Andy Frasco Turns the Stone Pony Into His Playground
The Stone Pony hosted an interesting mix of sounds Thursday night as Denver's Magoo opened for co-headliners Kitchen Dwellers and Andy Frasco & The U.N. It was a bill that moved from progressive bluegrass to modern roots music before giving Andy Frasco plenty of room to do what he does best.
Magoo opened the night with an energetic take on progressive bluegrass. The Denver quartet pushed well beyond traditional bluegrass, mixing tight three-part harmonies with extended instrumental passages and plenty of room for each musician to show off their skills.
Kitchen Dwellers followed with their own take on progressive roots music. The Bozeman, Montana quartet blends bluegrass, folk, Americana and psychedelic influences, and their set brought a different energy to the Stone Pony. Their instrumental approach and musicianship made it easy to understand why they have built such a following in the modern string-music scene.
Then came Andy Frasco & The U.N.
For Frasco, this was another return to the Stone Pony. He had been here in 2024 as part of the Pigeons Frasco Dogs tour with Pigeons Playing Ping Pong and Asbury Park's own Dogs in a Pile. That night, all three bands played extended sets, with Frasco right in the middle of the lineup.
His last Asbury Park appearance before Thursday's show was his memorable set at Sea.Hear.Now in 2022. That performance remains one of the most entertaining shows I've photographed, with Frasco turning the audience into a big part of the performance. The crowd interaction that day reminded me of what I experienced photographing St. Paul and the Broken Bones at the festival in 2019.
The lineup around Frasco has changed since then, including the absence of guitarist Shawn Eckels, but the current U.N. remains a first-rate group of musicians. They provide Frasco with plenty of room to move, play and, inevitably, get the audience involved.
Early in the set, Frasco spotted a bachelorette party in the crowd and invited the bride-to-be onto the stage. Getting one person onto a stage in front of a packed Stone Pony is no small thing, but she went along with it. She was serenaded by Frasco and the band, and eventually got a very large hug from a now-shirtless Frasco before returning to her friends.
It was classic Andy Frasco.
The night may have started with progressive bluegrass and continued with the exploratory roots music of Kitchen Dwellers, but once Frasco and the U.N. took the stage, the Stone Pony became a party.
After seeing Frasco here in 2022 and again in 2024, I wasn't surprised. The musicians change a bit, the set changes and the surprises change, but an Andy Frasco show still has one reliable feature: you never quite know what he's going to do next.
Andy Frasco and the UN
Kitchen Dwellers
Magoo
