Jackson Street Resident's Concert Hall

[Freehold Resident]

Did anyone know that a Jackson Terrace photographer has his own concert hall BEHIND his house and that name musical talents often peform there like John Eddie, Graham Parker and Amy Corea?

Check out Mark Costanzo's web site:

www.concertsinthestudio.com/

[Fed Up]

The News Transcript has done several articles on the Concerts in the Studio:

newstranscript.gmnews.com/news/2005/0405/Front_page/135.html
newstranscript.gmnews.com/news/2005/0503/Front_page/002.html
newstranscript.gmnews.com/news/2005/0914/Front_page/045.html
newstranscript.gmnews.com/news/2005/1012/Front_page/063.html

BTW, Mr. Costanzo is the photographer who took the portrait of Leon Perry in the "In Memory..." thread elsewhere on this board.

[Marc LeVine]

A TRUE TROUBADOUR OF THE HIGHWAY

by Gary Wien

There are people who think they have lived interesting lives and those who wish they had, but only a few have ever lived the kind of life of Peter Case. The singer-songwriter best known for his days as the lead singer of The Plimsouls ("A Million Miles Away") will be releasing a new record in the next few months to go along with his first book - "As Far As You Can Get Without A Passport". The book shares stories from Case's life as a musician living on the streets of San Francisco.

Peter will be coming to the area on Sunday, October 15th for an intimate performance as part of the Concerts In The Studio series located in Freehold, NJ. The show starts at 3pm. For more information visit www.concertsinthestudio.com

Your upcoming show in Freehold is technically a "house concert" - have you done those before?

Yeah, I have. Every year it seems like I'm doing more. Generally they're pretty good. Every once in a while you get a crazy one, but usually they're really good. The thing that's really great about them is the people at the shows are really into the music. They're real fans.

You have a new record coming out in a few months, will you be playing material from the upcoming record at the show?
Yes, that's what I'll be playing a lot of. I'll be playing older songs too, but I'm trying to break in some of the new ones on the road. I've done them before but this will be a whole tour where I'm working them in. Many are songs about now.

Are the songs political?
A few of them are. I don't know if they're political, but they talk about this society and there's definitely songs on there about justice. That seems like a big aspect.

It seems like it's kind of hard for politics not to creep into songwriting with everything so one side or the other these days.
I guess. They say politics is who's doing what to who. That's the definition of it. A certain group is really doing a lot to another group and that's what's going on in the states here. It's going on around the world really.
The attention of politics has gone up because of the drive of one particular group of perpetrators of who does what to whom. And so people who are generally silent about politics are speaking out.

I noticed you have a blog on your website. How do you feel about blogs? It looks like you do some real in-depth blogging there.
Yeah. Basically I use it as a tool to teach myself to write prose. I've written prose ever since I was a kid, but I've never written as much as I have for the last couple of years. I'm a blogger now and the author of a book, which is different from writing a blog. You have to take it farther, but the blog has got me writing a lot. I guess just having the Internet in general - emails and such - started getting me writing again.

But with having a blog I started communicating with my audience. It was fun to do. I try to write my best in a blog. It's not like "I got up today and I had ice cream at the 7-11" or that kind of blogging. You get into some things you're thinking and feeling. And then I started writing some stories and putting them up there. I wrote this whole book that's coming out and I wrote it real time on a blog over a couple of weeks. I was posting every day sort of like a serial. I've re-written it now but it was a big learning curve.

I think blogs are good. I've always thought if Woody Guthrie was alive now he'd be a blogger.

Speaking of the book, is it about your travel experiences?
Well, this is just part one and there's a lot of traveling going on at that point so yeah. The book's called "As Far As You Can Go Without A Passport". It's not out yet, maybe in a month or so. It's about an early period when I left home and came west and another period when I started playing on the streets. It was during the same period that I became a street musician and I began living on the streets. And one point of the book goes down to Mexico.

Everybody made that trek but my story is a bit like the Anti-Chronicles. Bob Dylan has his book about an ascent to the top of the culture but my book is more a story of the streets and someone finding what's meaningful to them in turns of music and life and love. And it comes from a point of view of the streets.

Where will the book be available?
It'll be available through the book seller's website
(acapellabooks.com ) and through independent book stores.

For years you tried leaving your Plimsouls history behind, why did you get that band back together?
The Plimsouls have been doing this latest run for about two years. We got back together in '95 and we never really broke up again. So the band's been together since then and we've been active the last three years or so.

Every once and a while it's a great thing to do. The band has its own sound. It's like stripped down rock and roll - a very intense rock and roll sound but a fun rock and roll sound too, one based on 50s and 60s rock and roll.

It's like something we've broken in that we can do. We've played thousands of gigs together so we've got a great sound. People aske me why we're doing it. I say because we can. It's so much fun and people seem to like it. I just embraced both sides of my career - my solo side and my rock and roll side.

