You won't want to go home

SUGAR LOAF — What a great combination for an August night - Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes are coming to Sugar Loaf.

The Sugar Loaf Performing Arts Center is presenting this iconic rock and roll band on Saturday, Aug. 17 and will open the lounge and bar two hours early just to get the party started.

If you had a radio in the 1970s and 80s you knew the Asbury Park sound. Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes first achieved prominence in the mid-1970s, emerging from the same New Jersey shore music scene as his now legendary contemporary and friend Bruce Springsteen. Southside’s first three albums, "I Don’t Want To Go Home," "This Time It’s for Real" and "Hearts of Stone," were produced by band co-founder Steven Van Zandt (E St. Band, The Sopranos), and largely featured songs written by Van Zandt and Springsteen. The Van Zandt-written “I Don’t Want To Go Home” became Southside’s signature song, an evocative mixture of horn-based melodic riffs and sentimental lyrics. With their classic blend of hard-core RandB and street-level rock, molten grooves, soulful guitar licks and blistering horn section, Johnny and his Jukes continue to put their unique stamp on the Jersey Shore sound, while recalling the glory years of Otis Redding and similar Stax Records titans.

“There's one thing I've always wanted to do,” Southside Johnny confesses, “and that is to sing.” And he has been doing just that for over a third of a century.

In a business where success is defined as getting a second single and longevity measured in nano-seconds, just surviving for 30-plus years is a rare accomplishment. But Johnny and the Jukes have not just survived, they have flourished: over 30 albums, several EPs and a box set; thousands of live performances around the globe; a legion of dedicated and enthusiastic fans; dozens of classic songs; a record — "Hearts of Stone" — that Rolling Stone called one of the "top 100 albums of the 70s and 80s"; and the story continues as the band releases its newest studio album, "Pills and Ammo," full of new material that is already getting rave reviews from fans.

"I'll stack my group against any group out there. We enjoy playing, and the audience enjoys having a good time," said Johnny. "Music is a shared emotion. We distill it down to that."