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4/5: Ever Mind the Pollak, Here’s…
April 5, 2013
Go-to blues authority and pedigreed purist John Hammond “arrives like a big train coming” in a concert TONIGHT at Monmouth University; one of a springtime slate of Performing Arts shows that further features the MU debut of Southside Johnny AND the return of Roger McGuinn.
Press releases, for the Center for the Arts at Monmouth University! We’re happy to be able to do them…and happier still to share the word on FOUR forthcoming shows (brought to you by Vaune Peck, Eileen Chapman and the terrific team at Center central) on the stage of the Pollak Theatre; beginning TONIGHT with seasoned stringbender John Hammond, and continuing with appearances by Step Afrika, Southside Johnny and the return of Roger McGuinn!
Bluesmaster Hammond Booms the Room
Tom Waits called his sound “compelling, complete, symmetrical and soulful; a “great force of nature” that arrives “like a big train coming.”
“A virtuoso. A conjurer. A modernist,” said no less an authority on American music than T-Bone Burnett. “The language goes out through the night…The Big Boom. Boom the room.”
The performer they’re talking about is John Hammond, an artist with a recording career that dates back 50 years — and with a name that in and of itself conjures an entire American century of world-shaking sounds.
As musical pedigrees go, they don’t come much more awesome than being the son of legendary record man and activist John H. Hammond — the same Hammond who’s credited with discovering everyone from Basie to Billie Holliday, Bob Dylan to the Boss. That said, John Paul Hammond has independently and indisputably forged a name for himself as a master blues guitarist and vocalist; a Blues Hall of Famer and multiple Grammy nominee whose recorded debut in 1962 served to keynote a journey that would take in eclectic collaborations with the likes of Waits (whose music formed the foundation of 2001’s Grammy-nominated Wicked Grin), Dr. John, Duane Allman, Robbie Robertson, and G. Love.
The man who once boasted both Eric Clapton and Jimi Hendrix in his band continues to stake his considerable reputation on his skills as a solo performer — and on the evening of Friday, April 5, the ongoing journey brings John Hammond to the stage of one of the area’s premier venues for acoustic music, the Pollak Theatre at Monmouth University.
Presented as part of the 2012-2013 Performing Arts Series by the Center for the Arts at Monmouth, the 8 p.m. event finds Hammond doing what he does best — delivering the blues, through his big voice and harmonica and National guitar — in a way that renders any further embellishment moot. With acoustic blues having been rediscovered — as it has been every so often, by a new generation of fans — Hammond stands uniquely poised to “show them how it’s done,” with laserlike focus, crossroads authority and a youngblood troubador’s passion that hasn’t dimmed a lick since he emerged from the Greenwich Village scene of the early 1960s.
Fans of homegrown blues are in for an additional treat, as the concert features a special guest opening set by Billy Hector, the veteran slide guitarist, blues belter and songsmith whose résumé as a bandleader (Hot Romance, The Fairlanes, The Shots) and solo performer has seen him share the stage as a peer of some of the most formidable names in music (including the late blues pioneer Hubert Sumlin) — and dazzle crowds with regular headline spots at Jersey Shore Jazz and Blues Festival events. It promises to be a fine fit for Hammond, who remains an artist with impeccable taste in music, his instrument, and the audience he plays to. ($30/ take it here for tix)
2/19: Mooche Strikes Up the Band
February 19, 2013
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Conductor Joe “Mooche” Muccioli stands in front of the big-band “freight train” that is the Red Bank Jazz Orchestra, when the 17 piece organization takes to the Basie boards for the first in a new series of themed concert events this Sunday, February 24.
Red Bank doesn’t have riverboat casino gambling. There’s no year-round Santa Claus Village; no go-kart track. You’ll need to head way out of town to take a winery tour, or find a decent Shad Festival.
What the town does have is its very own Red Bank Jazz Orchestra — a 17 piece organization of “first call” cats that’s a source of some pride for the borough that birthed the great William “Count” Basie, and the envy of pretty much anyplace this side of Lincoln Center.
