Who is in the mood for a good, ol’ Jersey style, Atlantic City Memorial Day weekend? A little BBQ food, some gambling, the sun and sand of the Atlantic City beach and boardwalk…sound good?! Well, we have one more way to add a little more “Jersey shore” to your itinerary and we’re NOT talking about the TV show. We’re talking about Southside Johnny & The Asbury Jukes, one of the first bands to come out of the Jersey Shore (Asbury Park, duh) in the ’70s. This is the same place and time that birthed Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band. Needless to say, Southside and Bruce know each other pretty well. The Boss even has writing credits and vocals on some of his albums.

Anyway, these guys have a great following in the Northeast as well as Europe (go figure) and will be playing the House Of Blues Atlantic City at Showboat on Friday. Learn more about the band and check out an interview we did with Southside earlier last week, below.

TAC: This band seems very hard working and has had ups and downs, but always seems to emerge with small victories. What about this band makes you the most proud?

Southside Johnny: I think it’s the consistency. You’re on the road and you get to that 38^th day, and you start to be really tired and a lot of the guys have kids, and they want to be home. You can get to that point where you don’t know if you want to continue, but you get up on stage and have a great show, and you realize that’s what you do it for. We never dog it on stage. We always find some way to have fun, find something new and enjoy the audience’s reaction.

TAC: Bruce Springsteen has writing credits on a bunch of your songs. Tell us something about him that we wouldn’t know.

Southside Johnny: Well obviously, he’s a very generous guy. He’s given me some great songs; songs that really could have been hits for him. He’s a very generous man. I shouldn’t say this because he doesn’t like to talk about it, but he does a lot of charity things. He always calls me up and says ‘Southside! We’re gonna do a thing!’. And we go and do charity shows with Bobby Bandiera in the band, and we do Chuck Berry and Wilson Pickett and we have a great time. He really believes in doing things for other people.

TAC: Oh, Bruce. Now let’s flip it! What’s something about Southside Johnny & The Asbury Jukes that many people don’t know but should?!

Southside Johnny: I can tell you something about me, I’m a bird watcher! I love watching birds and going into the woods with binoculars, a camera and a bird book, and just being lost in there for hours. I’ve gone all around the world looking at birds: Costa Rica, the South of France, Spain, Mexico, a lot of places. All across the United States too.

TAC: No way! Songs From The Barn was released in January 2013. What’s special about this album?

Southside Johnny: This is a side project of mine that is semi-acoustic. We play a lot of acoustic guitars. We have some electric instruments too, but it’s just a chance to do different material. It started out with me wanting to do some folk-ish things and a little country; and I started writing songs for it and thought well, we might as well record it if we’re going to put that much work into it. But really it’s not Jukes. There’s not a horn section, it’s not R&B, although there is R&B on it. It’s just more acoustic oriented. Nothing I do fits in any category.

TAC: You change your set lists nightly. What’s the process like of deciding what fits for what crowd?

Southside Johnny: Usually it happens within the show. I usually pick a song with how I feel that night. If I feel like doing something hard and fast, or something soulful, whatever it is I feel like doing. When I walk on stage, I’ve been known to change the very first song if I feel like the audience wants something different than what I want. But during the show, if I want to do the song, I’ll just do the song. I’ll call it out or I’ll just start singing it and we’re very flexible. The band is great that way. They can handle every curveball I throw at them which gives you a lot of freedom on stage. It makes you feel emotionally involved in the show because you’re not locked into anything. If I had to do the same show night after night, I might as well work in a cubicle in an office. I just can’t do the same thing over and over again that’s one of the reasons why I got into the music business.

TAC: Many of your followers hail from the Northeast and the UK and Europe. How are they similar? What is a Southside Johnny fan like?

Southside Johnny: Well usually, they sing along. A lot of times, they come up and sing, too. It’s just the enthusiasm. We’re not trying to prove anything. We’re not trying to convince anybody that we’re great. All we’re trying to do is play music and enjoy it and hope that the audience enjoys it, and it bounces back and forth between the audience and the band. You break down the barriers and it just becomes a night of fun, emotion and music. The Europeans understand that instinctively. The difference is that when I tell a joke on stage in America, people don’t laugh. But when I tell a joke in Europe, they don’t laugh because they’re translating it!

TAC: What can fans expect from your hometown show at HOB on 5/24?

