By Jim Testa
Bamboozle came and went. The Wave Gathering Festival in
Asbury Park hasn’t gathered for years. The Skate &
Surf Fest returned but proved to be mostly for skate punk
and emo kids. New Jersey needs its own music festival, and
the first Jersey Shore Music & Arts Festival promises
to fill that gap, with an all-day cultural cornupcopia of
local music, vendors, craftspeople, artists, top area restauranteurs,
and more.
The Festival will take place at FirstEnergy Park in Lakewood
on Saturday, July 20. Gates open at noon, and the live music
starts at 1 p.m., with at least 84 different acts playing
indie, metal, country, folk, and other genres represented
on a half dozen stages. The talent ranges from some of the
Garden State’s top touring acts (River City Extension,
the Front Bottoms) to up-and-coming shore bands like Quincy
Mumford & The Reason Why, the Antics, and Julian Fulton
& The Zombie Gospel. There’s also a strong emphasis
on funk and groove acts like Aer, Sophistafunk, Turtle Soup,
Papadosio, and Jimkata. Lineup information, tickets and
directions are available at
thejerseyshoremusicfest.com, but if you know any of
the bands, contact them directly and they can sell you tickets
at a discount.
“It truly is an indie music festival in every sense
of the word, in terms of funding, bands, production, promotion,
even down to the beer, which is coming out of an indie distribution
plant in Ocean County,” stated Chris Rotolo of Speak
Into My Good Eye.com, one of the festival’s sponsors.
“It’s awesome that we have a festival like
this again, after the fall of Bamboozle,” enthused
Julian Fulton, who will be playing the Skyland stage with
his band the Zombie Gospel. “There’s definitely
an opening for something like this in New Jersey, something
to coordinate the scene.”
“I like that there are a lot of different genres
playing too,” Fulton added. “For a band like
us, that doesn’t really fit into any specific style,
we feel less like a band out of place at a festival like
this.” Fulton noted that his band – which hopes
to release a full length in the next year – has matured
from its earlier radio-friendly pop sound to more ethereal,
psychedelic, post-punk excursions, as evidenced by the band’s
latest single, “Two Little Thieves.”
Alan Smith of Montclair’s Porchistas also expressed
his excitement to be playing. “What I like most about
this festival is that it is a nice layer of New Jersey bands
doing well on multiple levels, combined with some great
national acts that we get to play with right here in New
Jersey,” he said. “And I especially like that
we can spend the day and play with a lot of our good friends,
like Thomas Wesley Stern, Mad Feather group, and Elevator
Art.”
“We share a lot of the same fans, so it’s a
great opportunity for us to play together in their backyard
(those bands all live in Jackson, right near Blue Claw Stadium),
hang out with our fans, and also catch a lot of bands that
we haven’t seen before,” Smith added. “And
I haven’t seen the Front Bottoms live since before
they toured, so I’m lookin forward to seeing what
they’re up to now. As New Jersey festivals go, it
feels different in that it seems like the organizers really
tried to create a balance of local, regional and national
acts. It should be fun.”
Asbury’s Quincy Mumford & The Reason Why have
become a festival staple over the last few summers, and
Mumford’s clearly excited that something like this
has returned to the Garden State. “I’ve gotten
to play many festivals where I got to share the same stage
with artists that I worship and admire, like Toots &
The Maytals or the Tedeschi Trucks Band,” he said.
“Just getting to be in the same backstage area as
some of your heroes can be a huge, humbling experience for
a young band, but it really is an important part of a band’s
development. I also really like the fact that we’ll
be playing and getting to hang out with so many bands we
know and play with from home, like River City Experience
and Echo Movement.”
Here are our Top Eleven Must-See Bands at the
Jersey Shore Music & Arts Fest:
River City Extension:
One of the most popular acts to come out of Asbury Park’s
burgeoning Americana scene, River City Extension blend
Joe Michelini’s poignant vocals with the rousing
bar-band wallop of acoustic and electric guitars, bass,
and banjo, along with horns, piano, and drums. There
are always a lot of people onstage at an RCE show and
they’ve proven time and time again that they can
transform festival stages into sweaty, intimate, communal
celebrations. Expect to smile, dance, and sing along.
