Events

Continuing a long and strange trip since humble beginnings over a decade ago, Dark Star Orchestra’s determined commitment to ‘raising the Dead’ has drawn nationwide attention.

Offering a continually evolving artistic outlet within the Grateful Dead’s musical canon, members of Dark Star Orchestra seek out the unique style of each performance era and offer their own interpretations and improvisations at each show. Using entire set lists from the Grateful Dead’s decades of touring as a launching pad, Dark Star Orchestra recreates song for song performances straight from the set list of these historic shows.

Made up of Jeff Mattson (Jerry Garcia), Lisa Mackey (Donna Jean Godchaux), Dino English (Bill Kreutzmann), Rob Koritz (Mickey Hart), Skip Vangelas (Phil Lesh), Rob Eaton (Bob Weir) and Rob Barraco (multiple keyboardists), Dark Star Orchestra does not try to match Grateful Dead live songs note for note. Anything so formulaic would quickly dispel the free spirit embodied in the music.

While faithful improvisation is pinnacle, precision is of equal importance with DSO, which position the stage plot based on the year of Grateful Dead show to be performed, adapting phrasing, voice arrangements, and even arranges specific musical equipment for the various eras of Dead music performed. At the end of each performance, the band announces the date and venue where the original show just covered took place. Dark Star Orchestra dips into every incarnation of the Dead, so most fans can “see” shows that happened long before they were born.

Dark Star Orchestra isn’t a cover band. Its shows are not even meant as tributes. What Dark Star Orchestra tirelessly strives for and achieves is a continuation of the spirit of what has now become over forty years of the Grateful Dead’s timeless music.

Due to an unforeseen scheduling conflict the Jesse Malin show at The Stone Pony originally scheduled for May 4 has been moved to Friday, May 17. We look forward to seeing everyone and promise it will be a special evening as Jesse and band perform The Fine Art of Self Destruction.
Live Nation & 90.5 The Night present
Jesse Malin
performing The Fine Art of Self Destruction + more
plus special guests
Adam Weiner (of Low Cut Connie)
Tangiers Blues Band
Matty Carlock and the Jailbirds
Tickets: $22 in advance (plus applicable surcharges), $25 at the door

From the bombastic and epic, to the folky and mystical, Get The Led Out (GTLO) have captured the essence of the recorded music of Led Zeppelin and brought it to the concert stage. The Philadelphia-based group consists of six veteran musicians intent on delivering Led Zeppelin live, like you’ve never heard before. Utilizing the multi-instrumentalists at their disposal, GTLO re-create the songs in all their depth and glory with the studio overdubs that Zeppelin themselves never performed. When you hear three guitars on the album…GTLO delivers three guitarists on stage. No wigs or fake English accents, GTLO brings what the audience wants…a high energy Zeppelin concert with an honest, heart-thumping intensity. Dubbed by the media as “The American Led Zeppelin,” Get The Led Out offers a strong focus on the early years. They also touch on the deeper cuts that were seldom, if ever heard in concert. GTLO also include a special “acoustic set” with Zep favorites such as “Tangerine” and the“Battle of Evermore” being performed in its’ original instrumentation with guest singer Diana DeSantis joining the band.

Tickets: $42.50 and up in advance (plus applicable surcharges)
TASH SULTANA is an explosive live artist who has commanded world attention since homemade videos went viral. Tash was soon selling out major theatres & arenas globally and playing at the world’s biggest festivals – no mean feat for an artist who just a year before was recording songs on a go pro in a bedroom.
Since Tash’s grandfather gifted a guitar at the age of three, the self-taught artist quickly developed a unique style that has people lining up to see around the world. Tash has mastered over 15 instruments, vocals that shine with a magical quality and a live show that needs to be seen to be believed.
The one-person powerhouse started out playing open mic nights on a fake ID and busking on the streets of Melbourne, Australia.
Recent accolades include winning an ARIA award for Blues and Roots Album of The Year with ‘Flow State’, over 500M streams, topping the iTunes chart in multiple countries, ‘Jungle’ coming in at #3 in triple j’s Hottest 100, achieving platinum sales for the Notion EP and platinum sales for single ‘Jungle’ which also featured in FIFA 18, winning the prestigious unearthed j award, multiple APRA nominations and recently playing a stand out set at Coachella and Lollapalooza 2018.

