Ahead of Bruce Springsteen’s headlining set Sunday at the Sea.Hear.Now Festival, the E Street Band rocker returned to Asbury Park, New Jersey’s famed Stone Pony to take part in an all-star afterparty show on Saturday night.
Hosted by photographer, frequent Springsteen collaborator and Sea.Hear.Now founder Danny Clinch and billed as “the Ocean Ave Stomp featuring Tangiers Blues Band with Very Special Guests,” the Stony Pony gig featured a revolving lineup that included Springsteen, Saturday’s festival headliner Noah Kahan, Robert Randolph, E Street Band’s Jake Clemons, Clinch and more covering songs by artists like Bob Dylan, Chuck Berry, John Lee Hooker, and more.
With Springsteen at the mic, the band ran through renditions of Little Richard’s “Lucille,” Hooker’s “Boom Boom Boom,” Them’s “Gloria,” and the oft-covered “Down the Road a Piece.”
Fresh from his own headlining set, Kahan also stopped by to deliver a rendition of Johnny Cash’s “Folsom Prison Blues”:
Springsteen and the E Street Band, fresh off concluding the latest U.S. leg of their world tour, will take the stage Sunday night at Sea.Hear.Now. In March, Rolling Stone spoke to Clinch about how he managed to convince Springsteen to play the fest. (It didn’t take much convincing.)
“So this time around, we were looking for our headliners, and he was going to be on the East Coast, and his tour was going to end on the 13th of September. So we’re like, ‘Oh man, this looks like a good opportunity to hit him up,’” Clinch said.
“And I happen to be over his place. And I said, ‘Man, I was looking at your schedule, and we would love to have you at our Sea.Hear.Now show,’ and he’s like, ‘Yeah, that’d be cool.’ And I said, ‘Can I have my guy reach out to your guy?’ He just was laughing, and he said yeah. Then later I was back in the studio, and he just turned to me at one point and he was like, ‘I’m gonna do the thing on the beach. I’m going to Sea.Hear.Now. I want to bring the band on the beach. This could be incredible.’”
Sunday night’s gig with the Tangiers Blues Band marked Springsteen’s first appearance at the Stone Pony in almost five years, with the rocker last playing the iconic Asbury Park venue at a private benefit gig in November 2019.