NJ REP’S ‘PROMOTION’: THIS TIME IT’S PERSONNEL

Shore area natives John Caliendo and Sophia Parola are pictured in rehearsal for THE PROMOTION, the play that makes its world premiere in Long Branch this weekend. (photos by Andrea Phox Photography)

Published in The Coaster (Asbury Park, NJ) and The Link (Long Branch, NJ), March 5, 2020

“I tried to take on as many hot-button issues as I could with this play,” confesses playwright Joe Giovannetti. “You could say I put a lot of powder into the powderkeg!”

The play in question is The Promotion, a “comedy about surviving in the dog-eat-dog world of business” that will very shortly become the latest in a long line of shows to make its world premiere at New Jersey Repertory Company in Long Branch. The hot topics include race, gender, traditional social hierarchies, sexual tension, and the relentless reality-show competitiveness of modern life — in other words, just another day at the office break room for some — all of it framed in a way that’s “funnier than not funny…it’s a dark comedy, but the treatment of the content is serious.”

Speaking from his Chicago home, the writer-technician-designer-actor-director and sometime filmmaker insists that, while it’s set inside an insurance sales office, the play is not necessarily based on his own past job experience in a “pretty soft-edged” agency. Rather, it’s inspired by “any place where competition rules, and where people try to hack the system to get an edge…it’s a thing that’s baked into our culture, but it’s super-corrosive to treat every interaction as a competition.”

In the show that goes up in previews beginning tonight, March 5, a pair of co-workers named Trish (Sophia Parola) and Josh (John Caliendo) are insurance agents who exist on more or less equal footing in the company power structure — until an opportunity presents itself that both of them want, but only one of them can have. The subsequent jockeying for favor finds both the black woman and the white man exploring the outer limits of just how far they’d go to claim that sought-after prize.

As one of many NJ Rep offerings developed through the National New Play Network, The Promotion has been workshopped for audiences at DC’s Kennedy Center, as well as in Atlanta and Giovannetti’s home base of Chicago. That said, the official fully staged debut boasts an engagingly local angle in the casting of the leads, both new to the Long Branch stage. The young stage and screen veteran Caliendo is a native of Point Pleasant, while Manalapan-bred Sophia Parola is an alumna of both Monmouth University and Brookdale Community College, where she first caught the acting bug under the direction of the school’s longtime drama prof John Bukovec.

The two lead actors are joined by Chantal Jean-Pierre (as Lois, a senior colleague described by Giovannetti as a “voice of God” and “Greek chorus”), and by Broadway veteran Phillip Clark (as Mr. Buchanan, a businessman whose arrival impacts the office equilibrium from the outside). The cast of fresh faces is under the expert guidance of prolific director Evan Bergman, whose critically acclaimed projects for the Rep company now number upwards of a dozen (we’ve lost count).

While jokingly referring to his first-time alliance with Bergman as a “shotgun marriage,” the playwright credits the time that he spent working closely with his director in Atlanta for helping The Promotion get in shape for its premiere.

“Seeing this play being read for audiences three times in three different cities has been really helpful,” Giovannetti maintains. “I’m a white man who’s written a play with two black woman characters, and I appreciate talking to people about what I might have gotten right, or what might be off base.”

“The actors also bring generationally different perspectives to their characters,” the playwright says of the story in which the authority figures — the ones who wield the ultimate decision on that prize — are never seen. “The play does end in a fairly resolved way…just maybe not the way that you might have expected!”  

A ‘FAT SATURDAY’ MARDI GRAS ROLLS ON IN ASBURY PARK

Published in The Coaster (Asbury Park, NJ) and The Link (Long Branch, NJ), February 20, 2020

 “People love the idea of Mardi Gras in Asbury Park,” says Cindy Wolfson Ciullo — and, as the impresaria behind the area’s most “something-for-everyone” observance of Fat Tuesday, the owner of Asbury Park’s Backward Glances has almost singlehandedly spearheaded a hyper-local happening that fits right in with such “seagrass-roots” annual events as the original Zombie Walk, the Asbury Park Promenade of Mermaids (returning on July 11), and September’s AP Porchfest.

