Sea Hear Now Day 1 recap: Noah Kahan brings mammoth N.J. fest into new era

 

The story of Sea Hear Now 2024 is not a tale of Jersey rock god homecomings, more specifically the deafening spectacle that was Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band’s first proper Asbury Park concert in 21 years, soaring over the sand and 35,000 fans.

 

No, it’s a story of patience, progress and power — specifically the power of art to revitalize a shorefront city that suffered more than three decades of crime, poverty and disrepair, and spurred Springsteen’s 2000 dirge “My City of Ruins.”

 

That song, now a fan favorite, was written for a Christmas benefit concert to assist a town left crumbling after riots in 1970 delivered a devastating blow. But it was local artists who’ve picked up the pieces these last 20 or so years — songwriters and painters and poets who began moving to Asbury Park in the 2000s and slowly reignited its soul. The LGBTQ+ community also embraced the resort-turned-ramshackle town and forged its reputation as a place for love, tolerance and creativity.

 

Moreover, these people made Asbury Park cool again, and when a place is deemed “cool,” investors come knocking — as do mammoth destination music festivals.

 

Few will ever understand the city’s fall and rise quite like Springsteen, who has, of course, been a global ambassador for his musical proving ground since his debut album “Greetings From Asbury Park, N.J.” was released in 1973.

 

“I feel f—ing old tonight, in a good way,” Springsteen said Sunday night, just before he and his 17-piece band began their encore. “I never thought I’d live to see this sight in my lifetime. The band, we were here on that little street corner when nobody was here, and I didn’t know when I’d see folks in this good town again.

 

He went on to thank “all the people that have invested themselves in Asbury Park and brought the city back to life. On the east side, the west side, I want to thank the LGBTQ+ community for all they’ve done for Asbury Park in the last 25 years.

 

It was the ultimate full-circle moment, to see the weathered face of Asbury Park, a week before his 75th birthday, so humbled by what had been laid before him, as he performed songs written in, around and about this odd little slice of the Jersey Shore.

 

I wrote this song about 500 yards north, on Loch Arbour beach,” Springsteen quipped earlier in his three-hour, 15-minute set, which closed sprawling Sea Hear Now’s sixth year. The song in question was “Blinded By the Light,” released in 1973 — a theme for the first hour of music, as only two songs performed (2002′s “Lonesome Day” and 1978′s “The Promised Land”) were released or written later than ‘73. This was a welcome deviation from the standard setlist of Springsteen’s ongoing international tour, and a nostalgia bomb intended to melt his most devout fans into puddles of undying fervor.

 

Such was the reaction to “Thundercrack,” the eight-minute beach party jammer and rarity (appearing on “Tracks”) Springsteen said he wrote in nearby Wanamassa, at a surf shop when he was 20 years old. Similar elation swept the sand for the “Greetings” deep cut “Does This Bus Stop at 82nd Street” and the all-too-apt “Sandy (4th of July, Asbury Park),” where fans could literally point to locales mentioned in the tune (I may or may not have done so for Madame Marie).

 

Springsteen, who has ostensibly recovered from the peptic ulcer disease that halted his tour last year and likely affected his preceding MetLife Stadium performances, was in top shape this night, balancing his patented Americana conviction with more playful moments: howling at the moon before “Spirit in the Night,” or telling tales of driving through Freehold in the mid-’80s, stopping at a J.J. Newberry’s five and dime and spotting a black velvet portrait of himself, prefacing the tune “Local Hero.”

 

The Boss was dressed for the special occasion, donning a vest, dress shirt and tie as he led his small army of musicians, whose collective sound was loud enough to be easily heard from Asbury Park High School, a full mile from the stage. This night seemed designed for pianist Roy Bittan and trumpeter Curt Ramm to shine, as both unleashed terrific solos on “82nd Street,” set the seedy mood for “Meeting Across the River” and Bittan’s extension on “Racing in the Street” elevated the fan favorite. Springsteen’s wife and bandmate Patti Scialfa, who has not been seen much on this tour and was revealed last week (via a new upcoming documentary) to have been diagnosed with blood cancer in 2018, emerged to sing a tender duet of “Tougher than the Rest” with Bruce, sharing a microphone.

 

The band’s swath of fans stretched a quarter-mile down the beach, belting along to “Badlands,” “Because the Night” and “The Rising” before entering the championship rounds with “Thunder Road” into “Meeting” into the cinematic rock mastery of “Jungleland” — Jake Clemons’ sax solo crested over the ocean, past the onlooking boats and toward the horizon — into the fist-pumping glee of “Born to Run.”

 

It was a night of triumph and exaltation for the band and fans alike, as the magnitude of Springsteen playing Asbury Park was mutually understood, respected and capitalized on for maximum Jersey-to-the-core impact.

 

It was a best-case scenario and the best Springsteen show I’ve seen since those record-breaking MetLife shows in 2016.

 

Not to mention this was his fourth performance in less than 24 hours.

 

Bruce has been busy: Saturday night, he surprised fans at The Stone Pony, taking the stage with Danny Clinch’s (his photographer and one of the festival’s organizer’s) Tangiers Blues Band, running through a handful of covers including a sizzling rendition of Will Bradley Trio’s “Down the Road Apiece.

 

Then, Sunday evening, he hopped on the SHN main stage to jam an epic version of his own “Kitty’s Back” with the Trey Anastasio Band, as an overjoyed Anastasio — who grew up in Princeton — noted how his first concert was, of course, The Boss in 1978.

 

About 45 minutes later, Springsteen popped up yet again, out on the Park Stage in neighboring Bradley Park, where he made his live debut of “History Books,” his new duet with Jersey alt-rock favorites The Gaslight Anthem, and stuck around to play the band’s older single “American Slang,” which he’d also joined them for at Convention Hall in 2011.

 

So yes, it would appear this was Springsteen’s weekend, a veritable takeover of a festival that also happened to showcase two-dozen other bands and artists — Noah Kahan, 311, The Black Crowes, Kool and the Gang and Norah Jones all performed as well.

 

But again, Sea Hear Now was, is and will continue to be about the city in which it is housed, and what is the most demonstrative transformation any New Jersey town has undergone this century. The fact that Asbury Park can support this enormous, multi-day, multi-stage event each year (since 2018) is a culmination of its cultural revolution. It is a bold, booming thing to behold

 

Let Springsteen sum it up once more: “There I was, driving down Kingsley, streets were empty, buildings were empty, nobody on Ocean Avenue, nobody anywhere. And then, I fell into a dreamy sleep, and when I woke up, I said ‘where did all these f—ing people come from?