Music
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The last band on the bill was Lawnchair. It was obvious that they were gonna bring a different flavor to the mix when the stand-up bass came out and then the mandolin and next an acoustic guitar. The four piece alt-country band turned the Royal into a real hoedown with their rustic bluegrass/old country influenced music. Suddenly being white trash sounded like fun! See ya at the next gathering. -Kat Dickinson - Music Monthly - 2/28/04
Lawnchair-
Truckstop Madonna
Atomic Twang
March 2005
Less is more for Baltimore indie-folksters Lawnchair. Their debut album, Truckstop Madonna, released on Hampden's Atomic Twang records, thrives on the simplicity of classic low-fi folk and alt-country. The drums are just a kick and snare, coaxed out gently with brushes. The guitars are all just plodding rootsy chord changes played low on the neck. Frontman Adam Miller sings with hoarse, pleasant disinterest, and Matthew Jenkin's mandolin lines are simple and under-produced.
Think of them as a Pure Prairie League on valium-Madonna is so noncommittal a record that the band's name makes clever, complete sense. But as a package, Madonna has the same continuity and effect as Nick Drake's Pink Moon or Neil Young's Harvest-the music eases into an effortless groove that is both sleekly done and that feels like every song could be played as the backdrop for the same movie scene: The sun is going down, the guy is making his bed, staring at the pillows, thinking about how he's going to be alone tonight; she's in her apartment across town, brushing her hair in long, slow strokes, remembering what it's like to be in his arms.
On "Looking Back," Miller bemoans his own retrospective: "There was a time when she was mine / But that didn't last-Everything is easier / When you're not looking back." He insists that if he saw his girl again, he wouldn't take her back. In "Powerlines," Miller deals in subtler images, a "skinny dog under the porch," an "old man barreling home, racing the tide," wind ripping power lines out from the ground. In another tune he compares having feelings of shame to trying to cover up his own footsteps in the snow.
Lawnchair has promise.....
-Robbie Whelan
- New Vibrations- 4/08/05
Discography
Truckstop Madonna - 2004
Hard to Swallow - 2007
Photos
Bio
American music - foot stomping and tear jerking. Lawnchair draws it’s sound from the roots of rock and roll and country music. The 4-piece ensemble conjures both acoustic and electric tones to create an alchemy of whiskey fueled honky tonk straight from the dust of loose porch boards and raucous old juke joints. Lawnchair delivers ballads and rafter rattlers with raw nerve emotion and sweat soaked intensity.
Hard to Swallow, Lawnchair’s second album, provides a closer look to the band’s live energy than their earlier mellower Truckstop Madonna. With it’s heart on it’s sleeve and it’s foot on the gas, Lawnchair is primed and ready to make you shake it with wild honky tonk abandon.
Lawnchair has shared the stage with national acts such as Malcolm Holcombe, Jason Ringenberg (Jason and the Scorchers), Eddie Spaghetti (Supersuckers) and Scott H. Biram to name a few.
Lawnchair has played many clubs in the Mid-Atlantic and elsewhere...
from the Knitting Factory and Pete’s Candy Store in NYC, the Ottobar in Baltimore, The Red and The Black in Washington DC to The Goodfoot and Duff’s Garage in Portland, Oregon.
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