Southside Johnny says Asbury Jukes still same ol' party band, despite serious disc

Posted by John J. Moser at 01:30:00 AM on September 30, 2010

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

Southside Johnny returns with hard-rocking album, 'Pills and Ammo'

Southside Johnny is getting in touch with his inner Mick Jagger.

“Pills and Ammo,” the new album he is releasing with his longtime band the Asbury Jukes, is a collection of lean, Rolling Stones-oriented rock ‘n’ roll — arguably the hardest-rocking set the band has released in its 35 years of recording. On a beautiful mid-May afternoon, I talked, by phone, with the 61-year-old Shore rock legend and Ocean Grove resident about the album, his career and his upcoming shows.

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Southside Sez Life Is Good…

Red Bank OrbitRed Bank Orbit has a great new interview by Tom Chesek with Johnny today. Giving some insights on the preparation of a show at the Stone Pony, Asbury Park… Preparation? Well, almost!

RED BANK ORBIT: Southside Johnny! Thanks for calling in. How’s by you?

SOUTHSIDE JOHNNY: Life is good!

RED BANK ORBIT: You know, for anybody who knows you, that doesn’t read like something you would say.

SOUTHSIDE JOHNNY: Life is good, because I’ve been dead for so many years, there’s no pressure.

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Tampa Calling!

CreativeloafingIt might be a slower time with all things Jukes right now… and fighting the tough weather in and around New Jersey is keeping everybody more than busy. But as long as telephone lines are operating, the occasional interviews with the band leader are still one thing to look out for. It takes more than a winter storm to stop Southside Johnny!

Eric Snider answered Southside’s call and did a write-up of his conversation with John on his blog TAMPA CALLING.

At straight-up 3 p.m., the appointed hour, a man on the other end of the line announces himself: “Heyyyyy, it’s Southside!”

And so begins a spirited 40-minute conversation with one of rock ‘n’ roll’s most undervalued artists, Southside Johnny Lyon, who has fronted a horn-heavy R&B band called the Asbury Jukes for more than three decades. After his first troika of LPs, released in the latter ‘70s on Columbia, fell short of commercial expectations — especially in light of the concurrent rise of his Jersey shore compadre Bruce Springsteen — Southside and company focused mostly on touring.

They don’t do the road-dog slog of the old days, when 250 dates a year was the norm, but the Jukes still cover plenty of turf. And they try their level best not to let performing get stale. “I’ve never wanted to just go out and play the songs,” Southside says. “I need to find that nugget in the middle of the night, where the audience clicks and is really there, and we’re all in that night, in that moment.”

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I still have the best job in the world!

logo_soundboardAs the whole JUKES family was on their way to Florida to play the HARD ROCK in Orlando, Jim Abbott of the ORLANDO SENTINEL’S SOUNDBOARD managed to have a short conversation with Johnny. Although Jim fantasizes a bit about the guy who is going to play the Super Bowl halftime in Tampa – and with that he’s not alone to fantasize about the different possible combinations of JUKES and E-STREETERS on a stage on the same weekend in Florida – he still manages to catch a few nice quotes from Southside Johnny:

Being on stage, anywhere, is just fine with Lyon.

“I was just talking with my buddy on the Boardwalk and I was telling him that I still have the best job in the world,” he says. “I make enough money and, after that, who gives a darn?” (…)

This past fall, Lyon released Grapefruit Moon, a high-energy collection of Tom Waits songs accompanied by a big-band under the direction of Jukes trombonist (and Max Weinberg 7 member) Richie “La Bamba” Rosenberg.

Still, Lyon concedes that winter has been particularly slow for the band.

“It’s traditionally a slow time, but it has been slower than usual because of the economy,” says Lyon, who still sees the glass as half-full.

“When we do play, the people are ready to have fun that’s what we’re here for.”

Read Jim Abbott’s whole post at THE ORLANDO SENTINEL: SOUNDBOARD

I believe that the JUKES will have a real blast, LaBamba, Kazee, everybody will probably be taking their kids to Disneyland, well… and everybody will have a great time whether they will be playing or watching the Halftime show in Tampa, on stage, off stage, in front of a TV… YOU REALLY SHOULD NOT MISS IT! GO, SEE THE JUKES!

