Lammers veers from Sublime to Sinatra

He didn't know it back then, but simply hanging around the house and his neighborhood with his ears open eventually would serve Bryan Lammers well.

Lammers' dad was a drummer who once played a gig with Count Basie. So, every weekend during his Bronx, N.Y., childhood, Lammers was, as he puts it, "spoon-fed Frank Sinatra, Count Basie and Ella Fitzgerald as my parents were getting ready for church."

Then, outside of the house -- and like any other kid growing up in the '60s and '70s -- Lammers absorbed other music of the time, from The Temptations to The Rolling Stones to Jimi Hendrix.

Also like many other music-enraptured kids of his generation, it was seeing The Beatles on "The Ed Sullivan Show" -- and his parents' eventual gift of a Sears Silvertone electric guitar -- that prompted Lammers to take up music.

He played during high school and, afterward, played regularly around the city. For a time, he also held down a day job in the mailroom of an ad agency.

It turned out to be a good break, because the agency's creative department happened to be on the same floor as the mailroom. So, Lammers recalls, "I kind of gave them the hint that I played guitar, if they ever needed it."

It turned out they did, and Lammers became their go-to music guy, playing on demo ads even as he continued to perform evenings and weekends around town.

Lammers' long list of professional credits includes a tour with Grammy-nominated Heatwave and working as a session musician with such performers as Sarah Dash and The Cover Girls.

"I've always been kind of a team player," Lammers says. "I've never been the guy (who says), 'I'm gonna be the star.' I just did what I did, and my friends used to tell me, 'You know, you're the worst publicist of yourself, ever. Nobody would know all the things you do.' ''

In January 2005, Lammers and his wife, Nancy -- they have two children Eric, 5, and Rae Lynn, 3 -- moved to Las Vegas. After a career spent mostly working as part of an ensemble, Lammers now enjoys the freedom of working solo.

"I like all kinds of music, so I like to be able to turn on a dime when I need to, and to do it well," he says.

"I tell people I go from Sublime to Sinatra and all that's in between, and I like that. It works for me. People come to see me, and you can't set your watch by my set because I never know what I'm going to do myself."

Bryan Lammers plays at 7 p.m. Tuesdays through Saturdays in the Hostile Grape at M Resort.

-- By JOHN PRZYBYS