Southside Johnny & The Poor Fools – I Don’t Want To Go Home – Kitchener, Ontario – 2012-02-02

Video by: OntarioToyShows

The Poor Fools: Southside Johnny, Jeff Kazee, John Conte, Neal Pawley, Tommy Byrnes

1 in 5 Norwegians watched LILYHAMMER premiere on NRK1, reaching an overall share of 56,3% – an all-time-high for NRK1 and the best ratings for a Norwegian made drama-series ever! With 44.2% in the commercial demographics, LILYHAMMER outperformed the channel average by 245%!

So, since you already know who triggered the whole TV craziness in Scandinavia, here’s the scoop:

After Frank “The Fixer” Tagliano testifies against his Mafia boss in New York, he enters the Witness Protection Program and makes an unusual demand: he wants to be set up with a new life in a small town in the Norwegian countryside called Lillehammer.

A sports fanatic, he had fallen in love with the place while watching the ’94 Winter Olympic Games. Now, he is hoping that “Lilyhammer”, as he pronounces it, will offer him more than “Clean air, fresh white snow and gorgeous broads”.

He knows that he is a marked man and figures nobody will ever find him there. That was his second mistake – the first was ratting out the Delucci Family…

But vengeful gangsters are only a part of his problems. Adjusting to the Scandinavian way of life is driving him crazy! At least he has a great Norwegian teacher, Sigrid, with whom he shares a passion far beyond books.

Of course, once a mobster, always a mobster – it is not long before Frank gets involved in shady dealings with the ex-Olympic “test jumper” Torgeir Lien and the local lawyer and businessman Julius Backe.

Here, cops are of an altogether different variety. Lillehammer’s calm and sensitive sheriff, Laila Hovland, is far more interested in crime prevention and education than solving cases… and boy can she bake! Yet another cop, Geir Tvedt, spends his spare time heading up the band “Geir Elvis and His Cell Mates”!

Of course, somebody has to try keeping Frank on the right path – a job that falls to his counselor at the local unemployment office, Jan Johansen, who specifically handles immigrants and asylum seekers, and who is a stickler for regulations!

Thrust into a brand new world forcing out a new side of his personality – and offers ample opportunities for an old one – Frank is confronted with a colorful cast of characters totally unlike the New York variety. But as he soon finds out, the past always has a way of catching up with you, especially when it concerns the Delucci family…

Netflix acquired the broadcast & distribution rights for the series in North and Latin America and will stream all eight episodes of the first season starting Feb. 6. Netflix has also signed on to co-produce the show’s second season.

Read more: ‘Lilyhammer’ sets new NRK record – January 26, 2012

Sources: Netflix.com, Seven One International, NRK

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

Southside Johnny and the Poor Fools – My Old Kentucky Home – Center for Art – Homer, NY – 2012-01-28

Video by SnarkyMagpie74

Southside Johnny began a new performance project late last year, dubbed Southside Johnny and The Poor Fools. They’ve played ten shows now; more are scheduled in between Jukes gigs. The new venture delves into the sort of acoustic-electric roots rock / Americana that one might associate with The Band, Bob Dylan, latter-day Hot Tuna, and various Brothers acts (Wood Brothers, Felice Brothers). It’s both a departure from Jukes music and a natural extension of Johnny’s catalog.

Read the whole story by Anton A at Tantalized – A Live Rock Chronicle

Browse the pictures at Photobucket

Photo (c) by Anton A – 2012

Little Calcutta – Southside Johnny & The Poor Fools – Berrie Center, Mahwah, NJ, USA – 2012-01-27

Bartender’s Blues – Jeff Kazee & The Poor Fools – Berrie Center, Mahwah, NJ, USA – 2012-01-27

Can’t Let Go – Neal Pawley & The Poor Fools – Berrie Center, Mahwah, NJ, USA – 2012-01-27

Ain’t No Free – John Conte & The Poor Fools – Berrie Center, Mahwah, NJ, USA – 2012-01-27

I Don’t Want To Go Home – Southside Johnny & The Poor Fools – Berrie Center, Mahwah, NJ, USA – 2012-01-27