This Saturday, February 22, the Asbury Park Mardi Gras celebration returns to the downtown business blocks for a fifth annual slate of activities and entertainments, with the vendor of vintage clothing and nostalgic gifts (located on the lower level of the Shoppes at the Arcade mini-mall, 658 Cookman Avenue) serving as anchor site for the event that began as a promotion for the Downtown Merchants Guild in 2016 — and which survived the disbanding of that organization to take on a vivid life of its own.

As Wolfson Ciullo tells it, “My love of New Orleans inspired me to bring the party to New Jersey…we have many people who attend the (Masquerade Ball) every year, and the daytime events are a great way to show what the downtown has to offer.”

The “Fat Saturday” festivities kick off at noon with the King Cake Baby Hunt, an all-ages scavenger safari inspired by the Mardi Gras tradition of baking baby figurines or other symbolic trinkets into “king” cakes, the Carnival pastries that have historically commemorated the Magi’s presentation of gifts to the baby Jesus.

In this case, the babies are hidden inside various neighboring businesses around the Cookman Avenue corridor — with all who take part in the five-hour hunt invited to stop by Backward Glances to pick up a list of the scavenger sites (there’s no charge to participate in the event).

As Cindy explains, hunters should “visit the shops and find each baby…each one is holding a secret word. Write all the words on your entry blank, then return to the start and get a mini king cake as a reward.” In addition, all scavengers are encouraged to hang on to their lists for dropping off back at the Backward Glances base camp by 5 pm, since “a random entry will be chosen to win great prizes.”

At 2 pm the fun gets down on all fours, as the 2020 edition of the Mardi Paws Pet Parade invites proudly strutting pets and human handlers to dress up in festive regalia for a promenade that proceeds from out front of the Shoppes, continuing along Cookman Avenue, then returning to be judged in the costume contest for which prizes will be awarded in multiple categories.

Pet Parade participants can register in advance for a discounted $5 via Eventbrite.com, or sign up for a $7 fee on-site by 1 pm Saturday. All registration proceeds will help fund the good works of the Oakhurst-based nonprofit Wag On Inn Rescue, with additional information available by calling Paws Pet Boutique at Shoppes at the Arcade, 732-449-5000.

From there the good ship Mardi Gras finds Happy Hour harbor in a delightfully unusual port of call, as Taka (660 Cookman Avenue at Bond Street) offers revelers a selection of “Mardi Gras inspired cocktails and festive food with a Japanese flair” between the hours of 3 to 7 pm. It’s an aperitif to the evening’s centerpiece and main event, when Scott Stamper’s Main Street mainstay The Saint plays host once again to a musically minded Masquerade Ball.

Headlining the hullabaloo — as they’ve done each year since its inception — are The VooDudes, the Highland Park-based specialists in Big Easy bontemps roullez who are familiar from countless summer-stage appearances in Long Branch, Asbury, Red Bank and other shakin’ Shore points. Fronted for more than 25 years by guitars-and-drums brothers Gary and Dave Ambrosy (as well by vocalist, harmonicat and washboard-vest virtuoso Andy B, pictured), the globe-trotting and glove-tight quintet is charged once more with dialing up the cajun-spice heat on a midwinter’s night, there in downtown AP’s boxcar berthplace of rock and roll.         

JAMIESON’S SELECT: A JERSEY JESTER HOLDS COURT AT THE BRIGHTON BAR

Published in The Coaster (Asbury Park, NJ) and The Link (Long Branch, NJ), January 23, 2020

 It’s the kind of matchup of vaudeville and venue that makes perfect sense and fits like a warm winter glove; a cold night’s comfort that still manages to raise a delightfully hellacious noise.

For a run of nearly five years, the Bradley Beach-based music promoter Ben Puglisi’s DAA Entertainment has established bi-monthly base camp, at a like-minded local-scene landmark that’s specialized in the care, feeding, and nurture of homegrown “heavy” music, in all of its metal/ punk/ noise and just generally offbeat manifestations.

