WELCOME TO THE STONE PONY!

INTERPOL + SPOON 
Lights, Camera, Factions Tour
with support from Water From Your Eyes

Interpol began in New York in 1997, when guitarist Daniel Kessler recruited bassist Carlos Dengler and singer/guitarist Paul Banks to form a band. In 2002, with Sam Fogarino on drums, the band signed to Matador records and released Turn On The Bright Lights, which made it to 10th position on NME’s list of 2002’s top releases and Pitchfork named it the year’s #1 album. Over the next decade and a half Interpol would go on to wide critical and commercial acclaim, with five subsequent high charting records on the Billboard 200; earning rave reviews across the map from Rolling Stone to TIME; performing on late night television shows and playing major festivals like Coachella and Glastonbury and headlining Mexico’s Corona Capital. The band (Banks, Kessler and Fogarino) have just finished recording their latest studio album with legendary production duo Flood & Moulder, due for release this year through Matador Records.

Spoon’s tenth album, Lucifer on the Sofa, is the band’s purest rock ’n’ roll record to date. Texas-made, it is the first set of songs that the quintet has put to tape in its hometown of Austin in more than a decade. Written and recorded over the last two years – both in and out of lockdown – these songs mark a shift toward something louder, wilder, and more full-color. Halfway through the recording process, the pandemic hit. The studio shutdown, but frontman Britt Daniel continued writing. “There are songs I wrote last spring [of 2020] that I wouldn’t have come up with otherwise,” he says. “It was that first-of-its-kind moment.” Lucifer on the Sofa is the sound of that moment, a record of defiant optimism, the sound of a band cracking things open and letting them spillout onstage. At a time fraught with uncertainty, it’s shutting the door on the devil you know and never looking back.

Tickets: $49.50 in advance (plus applicable surcharges), $55 at the door

Almost Queen (Queen Tribute)
Tickets: $30 and up in advance (plus applicable surcharges), $39 at the gate

It’s been described as the most authentic Queen live show since the days of Queen themselves. Almost Queen delivers a live performance showcasing signature four-part harmonies and intricate musical interludes. Donning genuine costumes, Almost Queen recaptures the live energy and precision that is the ultimate Queen experience.

“I am a very big Queen fan and Almost Queen does a great job of creating the illusion of actually seeing Queen live. We all miss Freddie Mercury, I feel the band pays tribute to him and Queen respectfully.” – Eddie Ojeda (Twisted Sister)

“I had heard a lot of great things about these guys, but the show was even better than I imagined.” – Randy Jackson

“Without a doubt, Almost Queen are probably the finest testimonial to Queen I have ever had the pleasure in seeing. If Freddie were alive today he’d queue for tickets!” – Eric Cook, Demolition Records

“Almost Queen proved that they are the best Queen tribute act around. Almost Queen captured the essence of Queen’s classic songs both from a sonic and lyric standpoint. Their show was high-energy and fun, and they are worth checking out in a live setting.” – Digital Journal

Doc Holiday, Garry Tallent & Vini Lopez
Doc Holiday and his Sony Nashville Studio A Team & Friends along with Garry Tallent, Vini Lopez, Nicky Addeo  and Leon Trent
Special event with the Creators of SOAP (Sounds of Asbury Park)
Door 7 pm
Show 7:30-10:30
Tickets: $25 in advance (plus applicable surcharges), $30 at the door

September 22, 2022, a once in a lifetime concert with some of the creators of SOAP (Sounds of Asbury Park). DOC HOLIDAY and HIS SONY NASHVILLE STUDIO A TEAM and friends take the Stone Pony stage for an unforgettable show at the jewel of the Jersey Shore. Special guests include Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame inductee and founding member of the E Street Band GARRY W. TALLENT and Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Famer, “the first beat from E Street,” “VINI “MAD DOG” LOPEZ. Plus, Nicky Addeo and from the legendary Jersey Shore band Waterfront, LEON TRENT, and special appearances by many creators of the Sound of Asbury Park (SOAP). Don’t miss this one time only event! Opening, from Texas, “MR. ENTERTAINMENT, SHOCK & ROCK SAMMY DALE.

