One of the biggest events in Northern New Jersey is taking place this weekend beginning Friday June 23 and wrapping up Sunday June 25 is the "13th Annual Rock, Ribs and Ridges Festival" at the Sussex County Fairgrounds.
This popular and ever growing three day event opens at 6 p.m. on Friday and features two bands; Dead On Live and former Lynyrd Skynyrd drummer Artimus Pyle and the Artimus Pyle Band.
Saturday features five bands including a The Band tribute with The Weight Band, Devon Allman Project and classic rockers 38 Special.
Sunday has four bands including closers Samantha Fish with Jesse Dayton and Blackberry Smoke. Recently, Jesse Dayton discussed the upcoming show, his friendship and new album with Samantha Fish called "Death Wish Blues," his love of the Rolling Stones and more.
"Well, I met Samantha 12 years ago when she was opening up for me at Knuckleheads in her hometown of Kansas City," he started. "I heard her before I saw her, I heard her backstage and I was like; who is playing that killer guitar? This guy said, "You've got to go down and see" and I went down there and there was this young girl down there shreddin' on guitar. I was like, oh wow! We met after the show and we just kind of kept in touch with each other and then her and her manager Rueben Williams who now manages me, came out to see me in New Orleans at my show and asked if I wanted to cut some songs together; that's kind of how it all started. It's pretty exciting because I have this whole other following and Samantha has this whole other following than I do. So, it's kind of like a whole new thing; ya' know? It's pretty cool because a lot of my fans don't know who Samantha is and a lot of her fans don't know who I am."
Dayton, who is a staple on Sirius XM's "Outlaw Country" is known for writing some colorful lyrics. He has penned songs with titles such as, "I'm at Home Getting Hammered While She's Out Getting Nailed," "(Hotter Than A) Three-Peckered Goat" and "Daddy was a Badass" to which he attributes to his childhood environment as well as some popular influences but he also says, he's not just a satirical songwriter.
"A lot of it just has to do with growing up around a lot of Texas storyteller people; people out in the country. I grew up on the Texas and Louisiana border right by Cajun Country in Beaumont, Texas.The high school I went to was 90 percent black and then I also grew up out in the country around a lot of old country people and then there is also that Texas singer-songwriter tradition that I love like Townes Van Zandt, Guy Clark; I've put as much time into my writing as I have my guitar playing; the 10,000 hours as they say."
"I mean, it's kind of a weird thing," he went on, "Because when you write a novelty song like, "I'm at Home Getting Hammered While She's Out Getting Nailed" then that's what people think you do but I also write a lot of serious songs. I grew up listening to Jerry Reed and Roger Miller and those are all super witty kinds of songs and I love that stuff. I write so many different songs and I try to write everything from Philly Soul to Chicago Blues to Outlaw Country to ballads."
Continuing, Dayton says his journey down this path started when he was up late one evening watching television as a youngster.
"It happened when I was a little kid, I saw Chuck Berry on the Johnny Carson show and he did the duck walk and I knew right then that was what I wanted to do. I'm still a huge Chuck Berry fan, nobody writes more witty lyrics than Chuck. He had the whole thing, he looked great, he was a showman, he was an entertainer; he was Bob Dylan's favorite songwriter; John Lennon's favorite too."
So, with these influences and playing lead guitar for country greats such as Johnny Cash, Willie Nelson, Glen Campbell and Waylon Jennings to name a few; how will his and Samantha's styles play out on stage?
"This is a whole duet tour so we actually play all the songs off the new record; this is the first band I've ever been in where we've literally gone out and played every song off a new record. Some of those songs are duets and some feature Samantha with me on lead guitar and some feature me singing with Samantha on lead guitar. So, it's a pretty cool tourl because we get to be Mick and Keith; the Rolling Stones are my favorite all-time band, I've seen them 23 times."
The Rolling Stones? Wait; so the guy with the heavy country and blues influences is a Stones fan? Dayton says it's an image thing which attracted him to the original "Bad Boys" of Rock 'n' Roll.
"I've always been attracted to the bad boy thing, the underdog. I've always cheered for the underdog, my favorite film is "Goodfellas" and I kind of always liked the gangsters more than I did the cops and with Mick and Keith; I think that The Beatles kind of overshadowed the fact that Mick and Keith are great songwriters. I also think that they are the coolest band ever in terms of the cool factor. The Blues is always the basic thing with those guys and a lot of people say that me and Samantha's new record has all of these different types of genres and music on it but that's what all of those bands used to do back then. You'd hear Zeppelin do their version of a Jamaican song or the Stones do their version of a country song and we try to do that too."
So, what can we expect at "Rocks, Ribs and Ridges" and beyond for the pair?