Conducted by Red Bank’s own Joe Muccioli — globe-trotting jazz scholar/arranger/bandleader, and artistic director of the borough-based nonprofit Jazz Arts Project — the RBJO is identified most closely with the Sinatra Birthday Bash, the annual event that commandeers the Count Basie Theatre for a tribute to The Chairman of the Board. The momentum generated by those Sinatra salutes over the course of the past six years (and the collective itch by the assembled players to do this more than once or twice a year) spurred the man they call “Mooche” to look into starting up a series of showcase concerts starring the Red Bank Jazz Orchestra — a slate of events that would team the RBJO with special guest performers, and spotlight great composers or classic musicians.
This Sunday afternoon, February 24, the first of two scheduled Jazz Orchestra events at the Basie gets underway, when intrepid trombonist Wycliffe Gordon joins maestro Mooche and the gang for a happening that’s being called nothing less than “a soulful journey through jazz history.”
Getting underway at 4 pm — an hour that traditionally seems more suited to a Sunday-in-the-park serenade or backyard barbecue karaoke, than a big-city blast of Le Jazz Hot — the inaugural RBJO event teams Muccioli — a man who’s worked with everyone from the London Philharmonic to Joe Piscopo — with Gordon, a veteran of the Wynton Marsalis Septet who’s known to fans of NPR’s All Things Considered for his arrangement of the venerable program’s theme — and whose eclectic catalog of recordings includes last year’s Dreams of New Orleans.
Monmouth County jazz-blues chanteuse Layonne Holmes — known for her work with Tim McLoone, Bob Bandiera, Springsteen, Bon Jovi and more — joins the band for a special set of numbers that include the rarely performed Duke Ellington composition “Tell Me It’s the Truth,” from Ellington’s 1966 Sacred Concert. Returning to Red Bank to steer the caboose of the RBJO’s musical “freight train” will be the man they call the World’s Most Recorded Drummer, Bernard “Pretty” Purdie — a legendary session sticksman whose seemingly impossible resume encompasses everyone from Satchmo, Sinatra, Steely Dan and The Stones, to James Brown, Aretha Franklin, BB King and country hat Alan Jackson.
Next up for Mooche and company is a long-awaited April 14 “Gershwin Spectacular” that pays homage to the works of George Gershwin — as interpreted by Miles Davis and Gil Evans, whose monumental musical collaboration has been the subject of Muccioli’s scholarship and expertise. Grammy nominated trumpet ace Jon Faddis joins the RBJO for a program highlighted by the epic Davis-Evans take on Porgy & Bess.
Your upperWETside correspondent spoke to Joe Muccioli (whose many stories involve everyone from Frank Sinatra Jr. to Manuel Noriega…think about writing those memoirs, Mooche) over espresso in the conversation pit of his Red Bank home and Jazz Arts command center. Flip the record over for more…
2/14: Pinsky’s Jazzy Samurai Song
February 14, 2013
Former US Poet Laureate (and Long Branch native) Robert Pinsky returns to the Monmouth University stage on February 15, with a words-and-music performance entitled PoemJazz. (Photo by Eric Antoniou)
In an interview that appeared almost four years ago on our since-skyfallen Red Bank oRBit site, Robert Pinsky waxed rhapsodic about Long Branch, the seaside city of his youth; telling us “In the Golden Age, you could have a Ballantine’s and a Max’s hot dog when Max’s was on the boardwalk side of Ocean Avenue. When there was a Long Branch boardwalk! Pizza at Freddie’s or Nunzio’s, clams at Danny Maher’s. Crabbing at Pleasure Bay, the circus at Flanagan’s Field. Tea dances at Red Bank Catholic.”