The Melvins
We Are The Asteroid

The Melvins are one of modern music’s most influential bands. Having formed in 1983 Montesano, Washington, the group founded by singer/guitar player Buzz Osborne (with stalwart drummer Dale Crover joining the following year), has been credited with merging the worlds of punk rock and heavy music, forming a new subgenre all its own. Over the band’s nearly 40-year history, they’ve released over 30 original albums, numerous live full-lengths and far too many to count singles and rarities. Most recently they released the 36-track acoustic collection Five Legged Dog, featuring reinterpretations of some of their heaviest songs as well as covers from their favorite artists. In the course of their discography, they’ve partnered with Jello Biafra, Mudhoney, and Fantômas for individual releases and toured the world many times over. In fact, the band had the misfortune to be in both Christchurch and Tokyo for their 2011 earthquakes. In 2012, the Melvins completed the “51 States in 51 Days” (50 states +DC) tour, which was chronicled in the film “Across The USA in 51 Days.” The current incarnation of the band is Osborne, Crover, and Steven McDonald (Redd Kross/OFF!). Previous line-ups include a pairing of Osborne and Crover with Big Business band members Jared Warren and Coady Willis, a four-piece featuring the current trio plus Butthole Surfers’ Jeff Pinkus, as well as Melvins Lite, which partners Osborne and Crover with Mr. Bungle’s Trevor Dunn. Sometimes, if you’re extra lucky, one version of the Melvins will open for the Melvins.

Tickets: $25 in advance (plus applicable surcharges), $28 at the door

CATE LE BON
A. Savage (Parquet Courts)

Pompeii, Cate Le Bon’s sixth full-length studio album and the follow up to 2019’s Mercury-nominated Reward, bears a storied title summoning apocalypse, but the metaphor eclipses any “dissection of immediacy,” says Le Bon. Not to downplay her nod to disorientation induced by double catastrophe — global pandemic plus climate emergency’s colliding eco-traumas resonate all too eerily. “What would be your last gesture?” she asks. But just as Vesuvius remains active, Pompeii reaches past the current crises to tap into what Le Bon calls “an economy of time warp” where life roils, bubbles, wrinkles, melts, hardens, and reconfigures unpredictably, like lava—or sound, rather. Like she says in the opener, “Dirt on the Bed,” Sound doesn’t go away / In habitual silence / It reinvents the surface / Of everything you touch.

Pompeii is sonically minimal in parts, and its lyrics jog between self-reflection and direct address. Vulnerability, although “obscured,” challenges Le Bon’s tendencies towards irony. Written primarily on bass and composed entirely alone in an “uninterrupted vacuum,” Le Bon plays every instrument (except drums and saxophones) and recorded the album largely by herself with long-term collaborator and co-producer Samur Khouja in Cardiff, Wales. Enforced time and space pushed boundaries, leading to an even more extreme version of Le Bon’s studio process – as exits were sealed, she granted herself “permission to annihilate identity.” “Assumptions were destroyed, and nothing was rejected” as her punk assessments of existence emerged.

Tickets: $20 in advance (plus applicable surcharges), $25 at the door

In an attempt to make the shows more accessible to all, Cate Le Bon and participating venues will be subsidizing a limited number of tickets for low income fans.  Please see point of purchase for more details. 

Start Making Sense 
Talking Heads Tribute
Tickets: $25 in advance (plus applicable surcharges), $30 at the door
Door 7 pm, show 8 pm

If David Byrne is one of the geniuses of modern times, then Start Making Sense is a tribute to genius. The musicians in this Talking Heads tribute take pride in faithfully recreating the music of Talking Heads’ entire career. Together they bring much of the Heads’ unique live show to the stage, with front man Jon Braun as a spot-on David Byrne, giving you a “once in a lifetime” experience. Prepare yourself for a rockin’, funkin’, danceable celebration of the new-wave art punk you loved from the ’80s!

“This is an appropriate title — Start Making Sense. This band makes plenty of sense to me, and is a great representation of Talking Heads’ music. So listen up and go check them out!” — Bernie Worrell, Rock & Roll Hall of Fame member and keyboardist for Talking Heads and Parliament/Funkadelic

We are beyond excited to announce our rescheduled “Rubberneck” tour dates with Reverend Horton Heat for fall of 2022! Postponing 2021 as the Delta Variant surged was one of the most difficult decisions we’ve ever had to make. For the safety of the band, crew, and fans, we felt it was the best thing to do.  All tickets for the original shows will be honored on the rescheduled dates.  Refunds at point of purchase as per local policies. Can’t wait to get out there and see everyone!

Tickets: $34.50 in advance (plus applicable surcharges)

Niko Moon: Coastin’ Tour

Tickets: $15 in advance (plus applicable surcharges), $20 at the door

Niko Moon has really clear memories. Music, cars, school. How much his parents loved each other, created a place where life was an adventure – and what you had was all you needed.

His dad, a drummer turned truck driver, loved old cars. As a boy, he remembers a Falcon, “red interior, and the carpet. The way it smelled.” He used to love to pile in with his dad, riding around, going to get donuts – and listening to music.

“I was 8 or 9, and I didn’t get it,” he laughs. “It was John Prine. My dad’s favorite was ‘One Red Rose.’ It’s funny. I knew all the words. I’d be singing along without a clue, but loving it… loving the line ‘What I never knew, I never will forget…’”

Like Prine, Moon’s finger is on simple things that really matter; easy joy and how to find it, loving where you are and finding ways to write about it so everyone – the really smart, the can’t be-bothered – can find their way to the bliss. It’s what Moon seeks to capture and sow in his songs.

