By Mabel Pais

The ‘Prudential presents North to Shore Festival’ launches the second New Jersey Cultural Summer Festival at ASBURY PARK where more than a dozen much-loved Asbury Park artists will step into the spotlight on the ‘Showcase Stage at the Grand Arcade,’ a new feature of the ‘Prudential presents North to Shore Festival.’

The ‘Prudential presents North to Shore Festival’ presents events in Asbury Park June 10 through June 16, including performances by headlining artists Bleachers, Lake Street Dive, Band of Horses and Gary Clark Jr. The festival’s full lineup can be found at NorthtoShore.com.

Watch this video – youtu.be/4-YG6QgMEAs

JUNE 14

From 3:30 to 11 PM on Friday, June 14, the stage in the Grand Arcade, located within the historic Asbury Park Convention Hall, will offer a continuous sampler of series of FREE performances by some of the city’s  most-loved singer-songwriters, spoken word poets, hip hop artists, punk bands, indie rockers and others, interspersed with sets by local DJ Adam Jay. Festival-goers will also have access to centrally located shops, restaurants and more.

This presentation, featuring a cohort of local artists on one stage adjacent to major festival venues like the Stone Pony Summer Stage, is a new feature of ‘Prudential presents North to Shore,’ the three-week, three-city summer festival of arts and ideas produced by NJPAC, now in its annual second season.

“The ‘Showcase Stage’ is our way of highlighting the talent of Asbury Park’s incredible artists, but also of ensuring that all the folks who come out for a festival event not only have a great way to extend their visit, but get a real introduction to Asbury Park’s authentic sound and spirit,” says John Schreiber, President and CEO of NJPAC.

The majority of the local artists and groups appearing on the ‘Showcase Stage’ are ‘Prudential presents North to Shore Official Selections’ — performers chosen to take part in the event by the festival’s committee of city arts professionals and community leaders. Each was given a grant to enable them to appear at the festival.

Overall, this season the ‘Prudential presents North to Shore Festival’ handed grants totaling $355,600 to local artists and organizations in its three host cities: Asbury Park, Atlantic City and Newark.

“From singer-songwriters to R&B, funk, soul, global sounds, world music, rock, pop, punk to funk, this lineup checks all the boxes of Asbury’s eclectic global music sound,” says Jennifer Stine, President of Fortune Creative Collective, an Asbury-based marketing company, who is producing the ‘Showcase Stage’ presentation.

Stine is also Vice President of the Asbury Park Chamber of Commerce, a member of the Historical Society and, as the daughter of local historian Don Stine, a second-generation Asbury Park booster.

“To have the Grand Arcade activated with such talented local artists is very exciting. We cannot wait for everyone coming into town that Friday and see, in this historic setting, everything that Asbury Park has to offer,” Stine says.

Artists who will be featured at the ‘Showcase Stage’ include:

Vintage-flavored punk/blues band Johnny Nameless

Hip hop spoken word poet and teaching artist Myster-E (aka Eric Shandroff)

Singer-songwriters Joe Miller, Mike Montrey and Dave Vargo

Funky R&B singer Space and The Goodstock Jamband

Asbury Park indie rock sensation, The Mercury Brothers

Local R&B, soul, rock, funk and pop band Des and the Swagmatics

These ‘Official Selection’ performers will be joined by spoken word and hip-hop powerhouse and one-time Poet Laureate of Asbury Park Chris Rockwell, rising singer-songwriter Jake Thistle and DJ Adam Jay, a staple of Asbury Park’s night life.

OTHER ATTRACTIONS

Festival-goers can stop by RWJBarnabas Health’s information table in the Grand Arcade to learn about the expansive community health programs offered for free each month at Monmouth Medical Center’ LiveWell Center at the Monmouth Mall. They can also be wowed by New Jersey’s immersive WOW Experience mobile activation on the Ocean Avenue side of the Grand Arcade.

The Grand Arcade houses an array of retail establishments including restaurants ‘The Beach Bar’, ‘Asbury Oyster Bar and Seahorse’, as well as ice cream bar ‘Betty’s Icebox’, coffee shop ‘Asbury Park Roastery’, ‘Paws Pet Boutique’, apparel store ‘Wanderlust’, home decor shop ‘Carla Gizzi’ and high-concept souvenir shop ‘Fun House’.

JUNE 15

On June 15, ‘ASBURY UNDERGROUND’ returns!

The ASBURY PARK tradition, last held in 2019, activates the city’s entire downtown now presented in partnership with ‘Prudential Presents North to Shore Festival.’ Hundreds of musicians, visual artists, comedians and poets will participate in a full day of FREE events during revived ‘art and music crawl’ on Saturday, June 15.