Pinsky — the internationally renowned, Pulitzer-lauded author of more than a dozen volumes of poetry and essays on art — was briefly back on his old turf for a reading appearance at Monmouth University, and a preview of his 2009 book Thousands of Broadways; a meditation on the “Dreams and Nightmares” of small town American life. The man who produced what for many is the definitive translation of Dante’s Inferno — and who served for an unprecedented three terms as Poet Laureate of the United States — had visited Monmouth U previously (even giving the commencement address one year). But when he stepped out onto the stage of the Pollak Theatre that March, he may not have realized at the time that he’d be making the West Long Branch campus a habit.
For a formidable figure who earned a doctorate in philosophy (in addition to many major awards and fellowships), Robert Pinsky has remained an approachable advocate for the role of poetry in mainstream 21st century life. It’s a mission that’s seen him consent to appearances on The Simpsons and The Colbert Report — and a calling that’s seen its purest expression in the Favorite Poem Project, in which Americans from all walks of life were recorded reading and discussing the works of verse that have meant the most to them.
The past few years have seen Pinsky — a genuine jazz aficionado and amateur saxophonist — step up his schedule of appearances in which he performs his poetry to the accompaniment of live jazz musicians. It’s a mode of expression that the Laureate has branded PoemJazz, and it’s an attraction that returns to the Pollak stage on Friday, February 15.
The 7:30pm performance is a followup to a 2012 event at Monmouth, in which Pinsky was joined by the New York-based double bassist Ben Allison. Since that time, Pinsky has released his first words-and-music CD, also called PoemJazz — a set that finds the poet collaborating with pianist Laurence Hobgood on an array of compositions that range from the intensely musical “The City” and the Pinsky favorite “Samurai Song,” to a rendition of the 17th century Ben Jonson verse “His Excuse for Loving.”
Pinsky — who’s jammed live with a variety of instrumentalists, and in settings ranging from duo to quintet — will be rejoined by Allison (as well as by guitarist and Allison bandmate Steve Cardenas) for Friday night’s fricassee of verse and vibe; an event that promises to recall some of the best sonic experiments of the Beats (minus the bongo’d cliches), while custom-crafting a zone that’s pure Pinsky perfection.
Your upperWETside correspondent had the tremendous honor of conducting a virtual interview with America’s pre-eminent ambassador of the spoken word, a few days prior to the Monmouth stopover….and it’s all here, at the flip of a pixelated page…
1/16: Denny’s Grand Slam for Supper
January 16, 2013
Moody Blues founding father and McCartney deputy Denny Laine’s in Asbury town on Friday, January 18, and Tim McLoone’s got ‘em — PLUS he’ll be joined by international musical man of mystery Peter Asher for a salute to The Beatles’ ABBEY ROAD that’s also keyed to this weekend’s Light of Day lulu.
Neveryoumind for a moment that the record album it graces is merely one of the most monumental in pop music history — when it comes to Abbey Road, the cover image alone is the stuff of primal-brain racial memory, and of a trillion cell-phone-shutterbug tourist recreations. But who among us can truly presume to walk in the zebra-crossing footsteps of the Fabbest?
Denny Laine, that’s bloody who. The man who spent nearly an entire platinum-plated decade as Paul McCartney’s guitarist-vocalist-secret weapon soulmate in Wings was front and center for some of the most rollickingly ubiquitous AM/FM clock radio blockbusters of the 1970s, from the smoothie-sweet “My Love” to the naughty glam-rock boogie of “Hi Hi Hi,” the mind-boggling march of “Let ‘Em In,” the orchestral license-to-thrill of the Bond theme “Live and Let Die” and the entire music-mad panorama of creative zenith Band on the Run. That’s his guitar pyrotechnics on “Helen Wheels;” his songwriting skills on the UK standard “Mull of Kintyre;” his harmony (and occasional lead) vocals all over the grooves of LPs that spanned 1971′s throwaway Wild Life to 1979′s curtain-closer Back to the Egg. And that’s surely enough to coast upon for most.
