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.”

It seems like a bad story, but romantic at the same time. The musician who drifts away, searching for something, puttering with dysfunctional appliances. Turning his back on those amazing times in the early ’70s when Bruce Springsteen came roaring out of New Jersey, and right on Springsteen’s heels was his own band, Southside Johnny & the Asbury Jukes.

Jon Bon Jovi — he’s another one of those Jersey rockers — said it was Southside who inspired him to put together his first rock band. A mesh of rock and soul. These guys made something.

“The past is gone, I’m much more interested in what’s in front of me,” Southside insists. Yet look at the band that he’s bringing to the German House Theater on Sunday: Southside Johnny & the Poor Fools. Rootsy American songbook. Dylan, George Jones. Muddy Waters. Southside’s even going to play some guitar, which scares him, since he lost a lot of the feeling in his left hand years ago, when he cut it on broken glass. “I remember when James Taylor was doing a solo tour, and he cut his hand with an axe,” Southside says. “The tour was just him and a guitar and a glass of water onstage, and they had to cancel a bunch of shows. And everybody I knew was asking, ‘Why is this guy cutting wood?’”

Maybe the burners on his stove were out.

“We’ve been rehearsing about 30 songs,” Southside says of the Poor Fools. “Some we’ve written, some by Tom Waits, who’s a friend, and Emmylou Harris, and some Jukes classics done in a different way. Songs by Robert Johnson, Son House ….”

Read the full article at: The Democrat And Chronicle

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…

The year was 1967, says Southside, or maybe ’68, and New Jersey was alive with the sounds of the primitive, pre-Beatles rock and Stax soul that would infuse both his and Springsteen’s work.

“I was living with Miami Steve (Van Zandt, Southside’s guitarist, songwriting partner and producer before departing for Springsteen’s E Street band) and Albany Al in a three-bedroom apartment,” recalls the 63-year-old rock vet.

Read the whole article at: TheRecord.com

BY JIM BECKERMAN – The Record – Southside Johnny is trying something materially different. “Southside Johnny” Lyon and the Poor Fools aren’t afraid to mix things up. “Everybody’s playing all sorts of instru­ments,” the influential Shore rocker says. If you see them Friday, you can expect to hear an eclectic range of tunes, too. For a start: different material.

“Parchman Farm,” by Mose Allison, “Shiver Me Timbers,” by Tom Waits, and “Shim Sham Shimmy,” by Champion Jack Dupree, along with B-sides, lesser-known original tunes and others that are off the beaten track, are all liable to turn up on the set list of Southside Johnny and the Poor Fools. “This is mostly doing good songs that I don’t normally do,” says “Southside Johnny” Lyon. “We’re doing a mix of material. Including some pretty obscure things.” But a new songbook isn’t the only thing that makes this latest side project of Lyon, Jersey’s quintessential Shore rocker, different from his flagship brand, Southside Johnny & the Asbury Jukes.

Read the full article at: NorthJersey.com

By Dan Kane CantonRep.com staff writer

It has been two hours-plus since Southside Johnny & the Asbury Jukes launched their TGIF party at the Pro Football Hall of Fame Ribs Burnoff, and they’re still tearing it up over there at the Stark County Fairgrounds. I can hear it through my open window as I’m typing this on deadline. What a good-time blowout!

Southside Johnny Lyon is 60 and, well, who cares? Age clearly is not slowing this born entertainer, who onstage is a whirlwind of rock ‘n’ roll, rhythm ‘n’ blues and soul inspiration, singing as if his very life depended on it and blowing a mean harmonica not often enough. Backed by a high-energy eight-piece band, Southside hit the stage like he was shot out of a cannon, singing “Shake ‘Em Down” to a racing tempo, with a guy pounding the piano and another wailing on sax. Things only built from there.

Read the full article on The Repository…

By JEFF MIERS – THE BUFFALO NEWS – July 22, 2011, 12:00 AM

In the wake of Clarence Clemons’ death, Thursday’s Square/Wharf show with Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes took on added poignancy. You could feel the Big Man’s presence in the humid air at the Central Wharf throughout Thursday’s killer show — particularly during the elegiac, burning saxophone solos.

Led by Southside Johnny Lyon and anchored by one of the most smoking horn sections in the non-jazz world, the Jukes tore it up big time Thursday before a crowd that seemed to be undaunted by the heat wave. We danced, we sang along, we felt the fiery blend of soul, R&B and rock that is this seasoned band’s stock in trade and we left as sweaty and fulfilled as one imagines the band members themselves were.

Read the full article…

(…) By 1 p.m. Saturday, fans in Asbury were already lining up at the Stone Pony for the evening’s annual Southside Johnny concert. Jersey rock legend “Southside Johnny” Lyon has been doing this Independence Day show at the Stone Pony for at least 10 years — and each year, just as faithfully, the fans return for a rockin’ Fourth. “This is a tradition for us,” said Linda Thebold of Wanaque, who was camping out outside the Pony with her husband Matt. “I do love Ocean Grove because of the great boardwalk, but it’s more like a family destination. I definitely prefer Southside on the Fourth of July.”…

The obvious question Tuesday night was: with Southside Johnny, Trombone Shorty and Bootsy Collins all in town, why were electro obscurities Misteur Valaire presiding over the big blowout?

Let’s at least consider the case of Southside Johnny Lyon for now. Leading a stellar set of Asbury Jukes into the groove with handclaps, assisted by the Club Soda audience, the New Jersey R&B singer immediately got in front of the four-on-the-floor beat and opened with Trapped Again, from his classic 1978 album Hearts of Stone. And his three horn players drove it merrily home.

It was a night of juke joint rock n’ roll, Stax soul and barrelhouse blues, with the 62-year-old singer and his band barely stopping for a breath between songs as they revisited highlights from the Southside catalogue.

Read the full story at The Montreal Gazette…

Read also (French): Rue Frontenac – Southside Johnny – Plein la gueule
Read also (French): Le Devoir – Southside Johnny & The Asbury Jukes au Club Soda – La bataille

“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…

Southside Johnny & the Asbury Jukes, perhaps the most-perfect street party band ever invented by Bacchus, brought out the big crowd as promised at Rochester’s Biggest Party, more modestly described in the literature as the Xerox Rochester International Jazz Festival.

With the big stage moved off of East Avenue, where it was in past years, and onto Chestnut Street, it was the same party, facing a different direction, as the longtime rock and R&B veterans with their tight, horn-powered sound opened with “This Time It’s For Real.”

A few moments later and it was on to “The Fever,” delivered perfectly by Southside Johnny Lyons, who still has one of the most compellingly soulful voices in rock. That one was written by Southside’s Asbury Park neighbor, Bruce Springsteen. Imagine being such a cool band, Springsteen tosses you a song and says, “Here, Johnny, I can’t use this one this week.”

By Jeff Spevak – Read the full story

Show of the night: Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes, baby.

Soul, r& b, soul, rock ‘n’ roll, swing, and soul came careening off the East & Chestnut stage in a brass-filled blast of good old barroom cacophony.

I’ve been watching this band for years and this was the best it has ever sounded. Southside Johnny (John Lyon) is the band’s biggest fan, as he bounded around joyously and unselfconsciously in a way that makes Joe Cocker look like a ballerina by comparison. Oh, and did I mention the soul?

By Frank De Blase – Read the full story…