Southside Johnny: It’s pretty much spontaneous. We don’t have routines or anything like that. We just let fly on stage! Hopefully there will be some humor too. Like I say, it is not a night of deep, philosophical seeking. It is a night of fun and enjoyment. If there’s an emotional moment in there, that’s great too. We want to have two hours-worth of music instead of worries of the day or any of that. Just come, get excited, and enjoy yourself.

TAC: We’re sure you have some memorable stories from Atlantic City over the years! What sticks out in your mind?

Southside Johnny: I have one from the last time we played in Atlantic City. Our road manager dragged me over to the $5 machine and I subsequently put $500 into the damn machine and watched it disappear! So he owes me $500! I’m gonna get him for that!

TAC: Well, you’re coming to the right place to get him back! Does performing live still give you those same feelings you felt while doing it in the mid ‘70s?

Southside Johnny: It’s different. It’s changed a lot more now, but I still get a thrill out of doing it and when it really connects with the audience, and you’re lost in it, it’s the same thing. It’s just the greatest feeling in the world. It’s better than sex! But not much!

TAC: LOLz. What do you still hope to achieve with this band and your career?

Southside Johnny: I just want to keep making music. There’s always things to do; there’s always styles to explore. The last studio album The Jukes made came out of a lot of anger from the recession with people losing their houses and losing their jobs. You write about what’s happening to you at the moment or in the last few moments of your life. And I’m in a pretty good place now, so I think that the next album will be R&B, love song, upbeat stuff. But, we’ll see! It’s an adventure all the time.

Sounds like it! Just keep doing what you’re doing, Southside Johnny!

Isn’t this man a hoot, though? And a damn good musician! Jersey’s finest for sure! Come see Southside Johnny & The Asbury Jukes in action on Friday at House Of Blues at Showboat Atlantic City at 8:45 p.m. Get your last minute tickets here!

Relient K is about to hit the House Of Blues Atlantic City stage this Saturday as part of their current tour with Hellogoodbye.  Although drummer Ethan Luck exited the band days before the tour began in April, and their newest album, Collapsible Lung, was pushed back from an April 23rd release date to a July 2nd, Relient K is soldiering on full steam ahead and not giving into these forces of nature. And we must say, it seems like they’re having a whole heck of a lot of fun doing it!

Pegged as Christian rockers, these dudes from Canton, Ohio hit the mainstream with their single “Be My Escape” off of their 2004 release Mmhmm, below.

The band actually had three previous albums and three more that followed and through it all, they’ve been through about seven drummers and three bassists. Lead singer Matt Thiessen and lead guitarist and background vocalist Matt Hoopes have remained the constants. Awesome music has also remained a constant too, so really… it’s all good!

We caught up with Matt Hoopes for a bit yesterday about all this and more! Check out the interview, below.

TAC: You guys are named after your car. He had a Plymouth Reliant K. What was it about the name of that car that you wanted to name your band after?

Matt Hoopes: It was a bit of an inside joke. My grandmother used to use it as a mail carrier car out in the country. She lived on a farm and she was a mail carrier, so she had this old, beat up car she used for that. She gave it to me when I was 16 and I was super stoked to have a car, but it was just falling apart and rusting out. I put a bunch of band stickers on the back and it just somehow became an inside joke that I was impressing all the ladies with my really cool car. There was this one night we were out to dinner and it was the first time that Matt [Thiessen] had heard about it when we started playing music together and he was like: ‘What is this K car? It’s so funny!’ And he was laughing about it and said that we should call our band that. It just stuck. There’s no real reason to it, it’s just kind of an inside joke that stuck.

TAC: You have a new album, Collapsible Lung, set to be released in July. How is this album different from your previous work?

