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Greetings from Southside Johnny

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By Alex Biese, June 26, 2009

It wouldn’t be summer at the Shore without him

Between his annual Independence Day weekend appearances at The Stone Pony in Asbury Park and his crowd-pleasing New Year’s Eve shows at the Count Basie Theatre in Red Bank, Monmouth County’s own Southside Johnny Lyon has become something of a Shore institution over the years.

“Well, I’ve been in most of the Shore institutions so I guess I belong,” Lyon told Metromix Jersey Shore last year.

Lyon and his house-rocking band, the Asbury Jukes, will be sticking with tradition when they return to The Stone Pony on Thursday to kick off Fourth of July weekend early.

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When Sonny Gets Blue

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Red Bank OrbitSonny Kenn, Asbury Park Legend, Guitar Guru and one of the great early contemporaries of Southside Johnny has been featured in a worth reading piece of interview by Tom Chesek of the Red Bank Orbit:

The way that a lot of his contemporaries on the Sound of Asbury Park scene dressed, they’d likely be denied entry in most of the new Asbury bistros these days – but Sonny Kenn always evidenced a more finely tuned sense of style.

It’s a look that we described more than once as “31st century sideburns, ice cream blazers and Vincent Price shades straight outta Tomb of Ligeia,” and even if the Star Trek ‘burns have been phased back a bit in recent years, the carefully coiffed look remains a marvel of pompadour and circumstance. (…)

Red Bank oRBit paid a call upon Kenn at his little “Fortress of Solitude” studio on the borough’s Left Bank — a place that’s equal parts musical mad-laboratory, bohemian painter’s garret and the attic lair of the world’s oldest living teenager. What follows is but a portion of a nearly three-hour conversation in which we spoke of many things — the painter’s passion and the inventor’s instinct; Muddy Waters and Mrs. Jay’s; dying industries and living legends.

Read on at: RED BANK ORBIT: When Sonny Gets Blue – An Interview with Sonny Kenn

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For TV Band, Jet-Lag Is Part Of The Job

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The New York TimesYou can get a Juke out of New Jersey, but you can’t get New Jersey out of a Juke! It’s been proved again! The New York Times features Max Weinberg and the Tonight Show Band on it’s TV Feature:

When Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band performed at the Izod Center in the New Jersey Meadowlands on May 21, there was one musician conspicuously absent: Max Weinberg, the group’s drummer for more than three decades.

As Mr. Springsteen tore into his opening number, “Badlands,” Mr. Weinberg was on another stage 3,000 miles away, pounding his drum kit through a dress rehearsal of “The Tonight Show With Conan O’Brien,” in advance of its debut last Monday on NBC.The following night Mr. Weinberg boarded a red eye for the East Coast so he could rejoin his E Street band mates, however temporarily, for the second show of that New Jersey stand, which fell on a rare night off from his new duties.

For Mr. Weinberg and the seven other East Coast musicians who have relocated to California along with Mr. O’Brien — including all the founding members of the Max Weinberg 7, the house band on Mr. O’Brien’s “Late Night” for 16 years — the turnover in hosts (and bands) on “Tonight” has proved to be both exhilarating and disruptive.

Visit the NYT to read the full article:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/06/arts/television/06max.html?_r=1

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Bandiera Revisits His Orbison Program

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By ED CONDRAN • April 22, 2009 •

When Count Basie Theatre CEO Numa Saisselin approached guitarist/bandleader Bobby Bandiera about doing revue-style shows at the Red Bank venue three years ago, Bandiera was reluctant.

“Numa said, “Why don’t you do these tribute shows?’ ” Bandiera recalled while calling from his Atlantic Highlands home. ” “A friend does them in Canada. It’ll be fun.’ ”

The laid-back musician initially turned down the offer.

“I told Numa that I just wanted to focus on original material, but then I said that I would do it if I could pick the first artist for the show,” Bandiera said. “And he said, “Oh, no.’ But I told him to trust me.”

Roy Orbison was the first recording artist Bandiera decided to honor with his initial Jersey Shore Rock-n-Soul-Revue in 2006.

“It was a natural selection for me,” Bandiera said. “Over the years, I would pull out a Roy Orbison song while doing Jersey Shore dates and the response was always tremendous. . . . Why not do a show featuring all of Roy’s material?”

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Man with A Horn

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logo_dailyrecord‘LaBamba’ answers the call from Springsteen, Southside, Conan

By Ellen S. Wilkowe • Daily Record • February 8, 2009

His kids call him Dad, but to everyone else, Richie Rosenberg of Randolph is best known as LaBamba. Everyone except for his wife, that is.

“She calls me LB,” he said.

For the past 16 years, the man of one hat, one horn — a trombone — has found himself on the receiving end of Conan O’Brien’s jokes as a member of the show’s house band, the Max Weinberg 7.

“I don’t know idea why he picks on me,” Rosenberg said jokingly in a phone interview from — where else? — NBC in New York, where he tapes “Late Night With Conan O’Brien” almost daily from 2 to 8 p.m. “But from day one, there was always a camera on Max and on me.”

This year O’Brien will head west to take over “The Tonight Show,” and while an NBC spokesman would not reveal the band’s fate, Rosenberg said he will be going along — “a dream come true,” he said.

“I can only speak for myself and not the band,” Rosenberg said. “I just wish I didn’t have to leave this all behind.”

This, meaning New Jersey. “I’ll miss the Shore,” he said.

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