Celebrate the music of Bob Dylan on the eve of his 78th birthday as one of the year’s most heralded Basie Center events returns from a sold out west coast tour to ‘shake the windows and rattle the walls’ with Pat Guadagno’s performance of Dylan’s classic, Blood on the Tracks.

The rock & roll Poet Laureate’s 15th album, released in 1975 amidst a deluge of important new singer-songwriters (each one hailed by rock pundits as the ‘next Bob Dylan’) assured the world that, in fact, there is only one Bob Dylan — and there won’t ever likely be another.

At this, the 21st Dylan birthday celebration in Red Bank, Guadagno and his all-Star band Tired Horses will deliver the powerful, emotionally charged epic Blood On The Tracks in its entirety, with a passion and reverence befitting the Nobel Prize winner.

Tickets: $25 in advance (plus applicable surcharges), $30 at the door
Betty Who has partnered with PLUS1 so that $1 from every ticket sold will go to support The Trevor Project, and their work providing crisis intervention and suicide prevention services for LGBTQ youth. TheTrevorProject.org
To understand where Betty Who currently stands in her career, it’s best to imagine her as she often stood as a kid: solo, in front of the bedroom mirror, belting out hits, dancing like everyone’s watching. Because as the Australian pop queen walked away from her record deal and into her first independent album, she had a single mandate: “I am going to be the most me I can be.” That is, in part, why her third full-length statement is simply called Betty. It’s pure her: a brilliant swirl of pop — ’80s, Y2K, and hyper-modern strains — that encompasses everything from intimate artful fare to darkly sexy bangers to full-on wedding reception shout-alongs. What’s more, these are songs about grown-woman emotions delivered by someone who rediscovered the drive and verve that fueled her rise through music in the first place. As Betty says, “It all came back to joy.”There’s a reason Betty was tapped to remake the Queer Eye theme song for the uplifting series’ second season. It’s the same reason she’s soundtracked Pitch Perfect and made the Glee cast swoon, and that a certain legendary flash mob proposal video went viral to the tune of her 2012 debut single “Somebody Loves You.” Joy has always been in the music, but for Betty herself the feeling had faded. “I didn’t understand how damaging it was to feel like I was never living up to expectation,” she says of her time on a major label. “When you’re in the middle of it, you think it’s driving you. When I came out the other side I realized, no, I was devastated.” She wanted to handpick her team, sink or swim by her own choices, and share music while it’s fresh. With Betty, she did all of that and made an album that, as she puts it, “I’m more proud of than I could possibly say.”The world got a taste of that with Betty’s first independent single “Ignore Me,” an uplifting ode to moving on set to warm, indie-tinged electropop. Likewise, synth-streaked dance cut “I Remember” takes on something sad — the dissonance that can bubble up in a relationship — and finds the sweetness therein as Betty coos, “I don’t want perfect, I want you.” Our heroine not only split from her label in 2017, she got engaged, and the thrill of realizing you’ could spend your life with someone rings out on “Marry Me.” The song’s exuberance was inspired by the unabashed pop (namely Katy Perry) Betty loved as a teen. Meanwhile, the vintage JT-evoking “All This Woman” addresses a would-be lover but is really about Betty’s acceptance of her own body: “This is me saying to the man or woman I’m standing opposite, ‘This is what I want and you’re crazy if you don’t want it too.’”These songs spilled out with a similar assuredness — among them, early teaser “Taste,” which Betty has described as “a little rock ‘n’ roll with just a touch of vampire fetish,” and Betty‘s first official single, the achingly up-close, acoustic-powered “Between You & Me.” The process began in sessions between runs of her famously vibrant, intensely choreographed tour. She’d planned to write more when she came off the road, but instead realized she already had an album’s worth of songs she adored. So rather than iron them out in high-profile studios around Los Angeles, she absconded to a rental in Palm Springs with her two of her best friends, artist/producer Pretty Sister and decade-long collaborator Peter Thomas. They finished Betty in 10 days between shared meals and streaming sunshine. “It was one of the best times of my life,” recalls Betty. “I swear I’ll never make a record any other way.”But that setting conjures the beginning of Betty Who, when the woman born Jessica Newham studied cello at Berklee during the week, then took the first train out to Providence so she could spend all weekend inventing her sound at classmate Peter’s family home. And that hustle itself mimics a theme of Betty’s childhood in Sydney: while her classical training began at age 4, she devoted every free second to Britney, Christina, *NSYNC, and MJ. The voices, the moves, the lyrics, the spectacle — she ate it all up, especially that feeling the best pop gives you: “When you hear it,” says Betty, “and go, ‘Oh my God, you literally wrote this about me.’ I’ve wanted to make music like that ever since.” In that spirit, Betty gives us what we need most right now: an excuse to dance in the mirror, license to trust our instinct, and knowledge that joy is never too far away

