Photo via Summerfest
Southside Johnny & The Asbury Jukes
Over a 40-plus-year career, Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes have never had a major hit single and chances are most people wouldn’t recognize frontman Southside Johnny Lyon if they saw him walking down the street near his Jersey shore home.
Lyon, though, has no complaints about where his musical life has taken him or about the busy touring schedule he maintains with the current lineup of the Jukes. “The business is fine. We’re not making millions of dollars or anything like that. But there’s a lot of work,” he said. “It seems as though everybody enjoys being on the road. Everyone has kids—I don’t—but everyone else does, but most all of them are grown, and I don’t know, we’re happy for the work because, you know, there are a lot of bands that never get the chance to tour. I’ve been touring for 40-some years. It never really gets old to me.”
That doesn’t mean Lyon should not have had a bigger success. In particular, his first three albums with the Jukes (I Don’t Want to Go Home, This Time It’s for Real and Hearts of Stone) are widely credited with defining the Jersey sound with their rousing mix of rock and roll and horn-fueled soul and featured quality songs written by local buddies Little Steven Van Zandt (who produced the early Jukes albums) and a certain guy named Bruce Springsteen.
Lyon remains proud of those three albums, released in 1976, 1977 and 1978 respectively, although he will allow that he’d love to re-do them today to improve the sound quality of those early efforts. The music, though, holds up.
“They just were such great songs,” Lyon said. “We were really in a ferment of creativity. Bruce, Steven and all of us were just really locked in, and I think some great songs came out of that. So it doesn’t bother me to do those songs. That’s where I started from. I’m very grateful to people for actually liking those songs. It gave me a chance to get on the road, which was one of the things I always wanted to do, even when I was very young.”
Born in Jersey
By the time of those albums, Springsteen was starting to put the Asbury Park, New Jersey music scene on the national map, thanks to his classic third album, 1975’s Born to Run. Lyon and Van Zandt (who joined Springsteen’s E Street Band in 1975) were two other charter members of a rich scene that formed in Asbury Park in the late 1960s.
One early hub of activity was a hangout called The Upstage, which Lyon frequented along with Van Zant, Springsteen and a number of future musicians in the Jukes and Springsteen’s E Street Band. The club, a no-alcohol venue that stayed open until 5 a.m., was equipped with speakers, amplifiers and a drum set.
“We just met everybody up there,” Lyon said. “We would jam and learn how to play and learn how to play with each other, and different songs. I’d want to go in and do some blues things. Steven would come and he would want to do some Yardbirds or that kind of thing. It was just a real melting pot of musicians.
“I was the designated singer,” Lyon said. “Steven was the designated guitar player. ‘Big Bobby’ (future Lyon and Bon Jovi collaborator Bobby Bandiera) and (original E Street Band member) Vini Lopez was the drummer, Garry Tallent (another original member who is still in the E Street Band) was the bass player. So if people came in that wanted to jam, there was a band available, a lot of musicians available that would go up and let the guy play guitar or sing or whatever it was.”
Some five decades after developing his skills at clubs like The Upstage, Lyon is still living his dream, touring worldwide and making albums at a fairly steady clip.
After Soultime!
He has started work on the follow-up to the excellent 2015 Southside Johnny & the Asbury Jukes album, Soultime!, teaming up with his long-time songwriting partner and keyboardist in the Jukes, Jeff Kazee, to write songs for the project.
“We’ve got a number of songs,” Lyon said. “But I think we’re fairly on our way. And with this band, it’s really quick. You send some MP3s of arrangements you think of (to the band members) and they come up with their own parts. You go into rehearsal, and then once we’re in the studio, it only takes a couple of weeks. I sing, they play, we get a take we like and (that’s it). It’s because these guys are that good. You don’t have to worry about mistakes or anything like that.”
Fans can expect Southside Johnny & the Asbury Jukes to deliver their usual crowd-pleasing shows now that the group is back touring after the pandemic. “We have five or six songs that I know people want to hear. Every time I start them, people get excited and that carries you through, even though we’ve done them a thousand times. But we leave a lot of room on stage for us to try and improvise and do some old stuff or some cover things,” Lyon said. “We might do some new material, too.”