The ringmaster for those revels is Don Jamieson, the veteran purveyor of “slobservational” standup and “prank” humor who’s best known on the national/ international as longtime co-host (with Eddie Trunk and Jim Florentine) of the VH-1 series That Metal Show, as well as the SportsNet NY program Beer Money, and enough multi-platform plaudits to have earned standing as a King of Most Media (or at least a recognition as “TV’s Don Jamieson”).

The venue for that brand of vaudeville is none other than the Brighton Bar in the West End section of Long Branch, a place whose proudly proclaimed pedigree as The Home of Original Music on the Jersey Shore saw it sounding its keynote as a neighborhood “frosted mug”/ package goods joint with a postage-stamp hitching post stage, gaining regional cred through various changes of ownership (and the steadfast presence of longtime booker/ bandleader Jacko Monahan) — then, under the stewardship of punk musician turned barkeep (and “cool teacher” at the local HS) Greg Macolino,   soldiering on through an era when live music clubs were shuttering by the bucketload, and when even the storied Stone Pony was vacant (or, briefly,“Vinyl”).

Then there’s that Wall of Fame, a groovy grotto of reverent contemplation that attests to the little bar’s ability to attract a generation of acts from the fabled 1970s golden age of punk rock (The Dictators, The Dickies, The Damned, The Vibrators, and members of The Sex Pistols, Ramones, Dead Boys, X, The Stranglers, New York Dolls), as well as the decades beyond (Fountains of Wayne, Nashville Pussy, Ween). It’s been a place that’s welcomed everyone from Howlin’ Wolf guitarist Hubert Sumlin to that wand’ring-minstrel-in-search-of-a-gig named Bruce Springsteen; a sonic laboratory and spawning ground for stars to be (Monster Magnet, Godspeed) and a happy harbor for a thousand-and-one local/regional acts that flared ever so brightly and all too briefly (Laughing Soupdish, Secret Syde, Dirge…and yes, J’zzing was a thing). The kind of place where you’d find yourself at the next barstool with one of your rock idols from middle school days; an experience that you’d pay VIP Golden Ticket Ambassador Pope levels to attain in a more corporate concert context.

“That’s because there’s nowhere to hide at the Brighton!” laughs Jamieson in a call from his Monmouth County home. “There’s no star dressing room; the bands are right there with the fans, and it’s a loose relaxed vibe all around.”

“It’s a great place, with a great stage, and great sound,” says the man who’s “seen the world” via multiple tours with Armed Forces Entertainment, and enjoyed a gig as regular opening act for Andrew Dice Clay. “if we can use my name to promote bands, give ‘em a place to play, that’s what it’s all about.”

On Friday night, January 24, it’s all about four Jersey-fresh bands who are “all going to be heavy, but different;” a dance card (selected by Jamieson in cahoots with DAA) that spotlights Ocean County combo Wild Chariot (seen previously at the Brighton during last month’s Brothers Union Holiday Show), as well as prog-metal paragons (and fellow OC guys) Throne of Exile, teenaged titans The Age of Ore, and the power trio known as “Apparition. Apparitions. ”All this, plus the highly visible DJ Claude Rains, for a twelve-dollar ticket.

“As a fan myself, I appreciate a club that keeps things on schedule,” says Jamieson of his preferred local haunts. “Get ‘em in, have fun, and get ‘em home at a reasonable time.”

“The Brighton Bar is our CBGB,” adds the emcee in reference to the legendary Bowery club. “I lived in New York around the time that CBs closed, along with Don Hill’s, Roseland, Continental…but places like the Brighton and The Saint have stood the test of time…Jersey really does have a thriving rock scene.”   

