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JAZZ & BLUES FEST BUSTS ITSELF IN THREE

stage2The 2009 edition of the festival was the last at Red Bank’s Marine Park, and there are no signs of a return. (Click to enlarge)

By DUSTIN RACIOPPI

The Jersey Shore Jazz & Blues Festival, once a summer staple in Red Bank that was unceremoniously scratched off the calendar and has since been on a wayward journey for a permanent home, is taking the show on the road this year.

After a stint on the pavement at Monmouth Park, the festival’s foundation announced it’s taking a totally different direction — three, actually — making one-day stops over three months in as many towns.

“It is what it is right now,” festival organizer Dennis Eschbach told redbankgreen. “We’re going in a different direction this year.”

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JAZZ & BLUES CROWD MISSES MARINE PARK

jazz-and-bluesFestivalgoers enjoyed dancing in the parking lot, but many missed the banks of Marine Park as the home for the Jazz & Blues Festival. (Photo by Dustin Racioppi; click to enlarge)

By DUSTIN RACIOPPI

For the first time in years, Red Bank’s Marine Park saw no hordes of music lovers — or rain — on the first weekend in June.

That’s because what was once known as the Red Bank Jazz & Blues Festival instead set up camp Saturday and Sunday in the parking lot of Monmouth Park in Oceanport, this time under the broader label of the Jersey Shore Jazz & Blues Festival.

It isn’t often that redbankgreen ventures beyond the confines of this virtual town square, but considering a landmark event was all but forced to pack up and move to a different venue, a trek to Oceanport to check in with folks to find out what they thought of the 2010 edition of the festival was in order.

The reviews weren’t exactly glowing.

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