"I'm not sure if we are playing 90-minutes or just an hour, wait, I believe it's an hour-and-a-half. So, you're gonna get the whole show and it's a super high energy show and in the middle of the show we actually come out and play a couple of acoustic songs by ourselves which is really cool too."
"I'll be out with Samantha until next year but Samantha and I are both taking our solo bands out separately in September and I've got a record coming out that Shooter Jennings produced and Shooter is a real hot producer right now; he's been winning Grammys rightly for the last few years. So, I went to L.A. and made a record with him so that will be my next follow-up to this record and it's due out next year but I think a single comes out in September."
To purchase individual day or weekend passes for the event, please visit Rockribsandridges.com and to discover more about Jesse Dayton and/or Samantha Fish, please visit https://www.jessedayton.com/ and https://www.samanthafish.com/
"The feeling is real, the emotion is mostly the whole thing," is how solo artist Jeffrey Gaines feels about music and his music will be on full display when he takes to the stage of The Lizzie Rose Music Room in Tuckerton, NJ also on Friday June 23 for a 7:30 p.m. show.
Throughout most of his music career, Gaines has gone it alone as a solo act and over the course of his travels, he has done one thing above all others and that is be authentic but it wasn't until he released a re-recorded version of Peter Gabriel's "In Your Eyes" circa 2001 that the world got it's opportunity to really see what this talent from Harrisburg, PA was all about.
Seemingly, after its release, doors, along with those eyes opened and Gaines has gone on to tour with such greats as Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, Heart, Tori Amos, Tracy Chapman, Sting, Bryan Adams, Stevie Nicks and many more and the interesting thing about it is; it doesn't matter to him the size of the room or audience, it's all about the music.
After seeing him perform, just one man and his acoustic guitar, one can't help but wonder why he chose the solo journey. Most musicians want the comfort and security of having others to share the stage or to write material with but not necessarily Gaines. When asked if he has ever felt "Naked" on stage without a supporting cast to cover any mistakes or missteps; he let that authenticity take over.
"I'm currently promoting and focusing on my Lizzie Rose performance," he began in those deep rich tones for which he's known. "I've never been in a band that is slick; ever. There are the types of groups that are very finished like wedding bands who work on perfection and perfection only. All of my influences and bands that I ever grew up listening to were either solo or naked. The Clash was naked, The Ramones were naked, something could always happen. The point of why you even wanted to do it was to be revealed. You weren't putting on a facade, you were showing yourself; Patti Smith with The Patti Smith Group, even right now to this very day, everything that comes to her mind is immediately woven into the show and it can go anywhere all of the time. It doesn't matter, no one is going to be sticking to a script or a rehearsed performed thing; they are going to be in the moment, interacting with the audience and you've got to keep it loose and ever changing. So, if I start a song in the wrong key and it's just not natural for me, I never consider that a mistake other than a revealing of the truth and the truth isn't a mistake. I never take the stage hoping to conceal the truth from you because everything I've ever written has been the raw truth that most people probably would hide but I've already written that into the song. I've already written that into what you've purchased; when you bought the album there were already mistakes. When you bought the album there was, oh, maybe a guy shouldn't be writing about that on a debut album, you probably shouldn't have told that truth if you're trying to conceal but it is within my nature to just be genuine so, I included all of that stuff."
Jeffrey's bread and butter are his live performances and he doesn't necessarily care about making a studio record just for the sake of putting something out to remain in the public eye. Here too, honesty plays a large part as does perhaps a bit of nostalgia.
"I think of making new records but for me, when the record stores were kind of disassembled and there was no Tower Records etc; I mean, there is still some pockets of little mom and pop stores but that whole chain of command and the distribution from the label to the distributor to the store; the whole nature of that is what really inspired me to make records. I was the kid who would hang out in the record stores listening to music and seeing all of the new stuff and that whole ritual being broken down like that kind of takes away some of the interest in making physical records. People don't have players for the format; I took vinyl out on the road and everybody wanted to touch it but they didn't have a record player. Then the labels; everybody wants to put out a single at a time and they want to make bets on the success of one song at a time creating the writer who can come up with some sort of firework; a one song firework that will catch fire and become something and that's not that interesting and it's also seemingly not that interesting to society. So, it kind of diminishes a little interest in that, for me anyway. So, what I'm kind of left with is the live gig and that experience and keeping that going and as far as a next record; there is always songs, be they mine or someone else's because a lot of people have had a lot of success just singing really good songs, singing other songwritier's songs. So, if it comes down to that; I'm writing because it's what I do but do I feel that what I have to say is clicking with society at large right now on a mass scale? Less so. So, you make records if they don't cost you too much and then you don't press up a bunch of them, you don't press up that many. So, when you think about the diminishment of that model, then I don't know and it really comes down to just that; I don't know. Making albums and making records; is that going to be just a little ego project for me to just make a record of songs that are already in my head? I can't know what the public wants until the public demands it but I don't want to start force-feeding you albums that nobody is buying so, we'll have to see. We'll have to see how the demand goes. My last studio record was 2018 I believe but I don't really think about that kind of stuff too much; you make them and keep on moving. As soon as I'm out of the studio I'm off that record so, that time has kind of gone by. I have two live records, "Live In Europe" and "Live at The TLA." I do live records, they are easy to do; if you just start making tapes of your shows you can compile some of the best sparked moments of a tour or of the year so yeah, I have those. I never got into this for sales, I was singing and enjoying myself playing in bands and then you get sort of solicited by a label; I didn't solicit the label. Somebody sees you playing on Bleeker Street in New York or in The Village playing a gig and then somebody comes up to you and hands you their card and says, "We've got an idea that you could make records for us" and you read their contract and agree to it but somebody else got that ball rolling first and then when that situation kind of falls by the wayside; you resume back into your personality. My personality, I really don't push myself on people which is sort of weird but it has been my life's nature; I'd have to almost become another human being to want to go around telling everybody, hey, I've got a record and you should have it (laughs). It's like dating and going up to somebody and saying, hey, you should go out with me (laughs). Somebody who finds you attractive will come up and start talking; I don't really know how to Gwen Stefani it where it's like an overt, extrovert personality that I'd have to be and for me that has never been the case."