WHOLE LOD OF LOVE, AT 20th ANNUAL WINTERFEST IN ASBURY

It’s still just scratching the surface…but some of the faces of this weekend’s 20th anniversary Light of Day Winterfest schedule include (top row) Marc Ribler, Sandy Mack, Deseree Spinks, Marc Muller, Jarod Clemons, Sara Aniano (New Narratives), Bobby Mahoney, Quincy Mumford, Stella Mrowicki, Pat Guadagno; (2nd row) Lisa Bouchelle, Taylor Tote, Cranston Dean, Billy Hector, Christine Martucci, Rachel Ana Dobken, Tara Dente, Avery Mandeville, Stringbean, Dr. Geena; (3rd row) David Ross Lawn, Bob Egan, John Easdale (Dramarama), Richard Barone, Jo Wymer, Poppa John Bug, Mary McCrink, Joe D’Urso; (4th row, hidden) We’re Ghosts Now, Shady Street Show Band; (5th row) James Dalton, JT Bowen, Stormin’ Norman Seldin, Chuck Lambert, Jo Bonanno, Billy Walton, Keith Roth, Emily Bornemann (Dentist), Paul Whistler, Reagan Richards (Williams Honor); (6th/ bottom row) Anthony “Remember Jones” D’Amato, Glen Burtnik (The Weeklings), John Eddie, Joe Rapolla, Anthony Krizan, Joe Grushecky, Vini Lopez, Jeffrey Gaines, James Maddock, Willie Nile.

Published in The Coaster (Asbury Park, NJ) and The Link (Long Branch, NJ), January 16, 2020

It’s a milestone menu of musical movings and shakings that was appetized by several local and regional events in the past week — one that lays out its spectacularly sprawling spread over the next four days; a benefit banquet that involves some 34 separate sites, dozens of distinct events, and enough performers to populate one little but LOUD, gloriously music-mad city.

Where to even begin to get a handle on Light of Day Winterfest, the fully soundtracked fundraising vehicle whose landmark 20th annual edition achieves climax this mid-January weekend? For perspective’s sake, it might behoove us to start at the very beginning — in this case the original Downtown Cafe in Red Bank; scene in November 1998 of a tune-filled 40th birthday party thrown by Bob Benjamin. Having received a diagnosis of Parkinson’s Disease two years earlier, the music promo/ management pro asked his guests to forego the birthday presents in favor of donating toward Parkinson’s research — and it was there that Jean Mikle found herself on the ground floor of a thing that the Asbury Park Press journalist and Bruce Springsteen specialist says “has grown beyond anyone’s imagination…something that’s had such a positive impact on the community.”

The thing is the Light of Day Foundation, of which Mikle serves as president, and whose other board members include co-founder and premier promoter Tony Pallagrosi, as well as veteran music makers Joe D’Urso, Joe Grushecky and Rob Dye. As a year-round nonprofit endeavor with an international footprint, “LOD” has raised millions toward the goal of a cure for Parkinson’s — in addition to Joan Dancy & PALS, the ALS-focused charity founded by the late Terry McGovern — although the casual observer might be forgiven for first thinking of the organization as the planners and purveyors of a most auspicious party.

An ever-evolving affair that’s expanded its reach to several continents, major North American cities, and various satellite events throughout the calendar year, Winterfest commandeers the stages, storefronts and saloons of Asbury Park (as well as one sympathetic site in next-door Ocean Grove) in a manner that’s guaranteed to disturb the long winter’s nap of most other “off season” Shore locales. It’s a phenomenon that manifests as a natural outgrowth of the event’s symbiotic relationship with the city, where it first established base camp at the Stone Pony in 2000 — and to which it returned in 2008, after several years at surrogate homes in Sayreville and Sea Bright. By that time, Asbury Park had re-asserted itself as a music city that competed head-on with places many times its size — a “spiritual home” that finds Mikle “just amazed by the diversity and the depth of talent we have here.”

That deep bench will be on full active roster between tonight, January 16 and Sunday, January 19; represented by multiple generations of homegrown heroes, honorary local legends, and transplants to our music-friendly Shore. As Mikle (who recently accompanied D’Urso on the Fests’s European jaunt for the ninth time) explains it, “the fact that we have access to so many different musicians on this scene…and our out-of-town friends look forward to coming back each year…means we grow bigger each time out.”

