Posted by Marc Berman on Friday, November 18, 2011 6:48AM – Little Steven Van Zandt, Vini “Mad Dog” Lopez take the stage with the B Street Band and surprise guests at a fundraiser for Gilda’s Club South Jersey held at the Hard Rock Cafe Atlantic City

Source: NJ.com

Watch Southside Johnny on PBS. See more from ON CANVAS.

“I wanted to stick it to people,” the man born John Lyon said during a recent telephone interview. Lyon and bandmate Steven Van Zandt (now better known as Little Steven) were “very aggressive about that New Jersey being a joke state thing,” he said. “We thought ‘We’ll show you.’ We’d go onstage and the horns would hit that big chord. It was not like another band hitting two guitars. And I was a wild performer on stage. Iggy Pop was one of my heroes. So between Steve wanting to prove himself and me wanting to prove myself, that was the real bond. We really wanted to say ‘This is good and you have to pay attention.’

Read the full story at The Montreal Gazette…

Panel Discussion on the history of race and music in Asbury Park, NJ. Nicky Addeo, moderator Daniel Wolff, Bobby Thomas, Southside Johnny Lyon and Bruce Springsteen (Note: The video sounds are a little low) Video by: stzapper

Reported by Stan Goldstein of The Star-Ledger: Bruce Springsteen was a surprise special guest at a panel discussion on Saturday afternoon at the Atonement Lutheran Church in Asbury Park. The roundtable talk was on soul, rhythm & blues and the history of race and music in Asbury Park. It featured author Daniel Wolff (4th of July Asbury Park) who was the moderator with guests: Southside Johnny Lyon, Bobby Thomas, Nickey Addeo and Springsteen who was not advertised as part of the panel. The 90-minute discussion in front of about 125 people touched on the the roots of the Asbury Park music scene, the music west of the railroad tracks in Asbury Park along Springwood Ave. and how that music would have an influence on Springsteen, Southside Johnny and so many others.

Southside Johnny talked about growing up in Ocean Grove and how Asbury Park was another world. He played the pinball machines at the Casino and The Palace Amusements. He said his father liked black music, so he was knowledgeable about it and he always equated Asbury Park with music. Springsteen said he came to Asbury Park when he was 18. He said there were groups who were singers and groups who played music, but they didn’t crossover too much.

“You were all instrumental or all vocal, not both,” said Springsteen. He then kidded Addeo, who has a high falsetto voice (think Frankie Valli) that “if you wanted to make a move on a woman, you did it when Nikki was singing.”  Read the full report by Stan Goldstein at NJ.com >>

Panel Discussion on the history of race and music in Asbury Park, NJ. Nicky Addeo, moderator Daniel Wolff, Bobby Thomas, Southside Johnny Lyon and Bruce Springsteen – Video by: stzapper

Panel Discussion on the history of race and music in Asbury Park, NJ.Nicky Addeo, moderator Daniel Wolff, Bobby Thomas, Southside Johnny Lyon and Bruce Springsteen – Video by: stzapper

v=Panel Discussion on the history of race and music in Asbury Park, NJ.Nicky Addeo, moderator Daniel Wolff, Bobby Thomas, Southside Johnny Lyon and Bruce Springsteen – Video by: stzapper

Panel Discussion on the history of race and music in Asbury Park, NJ.Nicky Addeo, moderator Daniel Wolff, Bobby Thomas, Southside Johnny Lyon and Bruce Springsteen – Video by: stzapper

Panel Discussion on the history of race and music in Asbury Park, NJ. Nicky Addeo, moderator Daniel Wolff, Bobby Thomas, Southside Johnny Lyon and Bruce Springsteen – Video by: stzapper

Panel Discussion on the history of race and music in Asbury Park, NJ. Nicky Addeo, moderator Daniel Wolff, Bobby Thomas, Southside Johnny Lyon and Bruce Springsteen – Video by: stzapper

Panel Discussion on the history of race and music in Asbury Park, NJ. Nicky Addeo, moderator Daniel Wolff, Bobby Thomas, Southside Johnny Lyon and Bruce Springsteen – Video by: stzapper

Jon talks with Southside Johnny, right before his performance in the Musik at the Sands concert series, benefitting the ArtsQuest Center at SteelStacks.

Via: Green Leaf Productions

Southside Johnny Lyon feels the anger and frustration that many working-class Americans have with the economy and has tapped into it for his new album, “Pills and Ammo.”

“It was just the way I was feeling at the time,” Lyon said during an interview Wednesday with The Daily Item. “ … There was a certain amount of anger in the air, because the economy had tanked and people were losing their homes. It makes you angry that good-hearted people who work hard and pay their bills have to go through this crap because some slick boy on Wall Street invented some new way of investing.”

That anger helped fuel the album, which features much more of a two-guitar feel than Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes’ typical “old-school rhythm and blues,” and horn-soaked sound.

“There’s some real aggression on the record,” Lyon said Wednesday.

Lyon, 61, has been touring since 1976 and for many years played more than 200 shows a year. “That’s how you built your reputation in those days. You went out and played and tried to convince people you had something to offer,” Lyon said. “That’s what we still do today. It’s not like some of the other older bands that are out there who are just walking through their songs.”