Consider, though, that the veteran British rocker born Brian Hines was also present at the creation of another essential band of the firstwave Brit Invasion — The Moody Blues, for whom he sang the smash hit “Go Now” in those innocent days before all the mellotrons and musicians-union helpers. Inbetween-times saw him serving stints in Ginger Baker’s Air Force (and a band by the name of Balls), his own String Band and a long line of solo projects that include the McCartney-produced Holly Days and a seemingly inevitable CD salute to Wings. On Friday, January 18, the long and largely linear road brings the 68 year old Laine to the stage of Tim McLoone’s Supper Club for a special presentation entitled, with self-explanatory succinctitude, Abbey Road Memories.
The latest in the “Masters of Music” series (produced by Sammy Boyd and hosted by McLoone), the 8pm program finds the singer and storyteller recreating that final Beatles recording from lip to label — as well as other Fab Four faves, his own career milestones, and a merry mashup of hits (by The Hollies, The Zombies, Pink Floyd and more) that all happen to have been birthed in the booths of London’s iconic Abbey Road studios.
He’ll be backed for the occasion by the full faith and credit of the Abbey Road Band (drummer Steve Aho, bassist Bill Cinque, guitarist Brian Pothier, multi-instrumentalist Jeff Alan Ross) — and he’ll be welcoming a guest-star mini-set by none other than Brit-pop contemporary, eminent producer and legendary record man Peter Asher, making an encore appearance on the Supper Club stage (and all within eyeshot of Convention Hall, where his chart-topping duo act Peter and Gordon performed way back in the day). By the way, Laine and Asher will be among the stars (including Oscar-nommed Gary Busey!) who are slated to pay tribute to Buddy Holly at Iowa’s Surf Ballroom on February 2 — the same date (and the same venue) associated with the “Day the Music Died” deaths of Holly, Richie Valens and The Big Bopper.
As if that’s not enough to digest, Friday’s suppertime-smorgasbord musical menu further features a compliments-of-the-chef guesting by Kate Taylor, accomplished singstress and sister of Asher discovery (and Apple Records signee) James Taylor. It’s all offered up as part of the 2013 Light of Day smorgasbord going on across Asbury Park (and its suburb, NYC) between tonight, January 16, to Sunday January 20. All proceeds benefit the Light of Day Foundation and its ongoing research/ awareness efforts in the fight against Parkinson’s Disease; looky here for a breakdown of events, including the Asbury Angels induction show, an exclusive Boss video presentation, a Fourth Avenue salute to the late lamented Fast Lane, and the centerpiece sold-out concert under the Paramount proscenium.
Take it here for our June 2012 interview with Peter Asher — and flip the record over for a trip down Memory Laine…
1/15: A Border Crossing in Red Bank
January 15, 2013
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Grammy’d-up singer-songwriter Christopher Cross comes to Red Bank’s Two River Theater for an Intimate Evenings concert (and a benefit for Sandy Relief) on Thursday, January 17.
To a huge cross section of humanity, his songs are integrated with the Soundtrack To Our Lives — whether the Number One hit ballad “Sailing” was on the turntable during a certain memorable moment in your adolescence, or whether “Ride Like the Wind” was part of the choral curriculum in Mr. Grueter’s fifth-period music class, or whether “I Will (Take You Forever)” was danced to at your sister’s wedding, or whether you just heard “Arthur’s Theme (Best That You Can Do)” piped into the Shop-Rite not ten minutes ago.
Yet, for all of the units he sold back around the turn of the 1980s; for all of the awards that have made his trophy case buckle and groan — no less than five Grammys, a Golden Globe, and even an Oscar for that theme to the 1981 Dudley Moore comedy — we tend to know precious little about Christopher Cross.
Even if you do happen to know a thing or two about the smooth-tenor voiced (but low-key as regards his public persona) singer and songwriter, you might be surprised to find that the San Antonio native divides his residential time between his Texas stomping grounds and Manhattan’s Chelsea neighborhood. You probably wouldn’t be at all surprised to know that he continues to release new albums of precision-crafted pop music, and to play dozens of live concerts every year — a line of endeavor that brings him to the stage of Two River Theater this Thursday night, January 17.