Naturally, a big draw (and a focal point for some tantalizing will-he-or-won’t-he buzz) is the potential participation of Benjamin’s long-time friend Springsteen — whose soundtrack song “Just Around the Corner to the Light of Day” directly inspired the organization’s name, and whose frequent presence has made him de facto ringmaster for the majority of those all-star Bob’s Birthday concerts. 

TELL TCHAIKOVSKY THE NEWS: THIS NUTCRACKER ROCKS

Published in The Coaster (Asbury Park, NJ) and The Link (Long Branch, NJ), December 19, 2019

 “Tell Tchaikovsky the news,” sang the late great Chuck Berry in “Roll Over Beethoven” — and if the 19th century Russian master didn’t get the memo the first time, he might be interested to know that, here at the tail end of 2019, one of his most enduring concert classics has been given a holiday makeover complete with a transporting to an enchanted land known as the Jersey Shore, and a compositional assist from members of the Garden State rock band The Gaslight Anthem. Because of course it has!

Going up for six performances this weekend at the Axelrod Performing Arts Center in the Deal Park section of Ocean Township, The Nutcracker ROCKS represents a delightfully unexpected collaboration between   the APAC’s in-house professional dance company The Axelrod Contemporary Ballet Theater [AXCBT], and a team of Jersey-based creative partners highlighted by two core components of the New Brunswick-spawned Anthem: bassist Alex Levine and guitarist Alex Rosamilia.

As director and choreographer Gabriel Chajnik explains, “this is our first full season of ballets here at the Axelrod…and we wanted to finish the year with a work that adds something of the musical tradition in our area.” Recognizing The Nutcracker as “the ballet that most kids and families are exposed to first,” the founder of the AXCBT (who performed in the 1892 classic during his days at the National Academy in his native Argentina — and who, as a student at NYC’s Juilliard School, thrilled to multiple stagings of George Balanchine’s landmark production) set out to create something that “would appeal to the classicists…and to the Jersey Shore rock and rollers.”

Indeed, the producers aren’t trying to “gaslight” their audience when they pitch this intriguing project as a work that’s “destined to become a Jersey Shore staple for many holidays to come“ — a thing designed not so much to set P.I. Tchaikovsky spinning in his grave, as to get the old boy humming like a dynamo in sync with its fuel-injected energy.

Riffing on the original source stories by E.T.A. Hoffman and Alexandre Dumas — and the ballet’s familiar plotline of young Clara and her Christmastime voyage through magical realms of mouse armies, sugarplum fairies, and an enchanted nutcracker soldier — The Nutcracker ROCKS boasts a new book by Red Bank Regional High School drama teacher Reuben Jackson (entirely coincidentally, Chajnik’s old Juilliard roommate), a traditional score (recorded by maestro Jason Tramm and the 40 piece MidAtlantic Symphony Orchestra at Ocean Grove’s Great Auditorium this past October), dozens of young student dancers, acrobatic performers from Howell High School, “rats instead of mice; rockers instead of soldiers” — along with “hip-hop elements” and a layered rock component (including two all-new songs) custom-crafted for the occasion by the two Alexes and their partner in X Squared Productions, Wes Klienknecht.

As for exactly how the ballet master (who became a full time resident of Ocean Grove when given the opportunity to establish the AXCBT) connected with the veterans of the band best known for the album The ‘59 Sound, it’s as simple as the fact that “Alex Levine was my barber!”  

A (MULTI)CULTURED PEARL, REVEALED IN LONG BRANCH

Above and below: 10PRL owners Kira Sanchez and April Centrone are pictured inside the Cyclorama construction that’s a centerpiece of the all-new, multi-purpose arts facility in Long Branch, set to debut with a New Year’s Eve intro party. Photos by Allison Kolarik

Published in The Coaster (Asbury Park, NJ) and The Link (Long Branch, NJ), December 12, 2019

 The first thing you notice, upon ascending the stairs to its second-floor perch within a busy but largely beneath-the-radar neighborhood of Long Branch, is its immensity — an immensity grounded in its 6,500 square feet of splendid sprawl, its 14-foot high ceilings, and its numerous nooks of real-world real estate. It’s also a quality that transcends physical dimensions; that looks beyond the sturdy brick walls toward whole other realms of possibility and promise and pure potential.

