Category: Upcoming Shows

The Porchistas started as a bunch of friends writing and singing songs late into summer nights, on their rickety porch on Forest Street in Montclair, New Jersey. That evolved to DIY house concerts and block parties that continue today. Their songs navigate through the rock genre; Folk, swing, surf, reggae, blues, psychedelic, punk – always rock and roll. The Porchistas have developed friendships with musicians throughout The U.S. that shape the identity of who they are as a band. They see music and art as community building endeavors.

The Porchistas have performed at the WNTI Stage Festival, The Jersey Shore Music Festival, The Wellmont Theater and The Hoboken Arts & Music Festival, just to name a few. They’ve shared stages with Nicole Atkins, Willie Nile, Brick & Mortar, PineGrove, Thomas Wesley Stern, The Grand Slambovians, Billy Hector and countless others. They also performed at and were the primary organizers of Tierneys Tavern Music Festival, an event that drew 4,000 + people.

With the recent release of their 5th CD, “Shoot it at the Sun” The Porchistas build upon their ever-growing reputation throughout the metropolitan area as a band known for deft songwriting and musicianship. Although all previous Porchistas releases have received notable reviews, Shoot it at the Sun continues to receive shining feedback from NJarts.net, The Aquarian Weekly, The Asbury Park Press, NJ Stage Magazine, The Montclair Times, Northjersey.com, JerseyBeat Magazine and many more – “Combining an honest simplicity with a wicked talent for arrangement and construction, The Porchistas’ great new CD, Shoot It At The Sun, is the surefire money shot straight into that elusive, face turning solar plexus of musical success.” John Pfeifer The Aquarian Weekly

The Dunk Tank is back!! Benefitting the Tibet House in memory of Jim Woolsey, this event is a great chance to come and dunk your bartenders, servers and friends!
$5 for 5 tosses, drink specials TBA, and keep the night rolling with DJ AggrEschen!!
Exactly the type of activity that would generate harrumphs…

The following excerpt is from the Bucks County Courier Times, Aug. 30th 2014
Time and again, Jim Woolsey was drawn to Tibet.

And over time, Woolsey would help bring Tibet’s culture to the world, electronically.

The preface of the Dalai Lama’s 2004 book “Cultivating Daily Meditation” includes a note of thanks to the hippie intellectual, sound technician and frequent bartender from New Hope.

Jim Woolsey, 70, died Thursday after a life split between New Hope’s art scene and the southernmost outer ridges of Himalayas. He had lung cancer.

At 6-foot-3-inches and skinny as a post, Woolsey never owned a car, frequently hitchhiked, and in his 20s went to Woodstock, friends and family said.

Among his dying wishes, Woolsey left instructions that all his Tibetan treasures be returned someday to that spiritual capital some 7,000 miles away.

“I think he lived in a cave over there,” remembered friend Cynthia Wuthrich. “We would get these letters from him describing an event, some wedding or festival, and you began to feel like you were there with him.”

Longtime friend John Larsen remembers the day when Woolsey, then just a stranger, encouraged him to obtain a liquor license for his restaurant John and Peter’s, now a famous nightclub in New Hope.

“This guy was just sitting there,” said Larsen. “I didn’t really know him. He tells me he knows something about bars, and he offers to help me set it up,” Larsen continued. “Then, he just disappears to go to Tibet.”

“One time, (Jim) brought home a Tibetan monk,” Larsen said. “Frankly, I don’t know how he managed to get along.”

Woolsey first journeyed to Tibet more than 40 years ago. Over time, he became a sort of technical guru for exiled monks, working to codify thousands of historical and spiritual texts. He also helped design a computer keyboard for the Tibetan language.

Exiled from their homeland by the Chinese government in 1959, refugees had carried hundreds of manuscripts over the rugged mountains into northern India.

Located in India, the Library of Tibetan Works & Archives first launched an online database of manuscripts back in 2003. At the time, the Central Tibetan Administration had released a public statement, crediting Woolsey for his volunteer hours of computer training for government staff.

Ten years earlier, Allentown’s Morning Call newspaper interviewed Woolsey about his efforts overseas and a meeting with Tibet’s spiritual leader.

“A couple years ago, I was given the opportunity to brief the Dalai Lama about what’s going on,” said Woolsey. “We had some interesting conversation, but I feel that he’s got better things to do.”

Terez is a self-taught, multi-instrumentalist singer-songwriter and producer from New Hope, PA, who uses music for good. Growing up playing violin and singing in church and school choirs, Terez developed a keen understanding of quality vocal performance and harmonies. Her desire to combine her love of writing with her love of music and performing led her to learn the guitar, which opened a world of expression and performance possibilities.

While studying sociology at Lehigh University, Terez joined the Music Box, a local collective of student musicians working together to bring a music scene back to campus. She performed her first live set at an acoustic unplugged show in 2011 and went on to win Battle of the Bands in 2012, performing her original song as front woman of the local band 3 If By Air. She also had the opportunity to link up with some artists and perform live acoustic sets in the local underground music scene in Germany. These initial experiences performing original material and traveling inspired many new ideas and sparked her desire to make music a bigger part of her life.

