to began to show in the songs he was writing. He quit the cabaret circuit at the end of 2000, frustrated by the gruelling schedule of cabaret and session work and the styles of the music he was playing. Following a bad bicycle accident in 2004, he left London and moved to Prague. He has since worked and played with many key players from both the underground and mainstream in the Czech music scene: Monika Naceva, Vladimir Merta, DG307 and contributed lyrics and/or music to CDs by Sunflower Caravan and recently (Czech Andel award-winners) Lenka Dusilova and Michal Horáček. A guitarist with a unique style and rough voice who carves songs from many genres, his guitar playing has been described as being like an orchestra. His 4th CD, 25 Years, was released in May and features contributions from Lenka Dusilová, David Landštof and Beata Hlavenková amongst others. It was Uni magazine's CD of the month and was warmly received by the Czech national press. This is what the Czech Republic's top English language newspaper said about JL's last release in their end-of-year review of the four best CD releases of 2012 in the Czech Republic:
“Justin Lavash once described his music as tampered blues. He does much more than that, though. Live gigs betray Lavash's background in composition and arrangement, and concertgoers are often amazed at the big sound he is able to generate simply with voice and guitar. It shouldn't be a surprise, then, to see what Lavash is able to do with sparse but well-placed instrumentation on his latest CD. Seducing the listener, 25 Years at times gives nods to artists as varied as Big Bill Broonzy and Frank Sinatra, with the additions of 1970s R&B, UK second-wave folk, chamber pop and chanson. On 25 Years, producer and engineer Ian Kelosky has set a mark for recording quality rarely reached by independents in any genre.”
- Darrell Jonsson (for Prague Post's year in review: music releases)