It’s maybe only then that you happen to take in the cyclorama that commands the entire southwest corner of the space. For those who don’t have one at home, a “cyclorama” in this case is neither an amusement park midway ride, nor one of those spinner things in which astronaut trainees experience multiple G forces. Rather it’s an “840 square foot, fully immersive, gentle curve of white wall” that represents, in the words of April Centrone, “a canvas, for anything you can imagine.”

A Harlem-born, Shore-based musician, educator, therapist, photographer, and citizen of the world, Centrone is spending much of this holiday-season interlude prepping for the imminent public debut of a project that, in its own relatively quiet way, is as ambitious as anything on the rise within this fast-changing city by the sea.

Located just off Broadway’s midtown main drag at the onetime site of Pearl Street Gym, the place known as 10PRL (pronounce it as “Ten Pearl,” and you’ve all the GPS directions you need) is the brainchild of Centrone and Kira Sanchez — partners in life, marriage, music, art, entrepreneurship, and now a venture that is as proudly “Woman Owned” and “Queer Owned” as it is “super inclusive.”

“This is an idea that’s actually more than a decade in the making,” explains Centrone, herself familiar to fervent followers of the Shore soundscape as a unique maker of music, both as a drummer/ percussionist (for singer-songwriter James Dalton and others) and a front-and-center performer who was seen recently during November’s slate of “Tallie Fest” showcases in Asbury Park.

Regionally, the Point Pleasant native (who’s been raising a gloriously rhythmic ruckus since the age of 9) continues to commandeer the drummer’s seat with the Brooklyn-based band Jane — and is best known as the middle eastern music expert who founded the New York Arabic Orchestra in 2007 (an organization that also boasts the contributions of Venezuelan-born bassist Sanchez).

“I’ve played and taught in a lot of venues, from squats in Europe to major theaters and festivals,” explains the specialist in the stringed instrument known as the oud — a voyager whose Masters degree in psychology has seen her combine music and therapy disciplines in her work with at-risk teens on the home front, as well as (at the invitation of the UN and various American embassies) youthful refugees around the globe. “And what struck me in my travels was when we’d be welcomed into a space that was completely run by artists.”

The germ of what would eventually be realized as 10PRL was also inspired by the thought that, as tech-sector entities encroach upon available urban loft spaces and rehabilitated commercial properties — thereby driving up rents to the point where “artists are frozen out of the places they helped bring back to life” — it becomes more crucial than ever to stake out a space in which all members of the area’s creative class can converge; a hive of activity where “the connection is in supporting the community,” and where the momentum is generated by “the original forms of therapy: music and art!”

DECEMBER IN MUSIC-MAD ASBURY PARK IS A SONIC SAMPLER!

Performers appearing in holiday-themed concerts this month include top row, L-R: New Narratives (Asbury Lanes, Dec. 6), Rachel Ana Dobken (Stone Pony, Dec. 6), Brian Kirk (Stone Pony, Dec. 7), Rev. Horton Heat (Asbury Lanes, Dec. 7), Jody Joseph (Stone Pony, Dec. 8), Layonne Holmes (Paramount Theatre, Dec. 8; McLoone’s Supper Club, Dec. 20); bottom row L-R: Jo Wymer (The Saint, Dec. 15), Chris Pinnella (McLoone’s, Dec. 15 & 21), La Bamba (Stone Pony, Dec. 20), John Eddie (Wonder Bar, Dec. 21), P-Dub (Langosta Lounge, Dec. 22), Happy Fits (House of Independents, Dec. 20 & 21)

Published in The Coaster (Asbury Park, NJ) and The Link (Long Branch, NJ), December 5, 2019

 While it’s maybe a tad too early to anoint Asbury Park as a regional Capital of Christmas, try telling that to any of the multitudes who lined up outside Convention Hall this past Saturday, when some of the scene’s favorite makers of locally sourced, certified organic music (highlighted by Remember Jones, following up a big Back to Black Friday gig at the Pony) flipped the switch on another souped-up Santa sleighload of seasonal sounds, here in this historic city of summers.

