Gary Lamb

by Linda KohanovLamb's music is exemplary of his early musical interests. The Northern California native grew up listening to R&B and was playing drums in Bay Area rock bands before the age of 20. Along the way, he dabbled in piano and actually took some time off from the club scene to concentrate on building his chops on that instrument. He recorded a couple of solo piano albums in the mid-'80s, eventually adding electronic keyboards to the mix on his 1989 release Watching the Night Fall, his first album to get national radio airplay. His subsequent recordings mix his love of catchy, generally cheerful, pop melodies with his penchant for rock & roll backbeats.