W.S. Walcott Medicine Show

New Jersey’s own Gaslight Anthem released their sixth full length album, History Books last year over Halloween weekend and celebrated the release with a three night stand of shows at Jersey City’s White Eagle Hall.  But aside from those three pretty intimate shows the band had not played any shows in the States to support the album until a few weeks ago when they kicked off their 2024 Summer Tour in Denver.  The boys from Gaslight returned to New Jersey on Friday night and of course there could be no better place for this than The Stone Pony and its Summerstage along the beach and boardwalk in Asbury Park.To no one’s real surprise many of the Gaslight’s legions of fans began lining up around noon in order to score a spot along the coveted rail, bearing in mind that doors would not be scheduled to open for another 5 or so hours and the opening band not scheduled to go on for more than six hours. 

Speaking of opening acts, this seems as good a time as any to mention Pinkshift and Joyce Manor, who each helped set the tone for a fabulous night of rock and roll.  Pinkshift hit the stage right on queue at 7 PM and lead singer Ashrita Kumar propelled the band through an energetic set of pop punk that reminded me of a grungier early career No Doubt.   Joyce Manor, who are big enough that they probably could have headlined their own show at a venue such as The Stone Pony would follow Pinkshift with a classic Joyce Manor set that had a significant portion of the crowd singing (and moshing) along with lead singer Barry Johnson.  Johnson at one point during the set would mention how much the band loves playing in New Jersey, even giving a shout out to Andy Diamond and the crew at Crossroads over in Garwood where the band played, a not surprisingly, alcohol fueled matinee show last St. Patrick’s Day. 

Which brings us to our headlining act for the evening, Gaslight Anthem.  Prancing out,  right on schedule at 9 PM to a darkened stage to the sounds of Cyndi Lauper’s “Girls Just Want to Have Fun”, Brian Fallon dove right into it with opener “American Slang” off of the album of the same name from 2010 followed by “45” and “The Patient Ferris Wheel” before actually greeting the crowd.  As virtually every fan of Gaslight can attest to, Fallon has been known to be rather verbose on stage.  While his banter can often be entertaining and fun to listen to, it can also be criticized for taking away from time spent playing music.  On Friday, after welcoming everybody to The Stone Pony, Brian let everyone know that he and the band were going to try to keep the chatter to a minimum so as to maximize their playing time since Asbury Park has a hard stop noise curfew of 10:30 PM.  Shockingly, Fallon would actually adhere to this

promise for the most part throughout the evening.  The one exception being roughly midway through the evening in the middle of “Miles Davis And The Cool” when he would notice something going on about halfway to the back of the crowd with fans waving and flashing their phone flashlights attempting to get the attention of security.  Brian immediately stopped playing and allerted security that something was amiss.  Upon hearing that someone had passed out, he would comment as if on queue that they would probably bring this person to the “chill out tent” and provide them with “orange juice and cigarettes”.  This was of course an obvious reference (at least for those of us in the know) to the song “Chill Out Tent” from The Hold Steady’s classic album, Boys And Girls In America.  This would prompt a story about how Brian and drummer Benny Horowitz would listen to the album over and over when they worked together at Rutgers back in the day.  Once everything was rectified the band picked up right where they left off, literally without missing a beat.I do think that this lack of banter and storytelling, while certainly less amusing, does lend itself to a crisper and tight evening of music from the band. 

I think that with less breaks between songs lead guitarist, Alex (Rosamilia) on lead guitar, Ian Perkins (additional tour guitarist) and Brian tend to play off of one another more comfortably and certainly more fluidly.  This became quite apparent late in the set Friday night during (I think) “Mae” when Alex and Brian did a great job trading off lead licks on guitar while Ian provided complimentary and beautifully lilting slide guitar in the background.One of the things which I enjoy most about a Gaslight show is the mix of songs which Brian, Benny, Alex and Alex offer up to us.  While the band doesn’t present a different set of songs from night to night, it more often than not FEELS like they do.  Yes, they do mix in a couple of different songs each night but for the most part what changes the most each night is the sequencing of the songs.  And depending on whichever order of songs played, we get a different pace which then offers up the feeling that things are different.  Friday night at Stone Pony proved this formula to be quite effective.  We didn’t get any surprises like they did in Dallas last week when the band opened up with a cover of Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit”, but nonetheless the show still felt different and to a lesser extent, “special” as we were walking out afterwards into the streets of Asbury Park. 

Gaslight Anthem will be returning to Asbury Park in September when they play at the sold out Sea.Hear.Now Festival.   

Setlist:

1. American Slang
2. 45
3. The Patient Ferris Wheel
4. The Weatherman
5. Blue Dahlia
6. We Came to Dance
7. The Spirit of Jazz
8. Get Hurt
9. Bring It On
10. Michigan, 1975
11. Miles Davis and the Cool
12. Mulholland Drive
13. Positive Charge
14. Howl
15. Keepsake
16. 1930
17. Here’s Looking at You, Kid
18. Mae
19. Great Expectations
20. The ’59 Sound
21. The Backseat

Pinkshift Slideshow

Joyce Manor Slideshow

The Gaslight Anthem Slideshow