Lighthouse Music from Tiny Waves on Vimeo.

Lighthouse music is a group of five young multi-instrumentalists from St. Augustine, Florida who make genre-bending music that, at times, breaks with conventional music wisdom and ventures into new sonic territory. With influences ranging from Bob Dylan, Tom Waits, Miles Davis and James Brown to Mozart, Ravi Shankar, Philip Glass and John Cage, they try and incorporate all the textures of the music they love and the music that has inspired us all for the last 500 years or more.

The group has the do-it-yourself attitude that has swept the music industry this last decade. With major Record labels crumbling faster than ever the band has chosen to work with local St. Augustine producer and artist Lu Rubino at The Fish Tank Studios to create their new album Only Human, due for release July 2011. The band has also taken it upon themselves to make their own stop motion music video entitled Moving On , book multiple tours spanning half of the continental US and build themselves the ultimate touring vehicle. Their full-size “Lighthouse” school bus not only runs completely on vegetable oil but sleeps eight, has electricity, g.p.s., and custom built compartments for their musical gear. If the music doesn’t catch your attention, I assure you the sight of the band heading down the freeway will. 

Lighthouse Music has quickly become a regional cult band with write-ups in all the local magazines and larger and larger crowds gathering at each successive show. The band has spent the last four years perfecting their live performance and it has paid off with expanding audiences throughout the southeast. Orlando weekly’s Bao Le-Huu says “St. Augustine’s Lighthouse Music – who deal in fierce, virtuosic experimentalism and travel around in a converted Vegetable oil bus – have the stuff to be underground legends” and “Look for St. Augustine dynamos Lighthouse Music to steal the show with their mind-melting experimental intensity.”

Consisting of five multi-instrumentalists, the band members continuously rotate instruments throughout each performance. This also allows them to utilize a huge array of instruments including, trumpet, flute, trombone, alto and tenor saxophone, tuba, xylophones, sitar, drum kit, various percussion instruments, turntables, five part vocal harmonies, accordion, melodica, keyboards, synthesizers and of course bass and guitar. Fusing a Mozart like melody over a James Brown rhythm section and Waits like vocal harmonies is no stretch for this group. “Throwing out the rule book is great, however you need to read it first,” Hart said. “Our only real rule is to continue being creative on a day to day basis.”

The band has been playing together for over four years, and although they now take the group very seriously, the project started out as a group of friends casually getting together and jamming. “We were all friends before we were band mates, and I think that’s what makes this band’s on-stage chemistry so good,” singer/bassist/drummer/xylophonist/trumpeter Cody Wicker said. From jamming in bedrooms and basements to recording and playing clubs, they always put friendship and creativity before business. “Lighthouse Music is a group based entirely in the art of creative expression; we take textures, volume, theatrics, timbre and create something new that you can call music, theater, or performance art, but really it’s just our personal celebration of life and death.”