Of course, nobody hits the latter-day circuit here in this music-mad town expecting such a thing as a Silent Night — and the holiday interlude is no exception, as the season’s traditional hymns, choral cantatas and orchestral chestnuts are given a Santa-run for their money by a set of signature sounds that boast a decidedly more jingle-bell raucous bent. It’s an eclectic advent-calendar countdown that begins in earnest this weekend — and, as becomes abundantly clear, doesn’t necessarily let up when the tree hits the beach dunes or curb.

THE BIG ONE

Back for a second annual go-round as The Hottest Ticket in Town, the all-Shore/ all-star jinglejam known as A Very Asbury Holiday Show commandeers the Paramount Theatre proscenium on Sunday, December 8 for a 2019 sequel to last year’s sold-out inaugrual edition. Produced by those most proactive preservers and promoters of the city’s principal export — that is, The Asbury Park Music Foundation — the early evening extravaganza convenes another jukebox Justice League of performers whose Asbury roots run deep. It’s a multi-generational mashup that boats some of the living-legend linchpins of the SOAP scene (JT Bowen, Billy Hector, Layonne Holmes, Lance Larson, Lisa Lowell), next-wave singer/ songsmiths (Emily Grove, Anthony Krizan, Williams Honor), and some of the true master entertainers of the Shore clubscape (Pat Guadagno, Jillian Rhys McCoy, Pat Roddy, Deseree Spinks, Eddie Testa).

All this, plus a special set by the “Grooveangelicyulegasmicfunknsoulicious” force that is Everett Bradley’s Holidelic; the debut of the new song “Gonna Be Christmas” by The Weeklings, members of 60s heavyweights Vanilla Fudge and The Rascals; a big house band (led by music director Tony Perruso) boasting veterans of such acts as the Jukes, Joe Jackson and Patti Smith; plus returning co-hosts Lee Mrowicki and WABC-TV newscaster Michelle Charlesworth (joined by 107.1 The Boss deejay Michele Amabile Angermiller) handling the play-by-play. It’s dedicated to the memory of Asbury scene stalwart Kerry Layton, with proceeds going to benefit the community programs of the APMF, Mercy Center, Jewish Family and Children’s Services, and Boys & Girls Clubs of Monmouth County (there’s also an invitation to donate new unwrapped items to the Asbury Park Toy Drive). Info on available tickets can be had at asburyparkmusiclives.org.

SPECIAL SOMETHINGS

The December yesterdays when the likes of Bing Crosby, Perry Como, Andy Williams, and The King Family aired their annual Christmas TV specials have a modern-day corollary in Asbury town, with the ever-expanding selection of special live sets hosted by performers from within and without the local scene. First out of the box (and returning to the Stoney stage on Friday, December 6) is Quincy Mumford, who joins his band The Reason Why for a 2019 Holiday Show that further features Mike Pinto and another of QM’s contemporaries among the exciting new generation of Asbury-based solo artists, Rachel Ana Dobken. Another one-to-watch act on the present Shorescape, the duo New Narratives, is among the performers helping to raise donations for the AP Toy Drive effort during a Friday evening multi-band bill at Asbury Lanes — while over at Little Buddy Hideaway (that tropic-island-nest annex to downtown AP’s Brickwall), another best-kept-secret set aims to keep the beachy vibe alive, with a tinsel-garland twang. Hosted by the folks who bring you the annual surf/ tiki/ cocktail fest Hi-Tide Weekend — Magdalena O’Connell and Vincent Minervino— Friday’s Hi-Tide Holiday session offers chestnuts from DJ Hi-Tide’s private stash of swingin’ sides, plus live and languorous sounds by Philly’s foremost purveyors of party music with a Hawaiian punch, Slowey & the Boats.