All Videos by Sue Hammond

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

Southside Johnny & the Poor Fools – It Comes To Me Naturally – 01-20-12 – Towne Crier Cafe, Pawling NY, USA – Southside Johnny, Jeff Kazee, Neal Pawley & Tommy Byrnes with special guests Andy York, Francis Valentino & TJ Byrnes – Video by Linda Thebold

Jeff Kazee takes the lead on this beautiful tribute to Etta James – At Last – 01-20-12 – Towne Crier Cafe, Pawling NY, USA – Southside Johnny, Jeff Kazee, Neal Pawley & Tommy Byrnes – Video by Linda Thebold

Southside Johnny & the Poor Fools – Something’s Got a Hold on Me – 01-20-12 – Towne Crier Cafe, Pawling NY, USA – Southside Johnny, Jeff Kazee, Neal Pawley & Tommy Byrnes – Video by Linda Thebold

Southside Johnny & the Poor Fools – Beneath Still Waters – 01-20-12 – Towne Crier Cafe, Pawling NY, USA – Southside Johnny, Jeff Kazee, Neal Pawley & Tommy Byrnes – Video by Linda Thebold

Southside Johnny & the Poor Fools – Born To Hand Jive & All the Way Home – 01-20-12 – Towne Crier Cafe, Pawling NY, USA – Southside Johnny, Jeff Kazee, Neal Pawley & Tommy Byrnes – Video by Linda Thebold

Southside Johnny & The Poor Fools – Love On The Wrong Side Of Town – Light Of Day 2012 – Paramount Theatre, Asbury Park, NJ, USA 01-14-2012 – Video by Backstreetsbev

Night 3 – The Paramount Theatre: When The Asbury Jukes are away Southside Johnny Lyon will play…the guitar that is. With a six-sring strapped to his back, much to the surprise of Bruce Springsteen who remarked later in the evening “I didn’t know he [Lyon] could do that,” Southside, backed by his latest outfit The Poor Fools (Soozie Tyrell, Jeff Kazee, John Conte, Tommy Byrnes), serenaded the capacity Paramount Theatre assemblage with a six-song set of acoustic-ish tunes, none more crowd pleasing than the group’s opening trudge through “Love On The Wrong Side Of Town” and an equally adored and subdued rendition of “I Don’t Wanna Go Home,” nor did we want them too, as Southside and the crew, playing its first show in Asbury Park, recorded the most impressive Boardwalk debut of the weekend.

Source: SpeakIMGE – LOD: Best Asbury Park Debut…Southside Johnny & The Poor Fools

Southside Johnny & The Poor Fools – Trapped Again – Light Of Day 2012 – Paramount Theatre, Asbury Park, NJ, USA 01-14-2012 – Video by BLHowardProductions

(…) Last night’s event at the Paramount Theater was the main attraction, and with one of the strongest lineups in years, it did not disappoint. There were spirited sets by Lisa Bouchelle, longtime shore favorite John Eddie, the effervescent Willie Nile, and New Yorker Garland Jeffreys, who previewed several songs from an upcoming CD release. There were the bluesy guitar and vocals of the legendary David Bromberg. And there was also the Asbury Park debut of Southside Johnny & the Poor Fools, who presented both Jukes staples and unusual and well-chosen covers by the likes of NRBQ and Lucinda Williams in stripped-down arrangements that highlighted longtime Jukes keyboardist Jeff Kazee and the fiddle of Jukes alum Soozie Tyrell.

Source: Backstreets.com

Bruce Springsteen & The Light Of Day All Stars – Thunder Road – Light Of Day 2012 – Paramount Theatre, Asbury Park, NJ, USA 01-13-2012 – Video by LeynaESantore

(…) The show was almost stolen by the Asbury Park debut of Southside Johnny’s Poor Fools, a freewheeling bluegrass-inflected folk-rock experiment for the roughneck R&B singer.

The Fools, which featured accordion, banjo, and mandolin in place of the pounding drums and overdriven guitars typical of Southside shows, was quite a departure for the singer, but was perfectly in keeping with the Dylanesque tone of the evening. (Southside Johnny, who is usually unencumbered by a musical instrument, even strapped on a guitar — an event so notable that Springsteen felt the need to tease him about it later.)

Source: NJ.com / Tris McCall / The Star-Ledger

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