We're gonna have a new album. We're going to try but we haven't done it yet. I'm fully dedicated to my solo career and the other guys in the Plimsouls are busy. We'll hopefully have a record out over the winter

[Marc LeVine]

Backyard Concerts with the Stars
By Richard Menta 10/21/06

The most poignant part of the evening came when our host Mark Costanzo showed me the portraits he took of the artists who performed at his studio. The studio is nothing more than the small detached garage of a late 19th century colonial that was converted to serve Mark's profession. It's not a recording studio. It's a photography studio, one that this night was filled with about 50 or so chairs and ringed with both equipment and over a dozen 3 x 2 B/W portraits hanging high on the wall.

What makes these portraits so haunting for me are the ages of the artists that Mark used the tools of his trade to visually record. Graham Parker, Marshall Crenshaw, Robert Hazard, Garland Jeffreys, some I barely recognized until I took a closer look. At that point it clicked - these were the same faces on those 1970's and 80's albums, just a little older and - thanks to Mark's skills with a camera - possessing an unnerving dignity.

I have never attended a concert in someone's home before, but here I was with my wife and brother walking up a curiously quiet driveway in Freehold, NJ. To be honest I felt a bit awkward as I carried that dish of food into the backyard. The dish is part of the cost of admission. Tonight's ticket ran $35 per person plus a covered plate so we can all share a potluck dinner at the end of the performance. Tonight's guests were Pat DiNizio and Jim Babjak of the Smithereens.

The home is in a very lovely section of Freehold across the street from the same Freehold Borough High School Bruce Springsteen attended. This home is only several blocks away from the house where Bruce grew up, but it could have been miles away in the 1960's. These homes were where the upper managers of the factories that employed Bruce's father lived. The factories are gone now as are many of the working class folk who long sold their homes to the high-salaried NY commuters that continue to flood into this section of Monmouth County.

"Are we walking up the right driveway", my wife asked me. "I don't think so", I told her. I had even more doubts after I turned the corner into the back yard and saw a smattering of people in what appeared to be a small family barbeque. There were parents in their 40s and several kids between the ages of 8 and 12. Looking lost, we stood there for a moment wondering what to do when Mark's wife Elaine rescued us. A very gracious host, she introduced herself, took our names and told me to drop off the food in the kitchen.

Afterwards we settled into some plastic chair scattered throughout the back lawn and chatted with some of the audience. We were definitely in the right place, though the casualness of the whole event seemed comfortable, yet odd. Where are the security teams I witnessed a few weeks earlier when I caught the Guster concert at the PNC center? I remember one girl at that concert who climbed up on the stage to dance in front of the audience, only to have a large security guard effortlessly swoop her up and whisk her side stage where - in an organized and rehearsed maneuver - her passed he on to a waiting female guard who escorted our teenager off the stage and out of the complex.

When Pat DiNizio arrived moments later he just grabbed a beer, a chair, and a conversation. The co-star of tonight's event was approachable, personable and that curious sense that I was really at Uncle Joe's family BBQ came over me again. Jim Babjak arrived shortly thereafter with his second oldest son in a 10-year old Volvo wagon. No pretentious rock stars here, just family men and neighbors.

After a very impressive opening act Mark took portraits of his guests that evening and the lawn minions were directed into the studio. There were about 60 of us, tightly seated in the small garage. You can't get more intimate than this. We took seats in the third row, only ten or so feet from artists who still play the occasional arena show. In the first row were four of the neighborhood kids, who I suspect Mark and Elaine regularly give free entrance to. I immediately pictured in my mind how lucky I would have been if in my childhood I had a neighbors who introduced me to live performances of great 60's soul artists or jazz musicians. I wouldn't be surprised if these kids never heard of any of these artists before they saw them live, though artists like the Smithereens are still in the regular radio rotation of some stations. The Smithereens had several top 10 hits, but all were before any these kids were born. I suspect many will appreciate these evenings more when they get older than they do now.

Just prior to the show my wife briefly spoke with Pat when he realized he hadn't created a song list yet. The two men just got off a plane that morning from a performance out west and Pat had, to my surprise, another living room concert later that evening in Bergenfield, an hour or so away in North Jersey. "Maybe, I'll just take requests" Pat said as he politely excused himself.

For most of the night that's what he did - to Jim's chagrin. They both had fun that night on the tight little stage and it was infectious. After Pat called out the first few songs the audience began shouting out favorite tunes, sparking Pat to immediately launch into the song. Unfortunately for Jim, some of the songs he hadn't played in years and it was fun to watch him roll with the punches as tried to remember his parts. "No more requests" shouted Jim with a big smile of his face as the audience called out the most obscure titles in the Smithereens songbook (To help Jim out I called out White Castle Blues, a tune he wrote and sang in concert for years. It turns out he hadn't done that one in a while either).

