Black Lab Singer Can’T Stop Writing

Who knew a lawnmower could make such a perfect backup instrument.

But for Paul Durham, it was just the thing to start him down the road toward a rock musician’s life.

Growing up in Twin Falls, Idaho, he practiced his singing voice while mowing people’s lawns to earn money. “I liked it because I could sing super-loud and no one could hear me,” he says.

But these days it’s not a lawnmower backing up Durham’s dynamic voice. It’s the band Black Lab. Durham is the Berkeley, Calif.,-based band’s primary singer and songwriter. Black Lab performs at The Met Saturday night with Fuel.

Growing up in Idaho, Durham never felt like he belonged. “Everyone was either Mormon or right-wing Christian and I felt like me and my family were pretty different.” Raised with a mixture of Eastern spiritualism, the boy who loved punk rock and skateboarding found that studying hard was his ticket out of the small town.

He left Idaho to attend Whitman College in Walla Walla and then Oberlin College in Ohio. Although he was drawn to the study of philosophy and Judaism, Durham finally realized music was his calling.

“I just kept having these songs in my head,” he says. “Whatever I was doing I was constantly writing melodies and figuring out words. Finally I figured out this was the thing that was most persistently inserting itself in my life and it was also what I enjoyed the most.”

After spending time as a folk singer in Berkeley, Durham formed the rock band Black Lab with guitarist Michael Belfer, bassist Geoff Stanfield and drummer Bryan Head.

Their first album “Your Body Above Me” is full of swirling, melodic rock numbers wrapped in Durham’s sinewy voice. It has brought the song “Wash It Away” to radios across the country.

And it’s just what Durham wants to be doing.

“I love the miserable process of writing. I love going in the studio and getting it right. And I love performing.”

Fuel and Black Lab Saturday at The Met at 8 p.m. Tickets are $8, available through G&B outlets.