The Tiny Lights were one of the most original folk-rock groups of the 80's. They were from Hoboken, NJ, and leveraged the 3 natural talents of Donna Croughn (vocals and violin), John Hamilton (guitar), and Jane Scarpantoni (cello).

Their songs blended each one's eclectic talents in a folk-pop that was tenuous and innocent, veined of jazz and funk elements, that transported listeners back to the utopian atmospheres and naive experiments of the 1960s, with an approach and a music that recalled the fragile hallucinations of Joseph Byrd (United States Of America).

They debuted with Prayer For The Halcyon Fear (Uriel, 1985), like latter-day hippies hypnotized by celestial atmospheres and gentle harmonies, mimicking The Mamas & The Papas in Country Song with period vocal harmonies at a brisk pace, and early Jefferson Airplane in Singing At Your Door, with refrains in crescendo and instrumental magic. Meanwhile, they updated the "hare Krishna" marches of the hippies in Sweet Solutions, and raga-rock in the exotic tiptoeing dance Song Of The Weak, and harked back to the carefree era of the girl-groups in G Does The Limbo, and evoking the idealistic era of psychedelic experiments in Blue Dot Cleanser.

Dominated by Scarpantoni's quasi-jazz contributions, Hazel's Wreath (Gaia, 1988) further refined their rather reserved science of arrangements halfway between folk tune and renaissance hymn, while exploiting to the maximum the power of sweet vocal harmonies and simple melodies to the utmost. The group digressed every so often into extravagant blues-jazz (The Bridge), and in intriguing equatorial swamp chants (Before You Go). The album is a festival of accordions, saxophones, tabla, sitars, mandolins, violins, flutes, mellotrons, trombones, and tubas; instruments that slip in and out of the counterpoint, always with tact and discretion. Capricious Yearnings is characteristic of the band's corruption of folk-rock with a mix of dancing riffs a` la Neil Diamond and symphonic arrangements a` la Moody Blues. Theirs is a surreal circus of mutant, polychromatic, heterodox songs in wich melodies, rhythms and arrangements spin around like on a roller coaster (Colors And The Light, Grown-Up Fish).

Know It You Love, recorded in 1989, remained unreleased. Several songs were revived for the anthology The Young Person's Guide (Bar None, 1995).

Their mature the album was Hot Chocolate Massage (Absolute A Go Go, 1990), still anchored to the dualism between delicate singsongs (Moonwhite Day) and gritty rock'n'roll (Wave, worthy of Led Zeppelin, and Sweet Romance, almost Jimi Hendrix-ian). What is at its best, above all, is the instrumental skills of the group (now a sextet), that even takes liberties in the jumbled blues-jazz-gospel pastiche of Closer. The majesty of the melody in Lavenderman takes a secondary role to the instrumental bridge that easily and effortlessly weaves together steps of raga and folk. The group also succeeds in creating a vignette of the 1930s in Big Straw Hat. Even if the album is missing a unitary theme, i Tiny Lights remain among the most creative promoters of folk-pop in minor key.

Having lost Scarpantoni, but boasting string arrangements even more refined than in the past, Stop The Sun (Dr Dream, 1992) dulls their ethereal and pastoral image but not their ability to engineer suave psychological excavations like Sugar and Everybody's In The Park, which 10,000 Maniacs can only envy. The tender side of the group is on display in the jazzy and dreamy It's Really A Happening (an ode to death), and in the slow and fainting Papermoon. The omnipresent violins are particularly effective in the solemn elegy of All To You, and in the heroic lullaby of Big Ghost. A bit of kitsch raged disguised as a rhythm and blues horn fanfare in Curleyeyed Open Stare and Better, and is functional to the grand finale of Planet Love, a lengthy jam with a heavenly choir. There are even some rock tracks, from the "rave-up" instrumental of Facedown to the vibrant Miss Hose. Every track is alive with tremulous emotions, conveyed in exquisite melodies.

Croughn and Hamilton put together a new line-up for Milky Juicy (Dr Dream, 1994), perhaps their most eclectic album, or at least an ambitious compendium of their precious art-form. Catherine Bent on cello, Andy Demos on percussion, Dave Dreiwitz on bass, Andy Burton on electric piano, and John Kruth on mandolin and flute reinforce the chamber scores. In the least interesting scores (the disco vignette of Spinning and the deconstructed funk-jazz overture Ashtray) one can feel the influence of Frank Zappa, but in general the songs are fundamentally simpler (even though more varied, from the dixieland dance that breaks out in Less Is More to the full-throttle hard-rock of Shoulderback). The band's trademark is, if anything, to deform everything with a lyrical and eccentric sensibility: a rant worthy of Neil Young like Rattling avails itself of the backing vocals of Croughn, and the folk carol I Don't Enjoy Life ends in an uproar of harmonica and mandolin. The post-modern masterpiece Circle Sky, in just 2 minutes, retraces the paths of rhythm and blues, of Tommy Roe's marching ditties, of the classic riff of Hang on Sloopy, and of the vocal harmonies of the Beatles.

The Smaller The Grape The Sweeter The Wine (Bar None, 1997) marks instead a tired chapter in the history of this great group.

The Tiny Lights were heirs to the most underrated discovery of the 1960s, the naive and humble experimentation on the rock song, neither pompous nor violent, and they wed it to the new intellectual and alienated mood of the Hoboken school.

Andy Demos played on singer, songwriter and avant-folk guitarist Pamela Wyn Shannon's album Nature's Bride (2002). Jane Scarpantoni performed with Natalie Merchant, Indigo Girls, Sheryl Crow, Richard Barone, Crash Test Dummies, and many others.

Donna Croughn and John Hamilton got married (and Hamilton became a Harvard professor). Dave Driewitz (bassist) started recording and touring with Ween and launched a side project, Instant Death.