Many student musicians spend their free time writing original songs, and Linus Lawrence ’25 is no exception—in fact, he just finished writing an entire two-act musical for his senior capstone. So what does he do to relax? “The weird thing I do in my free time is that I just go into my room with a little notebook and I try and transcribe the Beach Boys’ vocal parts as closely as I can,” says Lawrence, the founder and lead creative of the Stowaways, a nine-person Beach Boys cover band formed in fall 2022.
The Stowaways is one of the many retro cover bands on campus that have gained popularity through live shows, Gigs on the Green, and A Night On College Hill performances, though it’s probably the most popular. Lawrence attributes this to their energetic show and “tight sound,” one achieved through structured rehearsals and careful vocal arrangements of six- to seven-part harmonies.
The Stowaways also remains fresh by modifying its set, keeping a few core Beach Boys titles while branching out into ’60s and ’70s classics—from the Beatles, Electric Light Orchestra, the Mamas & the Papas, and Fleetwood Mac—and adapting them to the harmony-forward style of ’60s music shaped by Brian Wilson.
The band’s “faithful recreation” of a sound from a different era is striking a chord on campus. “There are a lot of ’60s music fans that seem to have just kind of come out of the woodwork recently,” says Lawrence.
Liam Rogers ’25, bassist for the Stowaways and the Grateful Dead cover band Mud Room, agrees. “It’s kind of a novelty thing,” says Rogers. “A lot of people are like, ‘Oh yeah. My parents would put this on when I was little, and it’s so fun you’re doing it.’ And they know every word.”
Nostalgia isn’t the only reason why retro bands have succeeded on campus. According to JD Gorman ’26, bassist for the “jazz-inspired soul-funk-pop cover band” MOODRING, they’re also practical to get going—the songs are well-known, danceable, and sing-along-able, while still easy enough for students to learn.
“They’re popular songs from a time when music was pretty much fully instrumental,” Gorman says. “It wasn’t sampled, it wasn’t overly produced, so you can replicate it in a live setting. All the bands sort of have a similar instrumentation,” he explains, “I mean, save for, like the Stowaways, but they’re a 12-piece behemoth of a musical unit. Like that shit is crazy. Dude, who doesn’t want to be part of the Stowaways?”
Yet Lawrence says that when he invited various musicians and vocalists from across campus to a Beach Boys listening party in his room in fall 2022, he never expected any of them would accept his proposal to help realize his vision for the cover band. (All eight of them did.)
“I felt like a very uncool Nick Fury,” Lawrence says, referring to the fictional founder of the Avengers. “Then all of a sudden we cut to last spring,” he says. “I think we’ve become one of the go-to bands on campus to give people a good time. Ultimately, we don’t sound like any other band I’ve heard on campus. And I’m incredibly proud of that.”