Lawn Boys make menagerie of music


By TIM MALCOLM
Norwich Bulletin
May 22, 2008

"There's a big difference between playing music and making music," said Max Browning, bassist of the Lawn Boys, a New London act that has been — of course — making music since the 1990s.

Playing a conglomoration of many styles of music, the Lawn Boys have had good success in the region, performing across New England to this day.

Though comprised of Browning, vocalist/string instrumentalist Steve Cleary, keyboarist Chris Pike and drummer Darren McGill, the Lawn Boys are practically never a quartet. They're joined regularly by percussionist Greg Hamby, percussionist Ian Kelly, oboist Dr. Harvey Snitkin and percussionist Ed Toth, who was the drummer for alt-rock band Vertical Horizon and is now a Doobie Brother.

Many of the band's members have had success away from the Lawn Boys. Browning was a musician for the musical "Godspell" and toured with the Guess Who. All the success and experience has led to a band that is able to pull from multiple genres and create arresting rhythms and melodies.

"Any other musician, you go through a phase where you listen to Thelonious Monk and say, 'I wanna do some of that,' " Browning said.

They'll take different instruments and incorporate them into their songs, then sometimes create entire songs for that instrument.

"It inspires you to do somethng," Browning said. "You can have a sitar and write a couple notes and put it in the background somehwere, or you can write a song for the sitar."

Lately they've been working with the theremin (the instrument that was originally thought to have given The Beach Boys' "Good Vibrations" its vibrations). Their model is a baby doll's head that, when playing, has laser-red eyes.

"That's the thing you see now on (our) t-shirts," Browning said. "It's a trip to play."
Or make.

Reach Tim Malcolm at 425-4242 or tmalcolm@norwichbulletin.com