Southside and the Asbury Jukes have built a loyal following through more than 40 years of touring and burst out of the New Jersey shore scene with Bruce Springsteen in the 1970s.

Springsteen and his longtime guitar player, Steven Van Zandt — who also starred as Silvio Dante in HBO’s “The Sopranos,” — wrote some of Lyon’s most popular songs and Rolling Stone magazine named one of the band’s albums, “Hearts of Stone,” one of the top 100 albums of the 1970s and 1980s.

Asked if he prefers critical success like that or if he’d like to sell more albums, Lyon replied, “I don’t care about either one. I’d like to sell more records so I can pay the band more, but there’s nobody standing in front of me when I’m on stage telling me what to do or not to do.”

That’s crucial for an artist and band who still play more than 100 shows a year throughout the United States and in Europe.

“That freedom means more to me than anything because I’m the one who has to get up there and sing,” Lyon said. “I don’t ever want to feel I’m just doing it for the money.”

Lyon said the overnight success of people who appear on television shows like “American Idol” used to bother him, but now he keeps it in perspective.

“It’s just entertainment,” Lyon said. “The people who buy all that stuff would never buy us anyway. They want something they can just enjoy without really committing to it. Our fans are committed.”

Lyon’s band has never achieved the commercial success of Springsteen or fellow New Jersey musician Jon Bon Jovi, who used to open for The Jukes.

“That end of the business has never been part … of what we do,” Lyon said. “You’re either a musician or a star … if you’re not one, you’re the other and I’m a musician.”

The biggest lesson Lyon has learned from more than 40 years of touring is to “keep your sense of humor” and he acknowledges it’s a lesson he needed time to learn.

“I still get moments where I get furiously angry and throw things and scream and yell. I’m kind of a volatile guy that way,” Lyon said. “Nothing is as important as it seems at the moment it’s happening. It isn’t a referendum on your humanity, it’s a show. It’s your job to put the best show on you can and enjoy it.”

Putting on a great show is one of the band’s calling cards — their double-live album, “Live Reach Up and Touch The Sky,” which was released in 1980, is still one of their most popular records.

“I don’t want to see anybody just going through the motions,” Lyon said. “It’s the one moment you have to really be somebody. There’s an art involved and if anybody is blasé, I’m not going to stand for it, but fortunately no one is in our band.”

Lyon has been able to reach old and new fans through the band’s Web site, www.southsidejohnny.com and early on took advantage of the marketing capabilities of the Internet and new media.

“It’s been the lifeblood of all of us bands who can’t get the record company’s attention,” Lyon said. “The greatest thing to me is that the fans can talk to each other. We had four fans from Korea who came to see us at a show in Germany.”

Lyon, who’s lived in Nashville, Del. and California after leaving New Jersey, has since returned to his hometown of Ocean Grove, N.J.

“It could be a hassle in the past when people would recognize me, but now that I’m older, they just say, ‘Hi John’ and treat me like a normal person, so I’m happy.”

The band recently returned from Europe, where they’ve appeared routinely for years.

“They only see us once a year, maybe twice, so they seem to really enjoy us,” Lyon said. “They love the horn section.”

Lyon said European fans “don’t always get the humor.”

“I’ll make some kind of joke and you can see them translating it in their minds, and you know what they say in comedy, you can die in a second,” Lyon said.

Asked how long he’ll keep touring, Lyon laughed and said, “Until they shoot me off the stage. There are some nights I just want to quit, but most nights I love what I’m doing, plus I have to pay the rent.”

Source: The Daily Item

In its 35-year history, seminal New Jersey rockers Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes has always channeled its audiences’ emotions in its songs — typically in boozy, bluesy tunes such as “I Don’t Want to Go Home” or Sam Cooke’s “Having a Party.” But that’s not the case with the band’s newest disc, “Pills and Ammo,” a collection of series songs set to swampy rock on which front man Johnny Lyon sings with a bluesy voice on tunes that wouldn’t sound out of place on Bob Dylan’s watermark late ‘80s disc “Oh Mercy.”

Southside Johnny & The Asbury Jukes formed around the same time and place as Bruce Springsteen’s E Street band and cross-pollinated with the group so much that E Street members Max Weinberg, Patti Scialfa and Steven Van Zandt all were Jukes at one point. But while others found huge success, Southside Johnny and The Asbury Jukes never had a chart-topping hit or platinum album. Its late 1970s releases marked its commercial high point, though 1991’s “Better Days,” also produced by Van Zandt and with contributions from Springsteen and fellow Jerseyite Jon Bon Jovi, was a critics’ favorite. (…)

In a recent telephone interview from New Jersey, where he still lives, Lyon talked about the new disc, his history with Springsteen and life as a Juke at 60.

Read the interview at the Lehigh Valley Music Blog

YES TV coverage of the Mike Francesa bash at Bar A in Belmar, NJ on 8/27/10

Southside Interview with Mike Francesca

The Fever & You Can’t Bury Me

Talk To Me & Lead Me On & One More Night To Rock

Shake ‘Em Down & I Don’t Want To Go Home & Cadillac Jack’s Number One Son

via thecontes.com

Kevin Garrity sits down with Southside Johnny Lyon to discuss his new album “Pills and Ammo”……and a little sports.

Videos uploaded by Ziggymund