Growing up an hour outside of Atlanta, back when it was country not exurbia, life moved at a different pace. People knew each other, took their time, shared a meal on Sunday with their family and pitched in when someone needed a hand.

Moon wanted to extract the essence of growing up in small-town Georgia. Banjo forward, swaggy back beat, guitars that tang as much as twang. Sonic tags, melodies that tumble and moments that embody all the warm welcome and friendliness that defined his life as a kid listening to his mama play Alison Krauss in her car, his debut album GOOD TIME creates an old school sort of country ethos that also drags a bit of Michael Franti, Prine, the Eagles and Outkast through songs that simmer, stir and sizzle in all the right places.

“In middle school, I started having my own opinions about everything,” he’s quick to offer. “Nirvana, Offspring, Green Day, Sister Hazel, Outkast, Tupac, Biggie. That drum and bass rhythm section of hip- hop, I just fell in love with. Didn’t know what they were talking about, either, but I really loved the way the drums knocked me out!

“My hair was all long. I was wearing basketball jerseys, JNCOs, playing hacky sack before school. I didn’t know what I was, so I was taking it all in, trying to figure out who I was.”

All of it turned out to be more than anyone could’ve bargained for. A musically curious kid, he remembers watching his dad practicing drums in the garage. “I got chills. I couldn’t comprehend how he was doing it,” he remembers. “I was so little, but he was in a touring regional country/rock band, had hair down to his waist. He gave it up, made the decision it was better for his family to just drive. I always respected him for that. You know, he was getting up at 4 a.m. to provide for his family.

“But he was such a fan of music, of songwriters. To just sit and listen to what they did with the story and the language. He – and my mom, who had the sweetest voice – were always singing to me. There’s a rhythm to that, too.”

That rhythm is shot through every track on GOOD TIME, a self-cultivated positivity starter kit. Whether the staccato/dobro punctuated laundry list of ‘can’ts’ that forms “GOOD AT LOVING YOU,” the double entendre “WAY BACK,” the slinky, finger-snapping “SMALL TOWN STATE OF MIND,” or the strummy philosophy of “WITHOUT SAYIN’ A WORD,” Moon recognizes you can’t have heart without the beat.

“The rhythm, the groove, the lyric: it’s all important,” he protests, trying to home in on his sweet spot. “The songwriter in me says it’s the words; but at the end of the day, it’s the rhythm. Rhythm’s the more elemental thing. The head and the heart, right? The heart is deeper a lot of time, and I want my music to move people. When they love the way it makes them feel, they’ll get there. But… I want to reach the ones who love the lyric, who really focus on what you’re saying, too.”

If the secret sauce is the alchemy, it’s been years in the slow-steeping. Not only did Moon produce Franti’s acclaimed Stay Human, Vol. 2, he’s been the secret weapon for Zac Brown for almost a decade. In love with music, the young kid caught up with the circus, “back at the Dixie Tavern on Wednesday nights, 200 people with the line wrapped around the bar and across the back. ‘Chicken Fried,’ ‘Toes,’ ‘Free,’ yes, but he would do Metallica, Rage Against the Machine, Keith Whitley. And his picking, there’s always a hook built into the chord, even when he’s just playing G, C, D.”

Writing, traveling, seeing the world, Moon absorbed a precision and commitment to music that was exacting, even as it embodied simple pleasures. “Everyone in that band is so good. Spending 10 years watching them arrange and create was intense. Relentlessly authentic and refusing to adapt to other people’s ideas of what you should be was a real lesson.”

Ten years was also spent living the life. In the rock & roll Jetstream, Moon confesses, “I had it in my mind to be a real artist you had to live this life: always moving on, lonely, smoking a lot of cigarettes, lots of girls, drugs and drinking. That Jack Kerouac way of you have to suffer a little to really be an artist. But that was a story I invented…”

Tragedy collided with magic. With an engagement imploding in the most high-impact way – see the sinewy “DRUNK OVER YOU” – Moon sought higher ground. Young, talented and good-looking, it was easy to shut off, shutdown and remain aloof. But that’s when he met Anna, who Facebook friended him after a photographer she was thinking of using showed her Moon’s picture in his photo portfolio.

“I was playing Atlanta, so I invited her to the show,” the reformed player remembers. “She came, and was so beautiful. I thought we were gonna hang out, but she stayed two minutes, told me she liked the show and left.”

A proper date, a real conversation and the news that she, too, was a songwriter intrigued him. Unaware that she’d already appeared in Italian Vogue, he asked her to play a song. He was stunned. “She didn’t know how good she was.”

Smiling now, he confesses, “I was in love at first sight, but that creative force changed everything. I knew she’d understand me, get me – and while she was from an hour north of Atlanta and I was from an hour west of Atlanta, we were basically from the same small town.”