The Inaugural Sea.Hear.Now Festival Rocked Asbury Park

Words & Photos: Mike Petzinger

This past weekend the first Sea.Hear.Now Festival was hosted in Asbury Park, New Jersey. The festival completely took over the beach and boardwalk area north of Convention Hall as well as Bradley Park and the surrounding streets.

Though Sea.Hear.Now was a first-time for the festival, massive crowds turned out and everything seemed to go extremely well – even the weather was perfect after a week of mostly rain.

It was nice to see that throughout the festival, spotlight was given to local artists of all sizes and renown. Both days were kicked off by local bands – The Battery Electric, Deal Casino, and the Parlor Mob. And after hearing rumors throughout Sunday that #HeMightShowUp, Bruce Springsteen did show up – and jammed on a few songs with Social Distortion near the weekend’s closing.

All in all, it was a great weekend for music in Asbury and I’m pretty sure most of us are hoping this becomes a yearly thing. I’ll let the photos do the rest of the talking…

Ben Harper

Blondie

Brandi Carlile

Deer Tick

The English Beat

Highly Suspect

Incubus

Jesse Malin

Preservation Hall Jazz Band

SOJA

The Battery Electric