The Pride of Bayonne, Zakk Wylde, will join Kenny Wayne Shepherd, Kingfish Ingram, Eric Johnson, Samantha Fish, Dweezil Zappa, Taj Mahal, Noah Hunt, Stanley Jordan, Ally Venable and other artists at the 2024 “Experience Hendrix” tour. It’s been five years since this popular Jimi celebration toured. Starting as a single 2001 San Diego show, by 2004, it was a full-blown tour. Besides one 2022 night in Austin, it hasn’t toured since 2019. The three-hour extravaganza should be a doozy. Kenny Wayne Shepherd says, “I’m excited to rejoin this year. It’s always been great, with such exceptional artis ..read more

Bettye LaVette—while on the road—took a moment to field a few questions about getting a call to open for the Stones June 27 at Soldier Field in Chicago. “I am very excited,” the Essex County resident exclaimed. “They are my contemporaries. In fact, my first single came out in 1962 before their first record. Like I’ve said, `I’ve been waiting for them to call for sixty years. They finally found my number!” LaVette will not be performing any Stones songs in her opening set. “I will be selling my new album, LaVette,” she explains. In her career, though, she has recorded (and invigorated) two Sto ..read more

There’s rage in Kanak singer/songwriter Tom Kanach’s every facial tic in the Asbury Park band’s new “Without A Clue” song. Whoever he’s singing it to must’ve really done a job on him. As he explains, “it’s a contrast…a sing-song sweet melody over snotty but poppy guitar rock with angry lyrics. I thought it would be a nice juxtaposition to sing bitter lyrics to a lullaby-ish melody. I imagined singing it through clenched teeth, trying desperately to keep it together. “When it came time to make the video,” he continues, “I wanted to demonstrate how seriously the victim had been wounded by that ..read more

PHOTO: Robert Kool Bell Kool & The Gang (Jersey City), Dionne Warwick (East Orange) and Mary J. Blige (Saddle River) will be feted at the 2024 Rock’n’Roll Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony October 19 at the Rocket Mortgage Fieldhouse in Cleveland:  Kool and Blige in the Performer Category, Warwick winning the “Musical Excellence” Award. Robert “Kool” Bell, the last surviving original member of the band, told Andy Greene of Rolling Stone that he was overjoyed. “It’s been 60 years! We finally made it!” Bell will be seen in the upcoming feature film documentary, The Jersey Sound. The anno ..read more

PHOTO: Stephane Wrembel by Casey Ryan Vock The term “genius” is tossed around pretty frequently these days. Yet a true genius either invents his own genre like Bill Monroe (bluegrass) or furthers an existing genre into the future by making it palatable again but with a new personal touch so that it is forever irrevocably altered. Guitarist Stephane Wrembel is in the latter category. The Maplewood resident has fully inhabited the gypsy-jazz aesthetic of Django Reinhardt [1910-1953] to the point where he is, indeed, the living personification of Gypsy Jazz. It’s a sub-genre that hovers like a s ..read more

PHOTO: Soraia by Cassandra Panek When Jersey Girl Debbie Harry wrote “Union City Blue” with her British bassist Nigel Harrison for Blondie’s 1979 Eat To The Beat album, she must have been thinking of that Hudson County town. The following year Harry starred as neglected wife Lillian in the 1980 film Union City. Enter Philadelphia band Soraia whose lead singer ZouZou has captured the nerve, balls and aggression of the original while adding her own flair. "I've wanted to cover `Union City Blue’ since I first heard it on the Sid and Nancy soundtrack,” remembers Zouzou. “I loved that movie! We we ..read more

Summer just got louder. The Camden County 2024 Summer Parks Concert Series has been announced with concerts in three locations. The “Sunset Jazz Series” at the Camden Waterfront’s Roland Traynor River Stage will present shows every Monday at 8:00 p.m. starting June 3 with singer-songwriter-bassist Esperanza Spalding. The “Freedom Festival” will be held at the Camden Waterfront July 3 with Gin Blossoms, Tara Hendricks and a “Fireworks Spectacular over the Delaware River.” The “Sundown Music Series” will be held at Haddon Lake Park’s McLaughlin Norcross Memorial Dell Wednesdays at 7:30 p.m. sta ..read more

A flood damaged one of the Jersey Shore’s many venues last September and now, the new owners of House Of Independents have announced its doors will reopen in the summer. Fourteen shows have been set so far starting June 9 in the afternoon with “The Latin Social,” a party with live performances and a DJ providing spins for salsa dance lessons. Concert Crave (who already owns The Crave Cave in Elizabeth) promises everything from rock’n’roll, metal, punk and emo to hip-hop, country and comedy. Scheduled so far are comedian Ed Bassmaster (June 13), Dueling Pianos (June 14), a Taylor Swift dance p ..read more

Greg Kennelty, from Flemington in Hunterdon County, is something of an archeologist. He extracts rare metallic artifacts from the dustbin of time, polishes them off, and releases them on his new Embalmer Records label. As he says, “one of my biggest fears for the music world is losing pieces of history. Tapes degrade over time. Physical media gets lost over the course of decades. YouTube uploads get taken down or entire channels deleted. And once that last tape breaks, or the last upload goes away, we’ve lost something forever. I don’t want that to happen. The focus of Embalmer Records is to ..read more

Fresh on the heels of legendary Teaneck bassist Rufus Reid, 80, receiving the Wharton Arts Lifetime Achievement Award (see 2/29/24 news section), he’s shown up on the new Nick Finzer album, Legacy: A Centennial Celebration of JJ Johnson on the Outside In Music label, released April 5. Reid was in JJ’s band for many years, and, along with pianist Renee Rosnes and drummer Lewis Nash (who also played with JJ), they provide the pulse for Finzer’s sterling trombone improvisations amid stop-on-a-dime ensemble playing. JJ Johnson was born 100 years ago in Indiana, and died in 2001 at 77. The trombon ..read more