Maybe this all sounds sloppy to the average person, but it is what I find it to be one of the best element of the Costanzo's shows. The audience here is not getting a stamped, cookie cutter performance for their money. Instead they are interacting with the performers in a live, breathing atmosphere where these entertainers let their hair down in the name of fun. I had fun as did everyone else, including the tweens in the front row who probably view Snoop Dogg as an oldies performer.

After the show we all went out to the kitchen to grab food and eat. Pat stayed for a quick bite, but then ran off to his next show for which he was already late to. The guy already had a very long day, but he was off to another job. Meanwhile, I struck up a short conversation on the food line with Jim. After I got my food I joined my wife and brother in the backyard. When Jim came outside he joined us and for the next hour or so we just chatted. It turns out that Jim now lives in the town me and my brother grew up in and we spoke about the changes in the area length. In his pre-Smithereens days Jim owned a record store two blocks from my alma mater Rutgers, which I occasionally shopped at, so we talked about that. Jim told us about meeting his wife and proudly talked about his oldest son, the college-bound math whiz, who scored a near perfect SAT score in the math section.

Value is a subject I speak to frequently on MP3 Newswire. Value is what we all look for when we spend our hard earned cash and that goes for music as well as anything else. For me, I received more value from this simple, unpretentious night than what $75 a ticket brought me at the Bruce Springsteen concert I attended a few years ago. $75 plus $10 parking bought me the cheap seats at a great Giant stadium concert where the sound was good, but where I spent most of the night watching it from a large TV screen. The band was that far away. Value also came from the knowledge that all the money collected by the Costanzo's go to the artists. As we started to leave we watched Jim pop open the back of the Volvo and make an extra buck selling Smithereen t-shirts and $10 Smithereen CDs. I bought his solo CD. There was value for me even in the fact my money went directly into Jim's hands and not some middle man's.

It was a wonderful evening for everyone. A night where heroes became humans, rock stars became fathers and the performer complements your wife's cooking. Really, is there any reason for me to buy nose-bleed seats for an impersonal arena concert again?

[Marc LeVine]

HOME OF LIVE MUSIC

Freehold couple hosts concerts at house
Posted by the Asbury Park Press on 02/15/07
BY NICK PETRUNCIO
STAFF WRITER

Mark and Elaine Costanzo have been going to concerts together since they were teenagers.

Now married for almost 22 years, the Costanzos decided to bring concerts into their Freehold home — and to invite a few dozen friends.

"I'm a longtime music fan, and a while ago The New York Times did an article about house concerts," said Mark Costanzo, 47.

He said many people held the concerts in their living rooms, but the commercial photographer thought his home photography studio on Jackson Terrace would be and even better place to stage a concert.

The Costanzos, who grew up in Perth Amboy and have known each other since they were 14, began holding a series of monthly shows called "Concerts in the Studio" in April 2005.

Since then, 19 different singers, songwriters and musicians have performed for an audience that the couple attracts through advertising on Mark Costanzo's Web site and on the Web sites of friends.

"We've had very many people here actually," Mark Costanzo said. An e-mail list of fans of the concerts has grown to about 350 names.

"I think it's wonderful to have the audience come in, and you meet them (the artists) personally in a small intimate space," he said. "They sell their CDs and have dinner."

"We've had people from as far as New Hampshire and Florida come up," said Elaine Costanzo, 46.

An average of 60 to 65 people attend the shows, Mark Costanzo said, with the highest attendance so far being 72.

"It's very intimate. We have a pot-luck supper immediately following," he said, noting that anyone can come.

Past performers have included Amy Rigby, The Kennedys, Darden Smith, Richard X. Heyman, Robert Hazard, Jim Babjak/Gripweeds, Phil Roy, Amy Correia, Steve Forbert, Adrienne Young & Little Sadie, Marshall Crenshaw, Willie Nile, Graham Parker, Garland Jeffreys, Marah, John Eddie, The Smithereens, Peter Case, and Tracy Grammer.

"The nice thing is you get to meet these folks," Mark Costanzo said.

The cheapest charge for one of the concerts so far has been $15, with the most expensive being $35 for The Smithereens. The money from the tickets and from CD sales goes to the performer. "I'm really trying to get the artist as much (money) as possible," Mark Costanzo said.

He tries to guarantee a certain size audience, and some artists require a guarantee, he said.

Mark Costanzo shoots a portrait of every performer, and he said he is acquiring a nice portfolio.

Hamell On Trial is the next performer set for the studio. The show is scheduled for 3 p.m. Sunday. The cost is $15.

The Costanzos have no budget for or desire to pay to advertise. "When it becomes work, I'd probably not do it anymore," Mark Costanzo said.