The 7:30 pm show is the latest in an ongoing series of “Intimate Evenings” events produced by MusicWorks Entertainment, the concert promotion and production company co-founded by former Count Basie Theatre Foundation CEO Rusty Young. In keeping with the MusicWorks mission statement, portions of proceeds will benefit the nonprofit Hurricane Sandy Relief Foundation and its network of locally based humanitarian and restoration efforts.
Expect the expected on Thursday, in the form of those signature standards rendered with an angelic tone that hasn’t coarsened or dulled over the oceans of time that have passed since their release. Expect as well the unexpected, in the form of songs from such recent projects as 2011′s Dr. Faith — an album that proves Cross has ceded none of his claim to being king of the adult-contemporary love song, soft-rock candy mountain (“When You Come Home”). It also amps up the chunky guitars in a manner that might pop a monocle or two — and on compositions like “I’m Too Old For This,” introduces us to an Angry (but still sweet-voiced) Chris who rails against “the willful ignorance across the nation…the screaming yahoos on every station.”
UpperWETside spoke to the affable, down-to-earth Cross, somewhere between the Moon and Red Bank Borough…
12/11: A (Not So Secret) Santa for SB
December 11, 2012
Kirk out, baby — Jersey Shore barband legend Brian Kirk and his band of partystarting Jirks come to the Count Basie on December 20, as the Red Bank venue hosts a sold-out Sea Bright Rising benefit for the people and places of Kirk’s spiritual homeland.
The way that Brian Kirk tells it, the slender “city” of Sea Bright “has been my home in more ways than one…it’s where I met my wife, where I spent my youth and is the home base for my cover band, Brian Kirk & the Jirks.”
Although his long-running combo continues to gig regularly around the region’s wedding halls and nitespots, the Red Bank resident’s legacy as an entertainer is forever intertwined with Donovan’s Reef, the local-landmark beach bar (and “only piece of oceanfront property open 365 days a year between Sandy Hook and Cape May”) where the Jirks held down a Sunday night stand that outlived nearly all the original anchors of 60 Minutes.
It’s also the place where Kirk served as organizer, impresario and all-around Toastmaster General of Dunesday, the annual day-long beach blanket benefit that served as a fun(d)raising vehicle for a series of hyperlocal charitable causes — in addition to being a shining example of good old fashioned Jersey Shore hedonism.
With Superstorm Sandy having (at least temporarily) consigned Donovan’s Reef to Davy Jones’ Locker, the man who once upon a time raised money for victims of Hurricane Katrina looks homeward — to the people and institutions that have suffered the most during the Dark Ages of the October 29 aftermath. On the evening of Thursday, December 20, Kirk teams up with the seagrass-roots organization Sea Bright Rising for a benefit show from which all proceeds will go directly to Sea Bright “residents, businesses and the community as a whole.”
Occurring in the wake of the December 5 concert that brought San Francisco-based band Train to the edge of the battered borough’s tent city, the special Santa for Sea Bright extravaganza (officially sold out as of this posting) takes place on the stage of the Count Basie Theatre — the curiously elegant setting for one of the displaced town meetings in recent weeks. Kirk and assembled Jirks will be joined for the 7:30pm show by a fellow stalwart of the Shore barscape (championship bluesmaster Matt O’Ree), as well as a promised set of “special guests” that includes TV series star (Crossing Jordan, Law & Order) turned singer and songwriter Jill Hennessy.
The Awesome Music and Offensive Jokes Desk at upperWETside caught up with a beyond-busy Kirk for a conversation about good times, hard choices, and the big challenges facing the little town that so many of us feel a connection to.
12/4: Big Bash for Blue Eyes, at Basie’s Place
December 4, 2012
Frank Sinatra and Count Basie — seen suiting up for an episode of the 1960s TV variety show Hollywood Palace — return in spirit this Friday night, when the birthday of the Skinny Kid from Hoboken is celebrated in song at the venue named after the legendary “Kid from Red Bank.”