ASBURY’S GOT TALLIE (AND LOTS OF TALENTED WOMEN) DURING 3-DAY FEST

Published in The Coaster (Asbury Park, NJ) and The Link (Long Branch, NJ), November 21, 2019. Tallie design by Eric Schiabor

Tallie? Tallie Who? According to producing partners Brittney Dixon and Bob Makin, she’s the “overlooked girlfriend” of Tillie, the iconic figure whose toothy Cheshire-cat grin has graced many a souvenir and signifier of Asbury Park. She’s also someone whose name means princess in Gaelic, and from Friday, November 22 through Sunday, November 24, she’ll serve as spirit guide namesake for a three-day/ three venue happening designed to “shine a light on 22 female and female-fronted music acts, as a means to raise funds for two impactful women-operated Asbury-based charities” — an ambitious project called Tallie Fest.

Taking place on the stages of Marilyn Schlossbach’s Langosta Lounge and Asbury Park Yacht Club on the famous boardwalk, as well as Scott Stamper’s Main Street mainstay The Saint, the inaugural Tallie Fest celebrates “the many talented women based in Asbury and throughout New Jersey,” even as it raises funds and awareness for Food For Thought, the nonprofit initiative through which Chef Marilyn’s flagship restaurant feeds the homeless and hungry with free holiday dinners (on Thanksgiving, Christmas and Easter), in addition to operating a food truck that employs inner-city youth. The slate of shows also aims to benefit the Asbury Park Women’s Convention, the annual empowerment event (and its related year-round activities) that occurs during the Women’s History Month of March.

As the onetime manager of the landmark New Brunswick nightclub Court Tavern, and the promotional powerhouse behind the Brittney On Fire music showcase events (seen regularly over the past few years at venues like The Asbury Hotel’s Soundbooth Lounge), Dixon has indisputably ranked among the most influential women on the Garden State’s burgeoning music scene — although, as she readily observes, this highly anticipated “female powered” festival was originally the brainchild of Makin, the Dean of NJ Rock Journalists, and the veteran event organizer whose Makin Waves programs have raised beaucoup bucks for many a worthy cause.

“Tallie Fest was actually all Bob’s idea…I ran into him at a show at a local cafe, and he brought it up to me and I told him I loved the idea,” she says. “This is the first time we’ve ever officially done an event together, and I’m really thrilled with what we’ve created.“

“There have always been fantastic women doing their thing in the scene, and I’ve worked with a bunch of them from the get-go,” Dixon observes. “But it does seem that in recent years, bands with females or female fronts are taken a bit more seriously…it’s still not where it needs to be, but hopefully the scene can keep improving.”

Tallie floats her first notes over the chilly Atlantic with a pair of concurrent-but-connected concerts on Friday night, at the Schlossbach group’s sister saloons on the boardwalk. Langosta Lounge offers up an eclectic bill of locally based music makers, beginning at 9:30 with an unusual and exotic twist: the Middle Eastern percussion and instrumentation of music educator (and co-founder of the NY Arabic Orchestra) April Centrone. She’s followed by a young mainstay of the Shore scene, pop vocalist/ songwriter and bandleader Taylor Tote, with a closing set by Leah Voysey (from Brooklyn via Joisey).

Meanwhile, the Yacht Club features Pony-pedigreed singer and songwriter Stella Mrowicki, launching a Friday triple bill that further features Mamadrama (“a mom-only Jersey Shore band spicing rock and punk covers with inspired originals”), and Ella Ross, teamed here with a genuine Asbury original, Blaise. Both shows (as well as the two Saturday night events) are free of charge, but half of the entertainment budget will be donated to Food for Thought, which also will benefit from a 50/50 raffle, a silent auction (for color prints of co-sponsor Eric Schiabor’s Tallie poster), and a food drive through which attendees are encouraged to bring canned, nonperishable items to the show.