Asbury Park, NJ The Asbury Underground

Downtown Art and Music Crawl, a much-loved city tradition which fills the streets of downtown Asbury Park with FREE concerts, comedy shows and poetry readings, will be held again this year for the first time since 2011. This year’s crawl will be held on Saturday, June 15 from noon to 7 PM.

The event returns to Asbury Park as a feature of the ‘Prudential presents North to Shore Festival,’ New Jersey’s three-week, three-city celebration of arts and ideas. North to Shore, produced by NJPAC, will offer concerts and events across Asbury Park June 10 to June 16.

This year’s Asbury Underground art and music crawl will include approximately 100 performances — highlighting the work of over 200 musicians and some 50 visual artists, plus scores of poets and comedians, at 33 different venues, including stages dedicated to jazz, spoken word poetry and comedy.

Visitors following the crawl map to all of the event’s stages and venues will travel across the city’s downtown, into art galleries, coffeehouses, clothing stores, restaurants and other spaces; each stop along the way will offer a display or a performance by an area artist.

“The whole idea, from the inception of Asbury Underground, was to bring a broader awareness of just how fertile, in all of the arts, our city truly is,” says the founder and producer of Asbury Underground, Patrick Schiavino, a local artist and the owner of art629 Gallery. “It is really heartwarming how everyone pitches in to make this all happen. It is an amazing celebration of who we are as a community.” “North to Shore’s mission is to turn a spotlight on all the artists and creatives who make New Jersey such a uniquely vibrant place, and ‘Asbury Underground’ brings so many of them together in one place, at one time. We’re so pleased to be part of bringing back this Asbury Park tradition that celebrates this city’s incredibly deep artistic bench,” says John Schreiber, President and CEO of NJPAC, which produces ‘North to Shore.’

The crawl begins simultaneously at three different venues downtown at noon: art629 Gallery, 629 Cookman Avenue, Over the Moon Art Studios, 808 Springwood Avenue, and at Lock and Shade Courtyard, Court Square, 608-612 Cookman Avenue. Patrons can progress through the downtown, from any of these three locations, for the rest of the afternoon; performances are scheduled to begin at venues along the path every 15 minutes. All Asbury Underground events are free.

This year’s crawl features several special events including:

• The Joe Harvard Memorial Stage: A specially curated stage of performers in memory of local musician, artist, author, and “personality” Joe Harvard, an original member of the Asbury Underground crew and recent inductee to the Asbury Angels Hall of Fame. The music will start at 12:30 PM and run till 6 PM at Parlor Gallery, 717 Cookman Avenue. Harvard established The gARTen, a community black-light art garden and gallery, in a vacant lot on the Cookman Avenue corridor. It served as an Asbury Underground performance space for many years.

• Quills and Chills: A Supernatural Soiree with Poe, Crowley, and Yeats, a spoken word event with a mystic flavor, curated by poet Robert Goodman, at The Paranormal Museum, 621 Cookman Avenue, beginning at 4PM.

• The Literally Underground Comedy Show, curated and hosted by comedian Jess Alaimo, will be held in the (surprisingly spacious) basement of Cookman Avenue Italian restaurant Capitoline, from 2 to 3:30 PM. The restaurant is at 639 Cookman Avenue. A schedule and a map of the crawl route for visitors to follow will be available at the Asbury Underground website, asburyunderground.com.

For participating artists and the full event schedule, visit asburyunderground.com

Facebook: @asburyunderground

Instagram: @asburyunderground

Twitter: @apunderground

For the latest updates and new concert listings, visit northtoshore.com 

For the Asbury Underground/North to Shore Schedule, visit northtoshore.com

Get Festival updates most quickly on social media.

Follow North to Shore on Instagram, X , Facebook and TikTok.

TICKETS

Tickets for the ‘Prudential presents North to Shore Festival’ are available at NorthtoShore.com.

The Prudential presents North to Shore Festival

The ‘Prudential presents North to Shore Festival,’ launched in 2023, features all the talent, diversity, and creativity that New Jersey has to offer, packed into three extraordinary weekends of performances, screenings, parties and conversations in three of the state’s most iconic cities. Hosted by Asbury Park (June 10 – 16), Atlantic City (June 17 – 23), and Newark (June 23 – 30), the ‘Prudential presents North to Shore Festival’ will bring together events at 50+ venues for an over-the-top showcase of Jersey excellence, aligned with Governor Phil Murphy and First Lady Tammy Murphy’s vision of a celebration worthy of the Garden State’s long legacy of innovation in the arts, film and technology. For the latest updates and new concert listings, visit NorthToShore.com.

The New Jersey Performing Arts Center (NJPAC)

Learn more at NJPAC.org 

(Mabel Pais writes on The Arts and Entertainment, Social Issues, Cuisine, Spirituality, Health & Wellness, Business, and Education)