A venue such as The Lizzie Rose Music Room is the perfect fit for a "Personality" such as Gaines. The intimate confines and atmosphere will accentuate his soulful vocals while allowing for the emotion of which he speaks to barrel through but to hear him tell it; it's much deeper.
"Actually, what you can expect is, if anyone cares about singers anymore; you'll have one of the best ones sitting right at the end of your feet. I know a lot of people like to go see great guitar players who play a lot of notes, who've put their 10,000 hours in and everybody is like, wow, look at all of those notes. I think that is what happens when I'm singing, there's never an out of intonation even when I'm effing around and it's pretty awesome. The contrast is and the only rub is about lyrics and singers; sometimes you're being critiqued on what you're saying. Sometimes what you're saying supersedes the way you're saying it which is why I'm also a fan of doing covers.When I'm doing a cover, no one is scrutinizing what I have to say and then they say, holy shit, now that I stopped listening to what he has to say, he can fucking sing (laughs). So, if I do some Peter Gabriel or something like that it's like, oh shit he can really sing because everyone stops listening to what I'm trying to say and sometimes I write songs and I might be trying to say something but ultimately, I'm only saying these things as a vehicle for the singer in me. The singer in me just needs some words and I've written some things that have moved people and have been there for them that made a whole lot of sense and opened their minds but that's just an incidental thing because what I'm trying to ultimately end up doing all of the time is be a singer. So, that will be happening; if anybody is still into that anymore. So, it really comes down to, hey music lovers, there's a guy doing just that, it's less about Jeffrey Gaines playing; look, I've made a lot of personal relationships. My audience is often filled with people like me and people who like me and are there to see me but it works if you're there to see music, that's really the forefront. That's why I keep showing up, it's not an ego thing, it's not a Jeffrey Gaines thing, it's about the collection of the imagined notes that fly up in the sky being harnessed and put through the microphone. The magic of music that floats all around and the chef can reach up and grab it and cook that up for you and deliver it in an instant. The minute he thinks it, it can materialize physically through the PA system. So, if anybody is into that, that's what will be happening. That's what I always think about because I'm always listening on that level and that is what gives me so much joy and always satisfying that; that thing in me is being satisfied when I go see me (laughs). When I go to a show and say, oh, I'm playing tonight, at least I'm gonna know that somebody is into doing it and it's gonna be like wow, this cat is really into doing this and that thrills me as I separate from myself and just key into listening to what's happening and that's pretty great and that's pretty awesome. A lot of people in this genre and in the rooms where acoustic guys and gals assemble; there might be less of that going on. Meaning, there are a lot of wonderful singer-songwriters who have intricate songs and they do a lot of talking through them, they narrate feelings through them and that's cool but my thing is more of an Aretha Franklin singer-songwriter. There is going to be some vocal gymnastics instead of just, "I gave my love a cherry that had no stone," and no, I'm not talking about it (laughs). It is really a hard thing and there are less people doing it and that's what I do know from going out and seeing other people. There are less people putting their ass into it which is fine and still entertaining and I just don't know but I bet that Friday June 23 is gonna be pretty awesome. I was there in 2019 and I'm excited to go back to the little Victorian gift shop. They are a nonprofit and I hope that everybody continues to support them."
Tickets to see Gaines are $32 in advance and can be purchased at https://www.lizzierosemusic.com/ and to discover more about Jeffrey Gaines, please visit https://www.jeffreygaines.com/
That's it for this week! Please continue to support live and original music and until next week....ROCK ON!
