Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes – Soultime! in Brooklyn

Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes in Coney Island – photo by Howard B. Leibowitz /B.L.Howard Productions

Brooklyn Roads went to the Brooklyn Bowl to catch a rare Brooklyn appearance by Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes, who played shows here at Brooklyn College in 1976, when the very first Jukes album was released; another sometime in the 1980s at the long-shuttered Brooklyn Zoo in Sheepshead Bay; and, most recently, a Marty Markowitz-hosted Seaside Concert in Coney Island in July of 2010, opening for George Thorogood.

Just before the rousing 23-song Asbury Jukes set, Brooklyn Roads had a conversation with John “Southside” Lyon to get his thoughts on a range of topics, including the Brooklyn music scene and the newest Asbury Jukes album, Soultime!  

“Hey, Hood! Did we ever play Brooklyn in the last 20 years?” , John yelled out , when we asked him about the last Jukes Brooklyn shows. Hood is Andrew Hood, Southside Johnny’s road manager and the unofficial Asbury Jukes historian, who recalled the Brooklyn dates.

Southside Johnny at Brooklyn Bowl– photo by Bentley McBentleson / O-Patch Productions

 As far as the Brooklyn music scene is concerned, Southside told us how “it’s astonishing to me to see how much Brooklyn has changed and it’s become a cool place to live…families are here and, you know, I think that’s terrific. You’ve got all the old buildings and the old factories and it’s just a great enclave for people to be creative and make restaurants and places like this to play. I mean, I thought the Brooklyn Bowl was an old bowling alley they had converted, but they actually made this whole thing out of an old factory.  I don’t know how many lanes it’s got, 15, 20, but it’s jumpin’…kids…hipsters…older people…it’s really cool.” In a nod to the venue he found so cool, he performed the entire set in a black bowling shirt.

An avid record collector, Southside Johnny frequents record fairs, including the 2015 WFMU Record Fair, now held in Greenpoint. “Unfortunately, in this area, Brooklyn, Queens and all the boroughs, there are more record collectors than there are records, so you really have ferocious competition,” he said, “It makes it difficult…people elbowing you out of the way…you grab a record and someone tries to grab it out of your hand. It’s tough collecting up here.”

Southside thinks the new Asbury Jukes album, Soultime! “is one of the best albums I’ve done…it really is solid all the way through. I don’t say that from my viewpoint, but it is solid in the sense that it was easy to write, it was easy to record and the band knocked it out of the park. Its soul music and they just gravitated right to it. It was written in four or five days…Jeff Kazee and I wrote all the songs…we produced it, we fought over it, and we wrestled it to the ground.”

Drum Cover at Brooklyn Bowl – Photo by Bentley McBentleson /O- Patch Productions

As far as what he’d like listeners to come away with from the Soultime! album, Southside said “I hope they have fun with it — I hope they dance, I hope they sing along, I hope they have parties where they play it at. To me, it’s a hearkening back to the ’70s soul of Curtis Mayfield, Bobby Womack, The Isley Brothers. And it really is dance music- it’s not a deep intellectual exercise, where you have to think. It’s just music to turn on and have fun with…that’s all I want people to do with it.” Indeed, everyone at Brooklyn Bowl that night had fun with — and many danced to — the songs from Soultime! and other tunes from Southside’s four-decade musical catalog.

When Brooklyn Roads told John about the Big Eyed Blues Fest, he seemed interested in finding out more about this annual event, especially when he heard that Bobby Rush headlined this year’s installment. “Bobby Rush? Still kickin’? How about that!” Southside went on to tell us that Rush “has always been a great entertainer”…he’s a great player” and that he was supposed to be on one of the Jukes albums, but it “just fell apart,” as it was like “a lot of musical ideas….all the stars have to align for it to really happen, because everybody’s on the road, everybody’s busy.”