Matt Hoopes: This album is a bit of a pop experiment. We just decided to not make a record like we have ever made before and just kind of take each song for what it is. In that vein, the record is all over the place. We recorded things in different ways. We did some recording in Matt’s house and we did some recording in really nice studios as well, so it’s kind of all over the map as far as that goes. With each song though, we tried to take every element for what it was and really think about what each song needed. Did it need 1 guitar or 7 guitars or zero guitars? What does it need? We were able to kind of be creative on that level as far as putting songs together. Even in the writing process, there are a few songs that we worked on with several different writers. We’ve never done that before and that was an experience. Just to come at it at a different angle, that was our main goal on this entire record. I had a lot of fun doing it. I’m really proud of it. Even in the writing process, we would get in with some guys and it was interesting. Sometimes we would start with just a drum beat and we would say okay, now we have this drum beat, let’s come up with a chord progression to go on top of it. That’s usually backwards of how we normally write songs where you kind of come up with the melody and lyric first or maybe the chord progression first, but never a drum. It just kind of helps us move forward and think outside of the box of our own heads which we kind of felt like we had to do making our seventh record. We made a lot of great songs over the years and had a lot of fun doing it, but we really didn’t want to make the same record again. The idea of that just sounded boring. I’m really proud of it. A lot of the songs turned out really great.

TAC: We were just going to ask what the writing process is like for you! You are answering our questions!

Matt Hoopes: Yeah, Matt’s been the primary writer in our band and he’s been writing songs since he could play one string on the guitar when we were in junior high. He’s just one of those prolific writers. I think he’s really grown as a lyric writer as well. We’ve been doing music together since we were in high school and it’s really cool to think about that and where we’ve come. Matt’s actually been doing a lot of writing outside the band as well which is kind of where the idea to bring in other writers to what we were doing sprouted from as well.

TAC: Collapsible Lung is named after a track on the album. Why did you choose that track to represent the album?

Matt Hoopes: That song came about as probably the last song that we finished writing. Just Matt and I wrote that song, and it kind of encompassed that last three years since we put out an album. It kind of encompassed all the songs. It was like an explanation of all the songs, just the kind of things we’ve been through, and how we’ve dealt with those things. The record is pretty honest, but a little bit ambiguous, and I think that song just helped paint that picture a little more clearly.

The record is just all over the place. There are serious songs; there are almost funny songs that are really lighthearted. We were initially talking about calling the album “What The…”. We had talked about calling it “So, This Is Awkward”. I liked both of those titles for the album. I think they are very odd and us, but I think we decided to go with the more serious side of it. It just felt like the right thing to do.

TAC: Your band has been through a lot of transition over the years. Is there ever a struggle to try to maintain the consistency and dynamic that you know works for you?

Matt Hoopes: Yeah. Our drummer Ethan, who has been with us the last five years, just recently decided to leave the band and we wish him the best. I love Ethan as a guy. It’s just one of those things that happened. It’s not like anything went down, and I don’t mean to talk about that too much, but we’ve been through our share of drummers and it is interesting to see the dynamic of playing with different people. We’re very, very selective of people that we bring in musically just because it does make a big difference. The guy that we have playing with us now, Tom, has been a friend for a long time and actually we have a new bass player. Our bass player hasn’t quit, but he’s not able to tour for the time being and Dan is my roommate and he’s playing bass for us. He’s an excellent bass player and a great guy to have on the road. Tom is playing drums and has been our friend for the last five or six years. The other interesting thing is that we were all friends back in Canton, Ohio. It’s just kind of cool to have that history with it as well.

TAC: Again, you are answering our questions! How has playing with Dan and Tom been so far on this tour?

Matt Hoopes: It’s been great. Obviously they are both incredibly talented musicians. It’s just a good vibe. We have a lot of fun at the shows and we’re all just kind of enjoying it and having fun and singing with the kids that come and hanging out.

TAC: What can fans expect from your show here at House Of Blues on Saturday?

Matt Hoopes: Well we were actually supposed to have the new album out on April 23^rd which would have been right before the tour started and with the red tape of putting out albums and distribution and iTunes and record labels and all that sort of thing, we decided to push it back until July 2^nd.  We’re still playing four or five songs depending on the night from the new record, but in lieu of doing that, we’re also doing a hand of really old songs, so that’s kind of bringing it full circle. We’re just trying to have a show that’s all over the place as far as from our catalogue because we have so many songs to choose from at this point.

TAC: Has the bus fire you guys experienced while on the road in 2007 affected the way you’ve toured since then?

Matt Hoopes: Not at all, it was a fluke thing. I know a couple people who have had bus fires even since then. Our new bass player Dan had a fire about a year ago on the Pennsylvania Turnpike about an hour out of Pittsburgh which is almost exactly where ours happened. It was a lot tougher for them because they owned the bus, but we’ve never owned a bus just because we never felt like it made sense. It’s not a smart business move to own a bus and I still hold by that! It’s such a fluke thing and obviously we feel lucky that no one was hurt and that nothing irreplaceable was lost.

