The guys in jamgrass band Railroad Earth didn’t know they were getting into jam or bluegrass when they started out some two decades ago. Well, they were dabbling with string music and holding pickin’ parties, so they were certainly headed in a grassy direction. But RRE founding member/drummer Carey Harmon says, from there, “The band sort of happened.” They thought, “This is fun, this is different. … It was a learning experience with us; there was a scene we were able to fit into that was new and original to us,” Harmon says. How the guys behind RRE found themselves in newgrass/jamgrass/bluegra ..read more

Red Bank-based garage rock/powerpop outfit The Dream of When(?) are set to celebrate the release of their first EP March 10 at Asbury Lanes. Sure to please fans of The Lemonheads, Teenage Fanclub, and the like, TDoW(?)’s sound is reminiscent of the early-’90s-era college rock, grunge and powerpop that is beloved by so many. Also on the bill: Baron Praxis, Tide Bends and Matthew Pelli.  Last month NJ Indy was able to catch up with TDoW(?) frontman, Dylan McLarnon, to discuss the new EP, the release show and more.  What precipitated your starting The Dream of When(?)? I was in a band c ..read more

Rachel Ana Dobken learned from a young age that she should listen, quite literally, to her gut; her father was a doctor and an infectious disease specialist after all.  But she also learned to trust her gut, generally speaking, especially when it came to music. The multi-instrumentalist indie soul artist began to show symptoms of a love for music when she found old tapes of the Ed Sullivan Show.  “My mom was much more into rock and roll, and when I was very, very young, she gave me a ‘Best of Ed Sullivan’ tape,” recalls Dobken. “Which was The Beatles, Beach Boys, the Four Seasons, an ..read more

When NJ singer-songwriter Shannon Hawley prepared to record songs for her forthcoming album Starthrowers, she took to four wheels. Not a car, roller skates. The old school ones. “Because I’m so intense in talking about grief and death, the way I would prepare to go into the studio is I would roller skate and sing songs really loud,” Hawley says. “And it felt so liberating, kind of associating my heart being open and joyful.” That prep work paid dividends. For instance, In the latest single from the album, “Mercy,” you’ll hear the story of the grief that comes when someone dies young—the first ..read more

According to Spotify, I listened to a track called “Piss” by OC Rippers more than any other song last year. Now, I don’t really know what that says about me—admittedly, the optics aren’t great—but I WILL offer two notes: 1) Song-shame me all you want, but that tune rips and I defy you to listen to it just once; its addictive, and 2) What better way to make a new friend at the bar than by unsolicitedly sharing, “‘Piss’ was my favorite song last year!”? Thanks, OC Rippers! Hailing from Beachwood, NJ (Ocean County = OC, get it?), the Rippers’ raw, high-energy brand of punk rock & roll command ..read more

Some 30 years ago, moe. came together as somewhat of a lark. Al Schnier (guitars, vocals), Chuck Garvey (guitars, vocals), and Rob Derhak (bass, vocals) were at the University of Buffalo and thought, “We liked music, we liked to party, and we wanted to put those two things together.” Now, three decades and dozens of studio and live albums later, plus several festivals, concert cruises, side projects and more, moe. is American jam band royalty. Wild that they didn’t have designs on setting out into the jam world to begin with. “We adapted,” Derhak says. “Initially we didn’t have quite as much o ..read more

It’s hard to pin down Texas band Giovannie and The Hired Guns. I mean that broadly, and we’ll get into that, but literally speaking, it’s hard to slap a genre on these guys. They’re not quite punk, not quite rock. They’re signed to a country label. And frontman Giovannie Yanez says you can hear the influences of his uncle’s norteño band and Houston rap in their songs. Good things labels don’t matter to Yanez. Some parts of their latest album Tejano Punk Boyz—their first release on a major label, Warner Music Nashville—do fit that label’s country purview, but more went into signing with them th ..read more

The What a Wonderful Year (WAWY) festival, Dec. 29-30 at Wonder Bar, is “Asbury Park’s annual after-party,” says Joe Pomarico, co-organizer and exec at Telegraph Hill Records. “It is an event by the music community for the music community,” he says, adding it, “draws a passionate audience from throughout New Jersey who come for their longtime favorite performers and inevitably find new favorites.” Adds co-organizer Jim Lenskold, “a lot of our audience is the other bands that aren’t playing at all. I joked that for all you musicians, it’s your office party at the end of the year. That’s where I ..read more

There are a few things that come to mind when driving through Cherry Hill. 1) You probably aren’t moving that much because of the traffic. 2) Cherry Hill is huge. It stretches all the way from Pennsauken to Voorhees. 3) There are a lot of strip malls. Like a lot of them.  At the very least, you probably don’t think about music. And yet, Cherry Hill is fertile ground for musicians, from Into It. Over It., to Sweet Pill, to Adam Weiner of Low Cut Connie. Weiner has mixed feelings about growing up there, but is thankful for the experience.  “I’m not gonna say anything bad about it,” say ..read more

We didn’t plan it this way, but I happened to be on the phone with Englewood music producer Allen George minutes after the Grammy nominations came in. Turns out Beyoncé’s “Break My Soul” got a nod for best song. “Break My Soul” uses the production of George’s “Show Me Love,” which he wrote with longtime collaborator Fred McFarlane and which was performed by Robin S. and released in 1990. George has spent a career producing, writing and recording music—in fact he’s sold millions of records through his and McFarlane’s Terrible Two Productions. His Digital Dump Recording studio recently opened in ..read more