Call it Frank’s World — a land that stretches from the Hoboken clamhouses where a young and skinny Frank Sinatra first sang for his supper; to the Atlantic City casinos and big-town auditoriums where the established entertainer played to sellout crowds well into his eighth decade. And in between, a thousand pizza joints and ristorantes where the Sinatra soundtrack has never stopped.
Frank’s World took a beating all around when superstorm Sandy swaggered through the region — a catastrophe that birthed a bevy of benefit concerts, and allowed the area’s professional musicians to step up in the way that musicians have long been known to do. It’s a phenomenon about which Joe Muccioli observes, “I know people who have been on call to take part in all sorts of benefit events, who are themselves in the same boat as the hardest-hit people in the area.”
The conductor of the 18 piece Red Bank Jazz Orchestra (and artistic director of the borough-based nonprofit Jazz Arts Project) returns to the Count Basie Theatre this Friday for one of his most passionate pet projects — the Sinatra Birthday Bash, the sixth annual edition of which takes the famous stage of the place named for one of Sinatra’s favorite partners in swing, William “Count” Basie, at 8 pm.
The legacy of the Jersey-bred Chairman of the Board (born 97 years ago this December 12) will once again be celebrated in song and in style, with Muccioli and the RBJO backing a cast of performers that traditionally “runs the gamut from journeyman saloon singers, to soap opera actors, to total novices with a dream.” Adding to the backstory for the event is the fact that most of the participating vocalists hail from many of the most Sandy-savaged places on the map — and adding to the advance buzz is the eleventh-hour addition of a special return guest who also happens to be a supreme Sinatra fan.
11/29: Finding Mr. Wright, on a Steamy Night
November 29, 2012
Talk about bringing down the house before he plays so much as a lick: Red Bank-based blues/ reggae specialist (and bats-left guitarist) GARY WRIGHT has had to postpone his first full-length gig in several seasons this Friday night — scheduled for the historic Woman’s Club as the latest in a series of Reckless Steamy Nights — due to falling ceilings and other not-uncommon maladies benighting the life of a dedicated bluesman. (photo by Terri GO Seminoles Walliczek)
It was no less an old bluesman than John Lennon who said, “the blues is a chair, not a design for a chair or a better chair…it is a chair for sitting on, not for looking at. You sit on that music.”
Of course, when the person in the chair is someone with the skills and savvy of Gary Wright, that functional piece of furniture can be a throne of kings. The Red Bank-based singer and guitarist (who, just to clear things up, is not this Gary Wright) shares a love and a passion for the blues with a great many other veteran performers on the Shore soundscape — but in the hands of this southpaw stringbender, the legacy of the earliest blues recording artists comes alive. You hear the wise cat’s instinctive sizing up of the room and the audience; the troubador’s sense of social justice, and the crossroads at which the scholar’s pure research transmutes into joyous poetry.
Talking to the native of Syosset, Long Island, you also get to meet the supreme baseball fan — the kind who recalls every detail of a childhood trip to see the infamous 1962 Mets play the Mays-McCovey-Marichal era Giants at the old Polo Grounds. The kind who can rhapsodize for hours on the awesome 1970s era of Pete Rose, Reggie Jackson, Thurman Munson. The kind who actually got the opportunity to try out for the Yankees in 1984, as a lefthanded-hitting outfielder.
Boss Steinbrenner’s loss was ultimately the regional music scene’s gain, as Wright — a Red Banker for the past 28 years — would become known as co-fronter (with ex-wife Jennifer Wright on vocals) of Terraplane Blues, a band that released two CDs, played several major blues festivals, opened for some pretty legendary acts, and even made it to the finals of the 2000 International Blues Challenge in Memphis.
In the years since the Terraplane was permanently garaged, Wright has gigged extensively with reggae unit Predator Dub Assassins; sat in with his friend Chuck Lambert; produced the forthcoming CD by Richie Havens Band veteran Poppa John “Bug”; taken part in multi-artist benefits (such as a recent event in Asbury Park organized by the nonprofit Musicians on a Mission), and even showed up at the odd house party sort of affair — including, in the interest of full disclosure, a 2011 happening that took place at this correspondent’s digs inside the Stephen Crane House.