TAC: We’ve noticed that you guys take song requests for your shows on twitter sometimes. What is it like being able to connect with your fans so quickly and have them help you essentially build a different show each night?

Matt Hoopes: That’s been an amazing thing. It’s kind of off the radar. It’s not like we’ve made an announcement that we’re taking requests, but we talked about it a little bit and we’ve been doing an acoustic set in the middle of our show. So if it’s a song that Dan and Tom can’t learn in time, all those old songs are like that, then Matt and I will just play them acoustic. It’s been kind of fun because we’ve been doing songs that we haven’t played in ten years. We’ve been doing songs we’ve never actually played; we’ve been doing cover songs. Last night we did “Sweet Caroline” in Boston and it was really fun. We can do whatever we want and it’s cool to have that freedom where we change the set list every night.

TAC: Do you guys have any pre-show rituals or superstitions before you walk on stage?

Matt Hoopes: I’m not very superstitious at all! We have such a laid back vibe that we really want to portray that. We just kind of hang out backstage and go on. We’re just dudes up here that are lucky to be doing what we’re doing and we try to somehow convey that. We just kind of walk on stage wearing whatever we were wearing earlier and play a rock show and have fun.

Seriously. What’s not to like about going to a rock show and having fun? Do it! Grab your last minute tickets here! Relient K will take the stage at House of Blues at Showboat Atlantic City at 8 p.m.!

The Mavericks are back after an eight year hiatus and their newest album, In Time, released in February, has been receiving rave reviews. American Songwriter describes it as “as powerful and timeless as anything they have done” and the LA Times states that In Time “embodies the very best of the melting pot experience that’s the very best of the American character.” That’s right. Because The Mavericks are and have always been true to their name. You could never peg them in one hole or another.

While their sound as a whole embodies country, there’s also some smooth latin in there; some pop, some Tex Mex and more. In Time is the perfect next step to their previous six albums (like From Hell To Paradise and What A Crying Shame) even with the eight year time gap.

When all is said and done, it may seem as if the more things change, the more they remain the same because the band is back out at it on the road again for a huge international tour and are stopping here at House Of Blues Atlantic City TOMORROW at Showboat. We caught up with original member Robert Reynolds yesterday for a bit. See what he has to say about this reunion and more, below!

TAC: We love that you guys are a country-esque band from Miami! And you started off your career in a very different direction (punk alternative). What was the process like of finding the sound that works for you?

Robert Reynolds: There’s nothing like time. Time is a great teacher. If you have the liberty of time you get to try things and with each album you experiment a little and you push the boundaries a little and before you know it, with any luck at all, you begin to arrive at things that are uniquely yours and uniquely work for you and you keep those. You get rid of the things that were part of yesterday and you grasp onto things that are a part of the immediate emotion of the moment. Time is a creative contributor. A band that doesn’t get past a couple of records, how would they ever know what they are going to sound like 24 years later? This is our 24^th year together.

TAC: There have been so many artists as of late in the past couple years that have come back after a hiatus and that’s what you guys did last year after an 8 year break. Do you think there’s a reason for this and why was it right for you guys?

Robert Reynolds: I think there’s a couple of things that happen.  You see some bands coming together in a purely reunion kind of format; grabbing as many original members as possible and going out and doing reunion-like circuits. Sometimes on a summer festival, you’ll see multiple 80’s rock acts together, that kind of thing. I believe that’s a different purpose of reforming. In other cases, some rock acts take years between albums. U2 could go 4 to 6 years between records and in a way, they’re not accused of breaking up, they’re respected for taking deliberate, necessary time. In a weird way, we never broke up. We also never gave anyone any indication that we would be doing anything together again. Not even ourselves. So ours is a unique scenario and I would just say that time was a healer. And of course the album is called In Time which means things happen in time, things heal in time, and things change in time, so I believe that time is once again the theme.

TAC: How will you make sure that that fire you feel when playing together again doesn’t fizzle out like it did around 2003?

