PROFILE | Lloyd Dobler Effect Will Debut Album at BlackRock

Lloyd Dobler Effect frontman Phil Kominski insists that the band’s namesake — John Cusack’s nerdy Casanova from the 1989 film “Say Anything” — is arbitrary and has nothing to do with trying to pick up women through song.

“We just liked the character,” Kominski said laughing, in an interview with Patch ahead of the band’s album release party in Germantown.

That said, the band plans to show its intimate side during an acoustic album release concert at BlackRock Center for the Arts on Friday, June 17. The Kominski said the new album, “The Experience Unplugged,” is a two-disc recording of live shows.  The band hopes to produce a show of the same ilk as MTV’s “Unplugged” series.

Lloyd Dobler Effect — LDE as their fans call them — is a modern rock band based in Montgomery County. Kominksi, 32, a former intern for Washington’s go-go king Chuck Brown, is the lead vocalist and plays guitar.

At BlackRock, LDE will be joined by saxaphonist Albert Ketler, pianist Chris Brooks, and his wife, singer song-writer Elizabeth Coyle Kominski, who is an English teacher at Northwest High School.

Now whether or not Kominski owns up to using sensitive artist approach to meet women, being in a band did help him meet his wife. Elizabeth Kominski attended an LDE show in Chapel Hill, N.C., and asked Phil if she could sing between one of their sets. He gave her a tentative “yes” — this isn’t the first time someone has asked to do this sort of thing.

But it worked out.

“She had this amazing voice, “ he said. “It was so pretty. She blew us away.”

Eilzabeth Kominski became a life partner and musical collaborator  — she’s featured on the upcoming live album. The Kominskis were married in 2005 and have a 2-year-old son. Elizabeth Kominksi is pregnant with their second child.

Phil Kominski said that really, LDE grew into a five-piece rock band from a childhood friendship between Silver Spring buddies, who were products of the 1980s. LDE built up a following by gigging in college town and following festival circuits, averaging about 250 shows a year.

All that roadwork secured a fan base so loyal that in 2007, when LDE’s trailer — full of $100,000 worth of equipment and instruments — was stolen at a tour stop in Chicago, fans raised $40,000 to band get back on the road.

“It was devastating, uplifting, aggravating, any feeling you could think of,” Kominksi said. “But the fact that we were able to get through it, I don’t know what else could stop us.”

 It’s for this reason that Kominski thinks LDE fans won’t mind LDE’s “alternative jazz and folk” format at BlackRock. Besides, you can year the regular LDE set at this year’s HFS Festival at Merriweather Post Pavillion in September.

 Kominksi said the band plans to release a studio album this fall.