This Friday night, November 30, Gary Wright becomes the latest guest performer to join in the Shore’s longest-running house party — the Jersey Shore Jazz and Blues Foundation’s monthly series of Reckless Steamy Nights at the Woman’s Club of Red Bank. If you’ve yet to attend one of these unique and intimate events inside the historic Anthony Reckless estate on Broad Street, you owe it to yourself to take in some fine and fascinating sounds, take a tour of the landmark house, and take a break for conversation and refreshment with likeminded music fans. UpperWETside went looking for Mr. Wright, in advance of what promises to be his first (and, hopefully, far from his last) full-band solo showcase.
10/19: Beleaguered, Extraordinary Gents
October 19, 2012
Gentlemen, start your engineered-to-entertain diversions: the interlude prior to Halloweekend brings the end (for now) of some favorite things (including Asbury’s Showroom Cinema, shuttered now in its historic location but soon to re-open in its new ‘n improved Three Screen Circus) — as well as a gloriously sputtering spate of ongoing activities that range from the tried and true (Capitol Steps and David Bromberg at the Basie), the reimagined (once more into Shakespeare’s HENRY V), the NEW and never-seen (Chunksaah’s kid-friendly Playdate event at the Lanes, the area debut of Tinariwen), and the “new old school” thrill that is Mel Stultz’s highly anticipated Race of Gentlemen on the Allenhurst/Loch Arbour sands.
Take a whammy-eyed look at our Mad Monster Party Halloween roundup here on the upperWETside for deep dark details on excursions like Brookdale Haunted Theater, Camp Evans Base of Terror, Haunted Train Rides at Allaire, and the somewhat less campy but appreciably atmospheric Ghosts of Historic Fort Hancock walk. Then don your motoring cap, goggles and scarf, and meet us at the starting line for another dastardly dozen or so ways to decorate that gourd…
10/17: Bouncing into PLAYDATE
October 17, 2012
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Bouncing Souls frontman Greg Attonito joins singer-songwriter-spouse and PLAYDATE partner Shanti Wintergate for a special all-ages party celebrating the release of IMAGINATION, the debut “kindie-rock” release from the creators of the kids’ book I WENT FOR A WALK.
This one’s just TOO made to order: an event and an ongoing story that touches the aged punk rocker within us; by extension the clueless “cool parent,” and particularly the guy who worked for years in the cut-throat, mercenary world of children’s publishing — designing, copywriting and ghost-illustrating titles in the Clifford the Big Red Dog and Bill Cosby’s Little Bill series, among other things.
Most of all, this is a NEIGHBORHOOD story for us — said nabe being the eastern end of Fourth Avenue in Asbury Park, where we make our home (and our lonely writer’s garret) inside the historic haunts of the Stephen Crane House. Just cattycorner ‘cross the street from Crane’s Crib is the rambling, whimsically arcane ‘n eldritch place known as Little Eden — world headquarters/ clubhouse to The Bouncing Souls and the epicenter of that always-amazing combo’s Chunksaah Records empire. Wave to proud proprietress and Souls den mother Kate as you stroll past, then proceed down the street to the Fellini-esque pageant that we can all call our Corner Bar — everyone’s retro tenpins taproom (turned alterna-arts odditorium) Asbury Lanes.
It’s here on the sprawling steps of Little Eden — one of those majestically seedy old Asbury houses; combining the grooviest attributes of The Monkee’s TV pad, the Sanctum of Doctor Strange, the House of 1000 Corpses and your favorite aunt’s sunlit, frozen-in-time “cottage” — that Souls singer Greg Attonito is joined by his collaborator in the “kindie-rock” project known as Playdate, wife and singer-songwriter-actress Shanti Wintergate. And it’s there at the Lanes that the co-creators of the children’s book I Went for a Walk will set up shop on the afternoon of Saturday, October 20, for a special kid-friendly show celebrating the release of the debut Playdate CD, Imagination.
