It’s no secret that the famous Jersey shore town Asbury Park has been a hub for musicians for decades. The Stone Pony is one of the most legendary venues in the nation, standing mere blocks from other popular stages: Asbury Lanes, The Saint, The Wonder Bar, and the House of Independents.
It’s also no secret Asbury has seen its ups and downs as the center of New Jersey’s music scene. Beginning in 1962, Asbury Lanes opened its doors, The Stone Pony following it 12 years later.
Back then, crowds weren’t waiting at the doors for bands. The Pony was on the verge of foreclosure before “‘house bands’ began playing regularly, and the large crowds they drew saved the club,” according to The Stone Pony website.
It was then the local music scene was born. With his first studio album “Greetings from Asbury Park” Bruce Springsteen drew national attention to the place where he got his start and the rest is history.
Now the Stone Pony is most known for its Summer Stage lineup, and this year, big names are hitting the Asbury stage: Phoebe Bridgers, LANY, and Lauv to name a few.
Even though these famous artists are visiting the Garden State, what really makes Asbury Park such a lively music scene is the local talent.
Venues like The Saint and House of Independents are homes for Jersey artists like Olivia Bec, Scott Buksbaum, and Bryan Wood.
Buksbaum, who goes by the stage name Scxtty, says the House of Independents is his favorite venue to play.
“Everything about the venue is just special. The sound is unreal, the stage is huge and goes right up close to the audience so you can interact with them,” he says.
The House of Independents space is capable of hosting a variety of events thanks to its convertible seating areas and moveable stages, bringing, “Asbury Park’s ever-growing community of creative thinkers a venue that reflects their originality and versatility,” according to their website.
Bryan Wood, known as B. Wood, agrees, saying, “[The community] varies from hobbyists to dream chasers to legit professional musicians. There’s a bit of everything there genre-wise.”
Despite the variety of venues to match the equally diverse musicians that play them, Olivia Bec doesn’t think Asbury Park is all it’s cracked up to be.
“From my experience so far, there has been no extreme benefit to playing shows in Asbury Park. I love Asbury, I love its history, and its art, and music. But it’s tricky,” she says. “There’s no opportunity to gain incredible fan acquisition in Asbury. There’s no labels coming to town looking for the next Bruce.”
Bec herself is a one-of-a-kind musician, blending her Cuban roots with the local Jersey flavor. She’s one of many who play Asbury, but she longs for something more.
“I could move [to Asbury]. I could play out every night, get a job at a bar or as a sound tech. I could play every venue once a week for the rest of my life, and the crowd can be so great and responsive,” she explains.
“I could live off of that if I wanted to, but I would never shake the nagging feeling that there is something bigger and better somewhere else. Maybe that is enough for some, and that’s great, but certainly not for me.”
Bec’s opinion of Asbury Park is a stark contrast to the others, with Scxtty saying that, “The more you play the more people you meet and from that you can really start to build an audience.”
However, Scxtty also pointed out how attracting a crowd was difficult during COVID, and bands are still seeing the residual effects now.
“From the past two years of being showless, many fans moved away, and because of that many bands are struggling to pull heads,” he says.
Though Asbury Park is a legendary location for musicians, the town is still coming out of a recession due to the pandemic, and local acts are the ones suffering.
The Stone Pony Summer Stage will be a hit this summer as it always has been, but are Garden State bands pulling the best crowds they can be?
Asbury is a great place to begin a musician’s career, playing legendary venues to fuel the excitement of beginner performers. That being said, Asbury’s community outreach only goes so far. Bec says, “It’s not a place to make it big, it’s a place to settle and it’s a place for appreciation of the arts for sure. But at the end of the night, everyone goes home and forgets your name.”