Little Steven: From E-Street to Easy Street

The Evening HeraldLittle Steven got interviewed by the EVENING HERALD, an Irish newspaper published in Dublin. While the motivation for the writeup has been the syndication of Steven’s UNDERGROUND GARAGE radio program on a Dublin station, he does give some reflections about his musical career pre-1999 and promotes his latest campaign.

The success of the show has prompted Steve to lobby for rock’n'roll to be accepted as a bone fide college degree course. To that end he’s fundraising for his High School Foundation project.

“We’ve been endorsed from inside the academic community which hasn’t happened before,” he reveals. “Rock’n'roll is still the last outcast. You can get curriculums on movie making or jazz but rock’n'roll has been late to the game. Bruce Springsteen, Martin Scorsese and Bono are my first three board members so it’s going to be extremely exciting.”

Although the interview doesn’t really focus on Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes, Steve does give some insight into his – an that’s been probably more than true for Southside as well – personal situation in the 1990s…

“I had walked away from music,” he tells me. “I couldn’t relate any more. Grunge was happening. There was a good band or two there, Pearl Jam, Kurt Cobain. But I’m strictly a rootsy guy. If I don’t hear the roots in contemporary rock’n'roll it’s irrelevant to me. In the early ’90s, I’d produced four albums in a row including a Southside Johnny reunion record. There was no reason to make a great record anymore.

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Little Steven: What I've learned

EsquireThis comes in from the ESQUIRE MAGAZINE. Little Steven had a sit-down with Ryan D’Agostino. Their “Interview” comes as a write-up of just the quotes – not the questions. I like that a lot!

This might have been the best piece, of the very few, by Steven of the last couple of month. Although there is not one single reference to John or the Jukes, it’s worth being posted here – so here’s an extract with some of my favourites:

The Super Bowl — they ask us every year, literally for twenty-five years. Since Born in the U.S.A. You can only do it once, I guess. You want to save some things.

Here’s the wonderful thing that Bruce Springsteen and David Chase are capable of: Those two guys have the remarkable talent of transporting you to their own time zone, to their own rhythm, and slowing things down. That’s an extraordinarily important talent these days, when everything is temporary and disposable and going by at a hundred miles an hour. In the old days, they would have been called wizards, because they control time.

Scandinavia is another planet. They get health care, education, there’s no homeless, they barely have a prison system. We joke about how they’re overtaxed, but it’s the same fucking 50 percent I’m paying.

Art is not a luxury.

To have impact in two minutes and thirty seconds — that’s very hard to do. It’s much easier to write Pink Floyd’s The Wall than it is to write “Louie Louie.”

Little Richard opens his mouth, and out comes liberation.

In Europe, everybody in the audience has the new record before they come to the show. Why? Because that’s the script of the stage production they’re about to see and participate in. They come, and they all sing every word of every song. They don’t move, they don’t go to the bathroom, they don’t order hot dogs.

You can read the whole “Interview” at: ESQUIRE MAGAZINE

Via: BACKSTREETS.COM

Southside vs. Bob Harris (BBC Radio2)

BBC Radio2“Presenting some of the best music you’ve never heard, including an eclectic mix of exciting new tracks featuring the best of Americana, Alt Country, Indie, World, Nu-Folk and Blues. As someone said to Bob in New Orleans recently – “music is all around, all you have to do is listen”. This could be the motto of the show.” – that is what the BBC2 Website says about the Bob Harris Show on BBC Radio 2.

Now, there would be much more to say about Bob Harris. But maybe just the fact that he has been nominated the worlds’ best radio DJ numerous time is ’nuff said.

His show runs on Saturdays 23:00 – 02:00 GMT, the taped appearance of Southside Johnny is supposed to run after midnight. But don’t rely on that and tune in on BBC Radio 2 or via online live-stream next Saturday night (29.November 08) !

The show will then be available on the website’s “LISTEN AGAIN” feature for another week after the initial broadcast. Unfortunately, there’s no archive of the Bob Harris shows, so after the week is over, the show will be gone!

Link: BBC RADIO 2 – Bob Harris’ Saturday Show

Link: Bob Harris – official homepage