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The Front Bottoms:
Talon Of The Hawk, the Front Bottoms’
sophomore album, shot up Billboard’s Heatseeker
chart on its release this Spring, as the quirky, post-emo
team of Brian Sella and Matt Uychich – now expanded
to a quintet for touring – continues to win over
legions of fans with their catchy but heart-wrenching
singalong anthems. |
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The Porchistas
The pride of Montclair’s hippie folk scene, the
Porchistas like to spin traditional story songs into
goofy novelty tracks and then follow with their witty,
homespun originals. Chris Rotolo of Speak Into My Good
Eye.com opined, “"At its most basic, this
band is in the business of bringing smiles to the masses,
and though the group's artistic complexities allow The
Porchistas to work in various musical mediums, the accessibility
remains and the enjoyment of seeing it performed live
is undeniable."
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Julian Fulton & The Zombie
Gospel
I first encountered Hazlet native Julian Fulton and
his ever-shifting backup ensemble at Bamboozle 2011,
so the young singer/songwriter is certainly no stranger
to festival stages. The Aquarian Weekly described Fulton’s
debut EP “Heart & Arms” as “an
auspicious introduction to Fulton’s passionate
delivery, grandiose songwriting, and energetic backing
band.”
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Thomas Wesley Stern
TWS is a band, not a person, a group of four gifted
musicians whose heartfelt interpretation of American
folk , bluegrass, and blues glides along on the strength
of J.T. Makoviecki’s rustic vocals and the seamless
harmonies of his bandmates. Chris Rotolo raved that
the band’s latest single “Shake It Out”
“follows the rustic blueprint that’s endeared
the string-driven collective to a mass of Garden State
enthusiast .”
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Brick+Mortar
Brandon Asraf (vocals, guitar, bass) and John Tacon
(drums, samples, vocals) comprise Brick+Mortar, one
of the many rock duos who have emerged in the wake of
the White Stripes and Black Keys’ mainstream success.
B+M mix up the standard blues-rock formula by incorporating
intriguing samples and pounding out aggressively catchy
melodies that inevitably turn shows into mass singalongs.
Imagine a stripped-down Bouncing Souls jamming with
Nine Inch Nails in a sweaty New Jersey basement and
you can begin to appreciate the power and charisma of
these very unique individuals.
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Darrin Bradbury
This burly troubadour has been a mainstay in the Jersey
post-folk scene – both as a solo artist and as
the frontman of Bergen County’s Big Wilson River
- for years, Bradbury will bring songs from his latest
solo effort, “Tur-Lyfe: A Live Recording of Unfortunate
Events,” one of his strongest sets to date, chock
full of witty, melodic, and memorable tunes that channel
Steve Goodman, John Prine, and Dylan.
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Elevator Art
Toms River sextet Elevator Art combine multiple vocalists
with a rotating array of instrumentation to create music
that’s brash, exciting, seductive, and entertaining.
Ben Oliver of Music Emissions wrote, “The fact
that this band is breaking the mold by including four
lead vocalists is irrelevant here because Elevator Art
offers so much more in return. Their style can best
be described as all-over-the-place rock with no set
boundaries in place… ”
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Quincy Mumford & The Reason
Why
Five years ago, Quincy Mumford was a gangly kid in board
shorts who looked like he just left the beach. Today,
he and his excellent backing band are multiple Asbury
Music Award winners, about to release their fifth album,
“It’s Only Change,” on July 30. Self-described
as “soul meets funk meets rock and R&B,”
Mumford & The Reason Why perform confidently to
both jam-band groovers and indie rock snobs.
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The Antics
Barely out of high school, the Antics are one of New
Jersey’s younger self-described “post-pop-punk”
bands. Imagine Joy Division stuck in a New Jersey mall
being forcefed a steady diet of Hot Topic and Jersey
Shore, and rebelling against that. Hellhound
Music.com wrote, “The New Jersey-based band cooks
up a cohesive rock genre toss-up featuring fuzzy guitar
riffs and raw emotion that is quickly making these guys
hometown heroes."
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Black Jesuses
Like Brick+Mortar (and originally, the Front Bottoms,)
Asbury Park’s Black Jesuses consist of only two
members: Singer, guitarist, and pianist David James
Rosen and drummer Sam Bey. The duo’s sound is
difficult to describe but hard to forget, a mishmash
of classic blues, rock ‘n’ roll, noise-rock,
and jazz. Corey Pedalino of SIMGE wrote, “Sam
Bey and David James Rosen’s two-piece sound is
like nothing you’ll find anywhere. The stylistic
approach that they take on their instrumentation is
mind boggling… "
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JerseyBeat.com
is an independently published music fanzine
covering punk, alternative, ska, techno and garage
music, focusing on New Jersey and the Tri-State
area. For the past 25 years, the Jersey Beat music
fanzine has been the authority on the latest upcoming
bands and a resource for all those interested in
rock and roll.
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