By Kevin Gross/Gloucester County Times – Friday, March 23, 2012 – The Poor Fools is made up of members from his other band, the Asbury Jukes, and includes John Conte on bass, Tommy Byrnes on guitar, and longtime Jukes collaborator Jeff Kazee on the organ and percussion, plus Springsteen violinist and fiddle player Soozie Tyrell.
By Jay Lustig / The Star-Ledger: New Jersey ranks 11th among the states in population, and 47th in physical size. But in terms of musical importance, it’s second to none.
The state where the phonograph record was invented by Thomas Edison has produced a long list of musical giants. Seeking to honor the state’s greatest talent — and, frankly, annoyed that the national Rock and Roll Hall of Fame has not seen fit to honor some of the most prominent artists that New Jersey has produced — The Star-Ledger and its website, NJ.com, have created the Rock & Pop Hall of Fame. It will live permanently at NJ.com/rockpop and induct a new class annually.
That’s why, when Southside Johnny Lyon comes to the Narrows Center for the Arts in Fall River on Friday night (March 16), he won’t be with The Jukes, but with a new quintet, The Poor Fools. Southside and the new band will be performing a wide variety of music, in a mostly acoustic setting, from seldom heard Jukes tunes to surprising trips afield–Muddy Waters to Mose Allison, Wilco to The Band, George Jones to Django Reinhardt. Fans can expect the unexpected, and the show gets underway at 8 p.m., with advance tickets $35, or $40 at the door. The Narrows Center is located at 16 Anawan St., Fall River. Tickets can be purchased online at www.ncfta.org, or by calling 508-324-1926.
Taking some time off from his primary gig as frontman for Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes, Johnny Lyon is paring things down a little bit for his latest tour. Bringing the Poor Fools to Sellersville on Sunday, March 25, for an intimate, acoustic set, Lyon plans to have a great time going through some choice selections of the great American songbook.
Exuberant, energetic, and inspired performance by the Jersey band.
By Ann W. Latner – March 14, 2012
Ears are probably still ringing from the incredible performance by Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes on Saturday night at Landmark on Main Street. Attendees of the sold-out show certainly got their money’s worth – the band played for almost three hours, with barely a breath between songs. It was one of the most exciting shows I’ve seen at Landmark, and that’s saying a lot.
“I don’t always love the stuff he does but this one took me back to when I first heard Born to Run. I rode around in the car and listened to it, like, five times,” says “Southside” Johnny Lyon, an old ally of Springsteen’s whose band, Southside Johnny & the Asbury Jukes, emerged in the 1970s from the same New Jersey working-class background.(…)
Read the full article: © The Financial Times Limited – 2012
By Gary Graff – for Journal Register Newspapers; Twitter: @graffonmusic.
Like most Jersey Shore music veterans, Southside Johnny Lyon was “kind of shocked” when Clarence Clemons from Bruce Springsteen’s E Street Band died last June. And when Springsteen decided to tour this year, Lyon had an early inkling that it would cost him one of his own saxophone players — Ed Manion, a longtime member of Southside Johnny & the Asbury Jukes, who’s also been part of horn sections Springsteen has taken on the road before.
Southside Johnny Lyon has been playing with his Asbury Jukes since 1975.
By Dave Hoekstra – February 29, 2012 5:58PM – He still combs America’s backstreets with more regularity than his New Jersey compatriots Bruce Springsteen and Steven Van Zandt. Lyon is hotwired to soul and rhythm blues, and his party music is best heard in smaller venues where you can twist the night away. When Lyon has free time he looks for used record stores and flea markets in the city where he is performing. Lyon and Springsteen bassist Garry Tallent have a shared collection of 5,000 45s, 4,000 albums and 2,000 78s.
Written by Jeff Spevak – 20120126 — There was a point, about 20 years ago, when we nearly lost Southside Johnny. “I was sick of the music business, I had personal problems, my mother was dying,” he says.“I needed to get away. I found this little house, kind of a lodge with a four-burner stove, two of which worked, and a fireplace. Every now and then I’d go into town and buy some groceries… talk to the perky little checkout girl. But mostly, it was just a pile of books and listening to classical music — and whiskey. Piles of books and whiskey bottles, and that was it.”
By Joel Rubinoff, Record staff — “I’d seen James Brown and Ray Charles,’’ Southside Johnny, a.k.a. Johnny Lyon, is telling me over the phone from somewhere on the New Jersey Shore.“But I walked into the place I used to hang out, the Upstage Club, and this long-haired guy was onstage telling a story about how the nuns taught him the blues by bringing in a B.B. King album one day. “And he just was riveting, and I thought ‘Wow, who is this guy?’ ’’His name, of course, was Bruce Springsteen, though at the time he was just another up and coming nobody trying to get a break.
And when he and Lyon struck up a friendship, it changed the course of Lyon’s life…
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