Robert Reynolds: One is with a little bit of age, you begin to realize the things that were causing you stress and we might avoid those a little better today. I believe our intention today is to work hard and to also take as many necessary breaks as possible to preserve this good energy that we’re feeling. If we can do this right, it may not take eight year breaks between records. It might be that we take a year break and that would be the equivalent of eight years once you have learned this great healing process and how it works. I think we’re just a little bit more guarded. We’re prepared to approach this sensitively. We were on a hamster wheel back in the ‘90s. They had us working hard because we were generating a lot of money for a lot of people beyond ourselves. So they want to keep you working; that’s the nature of the beast. We finally put our foot down and it cost us our friendships and our band entirely, but fortunately it did not. We’re deep brother-like friends and we have a band that was capable of coming back together and being fruitful.

TAC: How is the group dynamic now different than it was in the beginning?

Robert Reynolds: Older, wiser, kinder, gentler, softer. More musical. All those other things really do apply, but in a weird way, we know how to project our music and not let outside forces get too heavy and dictating what’s right for us. We are learning now and have learned how to guide ourselves. That’s been a big part of it.

TAC: What about touring? How has that been going this time around?

Robert Reynolds: It’s been fabulous. We learned a lot about touring back in the day and of course there was a lot of money being spent and probably a lot of money being wasted. We’re a little bit more frugal but we don’t spare any expense when it comes to presenting the music so we’re out here on a pretty costly endeavor because we think that the audience will get the best show; nine pieces on stage, two tour buses, full production. It’s a pretty big deal, but we are more vigilant. We watch the bottom line a little bit more closely.

TAC: What can fans expect from your show here at House Of Blues on 4/19?

Robert Reynolds: There’s going to see a band that’s genuinely delighted to be together again. Our interpersonal relationships together on stage are generating really inspired music. There’s no going through the motions aspect of it. We bring an incredible amount of energy to the stage. We sort of save it all up so that the show is first. We’re out here for making shows, not any of the other silly nonsense. We are dedicated to bringing the same energy each night. Not having two great nights, an okay night, an off night and another good night. We want every night to be fantastic. We’re genuinely really excited to be together.

TAC: Do you have any fun memories of playing in Atlantic City in previous years?

Robert Reynolds: I enjoy Atlantic City for a number of reasons. I saw it when I was a young guy and I was really just starting to learn to travel and I was hitting those interesting American cities and I was just fascinated with it. I enjoyed it historically and to be honest, specific memories of Atlantic City are not many. But I believe we can correct that now! If I’m answering it honestly, we didn’t play in it enough and I believe that it’s time to get in there and do it right so that we can start building those now.

TAC: In Time has been getting rave reviews. Favorite tracks off the album?

Robert Reynolds: The power of “Come Unto Me” is just undeniable. It was recorded with such energy and it drove that track. When it appears on the stage live, it’s a fabulous energetic performance piece. I love “Fall Apart”. There’s something kind of whimsical and ‘60s nostalgic, Herb Alpert and Tijuana brass sort of thing. I grew up on Herb Alpert’s music and the Tijuana brass because it was part of of mother’s record collection and I feel like we kind of capture some of that. His was more often instrumental and this is obviously not, but there’s just something about the track that has that spirit and the ballad, “In Another’s Arms”, is just remarkably powerful. It works for me still. When I hear it, I still feel like it’s a beautiful recording. Great song to begin with, so I commend Raul for that, but the recording is really, really special sounding. It’s emotional and I love that.

TAC: What are your new favorites to play on stage?

Robert Reynolds: A couple of those that I mentioned are easily favorites on stage. “Come Unto Me” really does immediately resonate with the audience. I believe that “Fall Apart” has the spirit that I find on the record shows up on stage and that’s always nice. For the most part, the album songs that are coming to the live stage, are really integrating well to our old catalogue. It’s not like we have to sprinkle them in gently because no one wants to hear the new stuff. The new stuff literally holds its own and could be the show in and of itself.

TAC: Do you have any plans as a group after this huge international tour ends?

Robert Reynolds: We already have some new music in us so we’re feeling good about perpetuating this energy. I would say that our plan is to really bring this music around the world in a very deliberate process and that will take some time. Somewhere along the way, we are going to begin the process of looking at a new album. It won’t be immediately because we are so busy, but I think it’s indicative of a band that’s ready to work.

Sounds good. These guys are legit musicians. Check out The Mavericks tomorrow at House Of Blues at Showboat Atlantic City at 9 p.m. Get last minute tix here!