Enjoy a day of 50s style entertainment with a modern twist, including live music, a classic pin-up contest with prizes and vendors. Free to attend. This event is sponsored by Underground – please contact 609-652-5200 for more information. Historic Smithville offers 60 shoppes, 7 eateries, carousel ride, train ride, on site lodging at the Colonial Inn and over 26 free weekend events!

The parade starts at noon from City Hall. Festival includes live performances, over 100 vendors, family zone and food court. FREE.

The Monmouth Civic Chorus returns to its early days to present favorite choruses and scenes from Gilbert & Sullivan, The Merry Widow, Die Fledermaus, Victor Herbert and others, combined with favorite choruses from opera masters Puccini, Verdi, and more.

Ticket Prices: Regular, $30; Senior, $27; Group, $25; Student, $10

Coheed and Cambria
with Mastodon (performing Crack the Skye)
and Every Time I Die
Tickets: $49.50 in advance (plus applicable surcharges), $55 at the door

Special Reunion Event!
The New Black
City Vision
Common Wealth
This Years Comeback
Door 6:30
$20. adv + applicable surcharges / $25. door

Tickets: $22 in advance (plus applicable surcharges), $25 at the door

Love Remains, Tal Wilkenfeld’s debut solo album for BMG, is a testament to the celebrated bassist’s unconventional journey.While a dedicated fan base may already know Tal for her work with Jeff Beck, Prince, The Allman Bros., Herbie Hancock and Mick Jagger, Love Remains reveals a new side of Tal as a songwriter and singer with skills on par with her legend-in-the making musicianship. This new album’s 10 song collection displays the Australian-born, LA-based musician as a talented vocalist, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, and producer. The album was co-produced by Tal and Paul Stacey (Oasis, The Black Crowes) and features guitarist Blake Mills, keyboardists Benmont Tench (Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers) & Zac Rae (Death Cab For Cutie) and drummer Jeremy Stacey.

Tal’s range of talents is on full display, and she achieves a stunning balance between instrumental prowess and exquisite song craft. Jackson Browne, who offered creative guidance throughout the process of making the album, was executive producer.With few models of an instrumentalist turned singer-songwriter, Tal has broken extraordinary new ground. As Jackson Browne acknowledged,“I can’t think of another instrumentalist that has ventured into the area that Tal now has, when it comes to writing and singing songs from her own experience.”“I began singing and writing songs with words when I first picked up a guitar at 14,” said Tal. “When I arrived in the States a couple of years later, I quickly became fixated on guitar and then the bass and I stepped away from lyric writing. My bass became both my weapon and my shield, but that ran its course. That’s when I began writing song with lyrics again and creating this album.”After relocating stateside from her native Sydney, Australia at just 16-years-old, Tal made believers of rock royalty and fans with her uncommon combination of melodic sensibilities and technical prowess.