Terez relocated to New Hope, PA, where she began booking solo performances, briefly joining a local rock act, The Zeke Sky Band. In 2017, she parted ways with the band to focus more energy on finding her own sound. She linked up with local producer Spencer Blevins and experimented in more electronic compositions, culminating in an ongoing concept project known as The Odds.

Last summer, Terez hit the road and headed cross country to write and perform, spending time in Central Washington with her friends at Ducktown Records, recording folk covers and bare acoustic original tunes. She has been a featured artist at Godfrey Daniel’s listening room, John & Peter’s, and has performed at various secret house and barn shows throughout the country. More recently she has continued performing the local New Hope music circuit solo, while working with her new lady duo project, the Rod Hounds. She has collaborated with many artists in various styles including rock, traditional folk, jazz, and trip hop.

Terez’s songs explore the impermanent yet real emotions, spaces, and interactions that make up the human experience. She often sings of real and hard truths in a sweet and patient way, creating a space for her listeners to reflect and process the universal story into something personal. She is currently working on her debut solo EP.

The Great Bonfire is an original rock band based in Bucks County Pennsylvania. Drawing from the wistful sounds of yesteryear, these five friends blend their myriad of musical influences into a soulful mix of rock, Americana, funk, and folk. Their music is a late night parade, a fire in July with stories of friends new and old, a chance to take your time, and ignite your soul.

The Pixies have had a profound effect on all of us in this band. We are doing this for multiple reasons but mainly out of respect for their music, energy, spirit and originality. We are holding true to reproducing the records but more importantly we want to kick out the spastic energy that they had on those records.

We formed in Sept. 2017 as a fluke when we were asked to play Side B of Doolittle at a show where another band played Side A. We had so much fun learning those songs and since the group that I put together had the same amount of love for the Pixies as I did it was a no brainer to keep rolling. We’ll be playing near you soon, check in if you don’t hear about any upcoming shows. FB is crowded.

JP Wasicko – Drums
Anawin Avila – Guitars
Christina Ward – Vocals, Bass
Joe Ujj – Vocals, Guitar

A self described “Jersey Shore Ex-Pat turned West Texas Desert Rat”, for over 20 years, as a bassist, Hank Woji played in some of The Garden State’s most dynamic and innovative bands, performing in clubs and concert halls from Virginia to Ontario, in styles ranging from Blues and R&B to Reggae and Rock & Roll to County Rock and Afrobeat!

In the Spring of 2001 Hank moved to Houston, TX, fell in with a bunch of great Texas songwriters, picked up his acoustic guitar, and found a new musical voice as a Singer Songwriter. But destiny turned a page and it was his chance move, in 2009, to the far West Texas desert town of Terlingua that has most reshaped his life and his music.

Critics have described Hank’s music as “acoustic-wielding, sharply observed, Americana all the way” and being “in the best tradition of the Texas troubadours like Guy Clarke, Townes Van Zandt and Butch Hancock” and that “His troubadour style also comes very close to the style of Woody Guthrie or Pete Seeger, or as we heard on ‘Nebraska’ from Bruce Springsteen.”

Hank has released five self produced CDs: Medallion 2005; American Dreams 2008; There Was A Time 2010; Holy Ghost Town 2013; and The Working Life 2014. He has also just produced, Just Words, the new CD by Florida based singer songwriter Eileen Kozloff, in 2017

Over the last 35 years Woji, and his bands, have shared the stage with, such diverse artists as: Jonathan Byrd, David Massengill, Amy Speace, Ray Bonneville, The Radiators, Jimmy Cliff, Hot Tuna, Shake Russell, Dana Cooper, Darden Smith, Sara Hickman, Annie Gallup, Annie Wenz, Emma’s Revolution, The Flying A’s, David Rovics, Greg Klyma, Bonnie Whitmore, Colin Gilmore, Ronnie Elliott, Spook Handy, Rebekah Pulley, Room Full of Blues, Johnny Winter, Clarence Clemons, Garry Tallent, John Hammond Jr., The Nighthawks, Bob Livingston, Grant Peeples, Spook Handy, Jeff Talmadge, Butch Hancock, Jimmie Dale Gilmore, Kinky Friedman, Bruce Springsteen, David Amram and Pete Seeger.

Hank is a proud member of AFM Local 1000 and tours nationally, performing regularly at festivals, coffeehouses, theaters, clubs and house concerts as a solo singer songwriter, with his duo partner Eileen Kozloff as Woji & Kozloff, and with his full band The Hank Woji Conspiracy.

Having spent many years as a sideman on drums and guitar, Joe Borthwick has stepped forward in the past few years as a founding member and upright bassist for The Fermenters. His bass career began just months after picking up an upright on a whim and quickly lead to festival and club gigs with the likes of John Sonntag, Fellaheen and Bovine Social Club. Joe’s debut solo album, Amalgam, is as much a nod to the musician’s with whom he’s had the fortune of sharing the stage as it is a restrospective collection of his tunes.