Robinson Ale House owner Tim McLoone at Wednesday’s council session. (Photo by John T. Ward. Click to enlarge.)
By JOHN T. WARD
Red Bank’s Broadwalk dining plaza will return for at least a four-month run May 15, following informal agreement by the borough council Wednesday night.
The consensus arose after Mayor Billy Portman and Councilwoman Kate Triggiano goaded the reluctant majority bloc into an immediate decision.
The 30th edition of a dazzling Red Bank event, and the first of one helping local businesses compete, kick off the Christmas season Friday and Saturday.
Here’s what you need to know. More →
The back-end operations of McLoone’s restaurant empire will relocate to offices above Robinson Ale House. Below, Tim McLoone leading Holiday Express in its 28th Christmas-season kickoff concert last month. (Photo by John T. Ward. Click to enlarge)
By JOHN T. WARD
After seven years as a tenant, Tim McLoone has bought the building that houses his Robinson Ale House restaurant in Red Bank.
Earlier this week, redbankgreen caught up with 73-year-old restaurateur by phone as he rode a bus to Camden for one of 22 Christmas concerts he and his charity band, Holiday Express, have scheduled this year.
Bundled up against the cold, hundreds of stoked-for-the-season revelers cheered the return of Holiday Express to downtown Red Bank Friday night.
A partial stage-lighting outage was the only bit of rust as the Tim McLoone-led orchestra played its 28th annual show on Broad Street, after skipping 2020 for the pandemic.
As in the past, the concert and downtown light-up followed a dance performance at the borough train station and Santa parade to the concert stage.
Check out redbankgreen‘s photos below to see if you recognize anyone. (Photos by Trish Russoniello and John T. Ward. Click to enlarge)
After a pandemic year off, the high-energy Holiday Express concert and Town Light-Up is slated to return to downtown Red Bank Friday night.
Attendees will want to bundle up for what looks to be a seasonally appropriate chilly and breezy event.
An annual event that brings thousands of visitors to Red Bank and kicks off the holiday season has gotten the coronavirus bump.
What would have been the 28th annual Holiday Express concert November 27 won’t be held this year, organizers confirmed Wednesday.
Crisp weather provided an ideal setting for the unofficial start of the Christmas season in downtown Red Bank Friday night.
With Tim McLoone-led Holiday Express working its musical magic for the 27th time, several thousand kids and kids-at-heart crowded a stretch of Broad Street, singing along and counting down to the light-up of downtown trees.
Check out redbankgreen‘s photos below to see if you recognize any smiling faces underneath all those fun hats. (Photo by John T. Ward. Click to enlarge)
The Red Bank Holiday Express concert and Town Lighting is on for its 27th annual showing under what appear to be seasonally ideal conditions Friday night.
Details are below.
Brisk weather in Red Bank once again made for an ideal Holiday Express start to the Christmas season Friday night.
With the Tim McLoone-led band working its musical magic for the 26th time, several thousand kids and kids-at-heart crowded a stretch of Broad Street, singing along and counting down to the light-up of downtown trees.
Check out redbankgreen‘s photos below to see if you recognize any smiling faces underneath all those fun hats. (Photo by John T. Ward. Click to enlarge)
Santa Claus, the Grinch and a dazzling light spectacle return to Red Bank Friday night for the 26th annual Holiday Express concert and downtown tree lighting.
Postponed one day because of bad weather, and threatened again by rain, an undampened fireworks show made for a spectacular finale to Little Silver Day Sunday night.
Coordinated by the Little Silver Charitable Foundation, the biennial event helps raise funds used to support education programs, recreation activities, scholarships and other Little Silver
Santa Claus, the Grinch and Holiday Express worked their magic for the 25th time, ushering in the Christmas-and-other-holidays season with music, laughs and a touch of flurries on Broad Street in Red Bank Friday night.
Check out redbankgreen‘s photos below to see if you recognize any smiling faces. (Photo by John T. Ward. Click to enlarge)
Dozens of local politicians and players in the arts world turned out for the event. Below, Basie board members Steven Van Zandt and his wife, Maureen Van Zandt. (Photo by John T. Ward. Click to enlarge)
By JOHN T. WARD
A $23 million expansion of Red Bank’s Count Basie Theatre formally got underway Wednesday, beginning what’s expected to be a 20-month endeavor to turn the Vaudeville-era venue into a powerhouse for live performance and arts education.
The aim, musician and actor Steven Van Zandt told an al fresco gathering, is “to make Red Bank an example to the rest of the county of what it is possible to do” in elevating the arts.
The most recent Red Bank International Beer, Wine and Food Fest, held in April, raised $15,000 for two charities: borough-based Parker Family Health Center and Shrewsbury-based Holiday Express. Jim Scavone, executive director of event host Red Bank RiverCenter, presented checks of $7,500 to each organization at Wednesday’s borough council meeting.
Holiday Express founder Tim McLoone, above, played at the festival with his side project, The Shirleys. (Photo by John T. Ward. Click to enlarge)
The sky was mostly gray, but the White Street parking lot popped with color, sound and enticing aromas as the Red Bank International Beer, Wine and Food Fest held court Sunday.
Were you there? Check out our photo feast, below. (Photos by John T. Ward. Click to enlarge.)
More than 20 local food purveyors will be present when the 2017 edition of the Red Bank International Beer, Wine and Food Fest commandeers the White Street municipal parking lot this Sunday. (Photo by John T. Ward. Click to enlarge)
While the recent cancellation of Riverfest has left a hole in Red Bank’s yearly segue into summer, fans of strolling smorgasbords and top-down tunes needn’t wait too long to get their festival fix — as this Sunday, the White Street municipal parking lot will be the scene for the 2017 edition of the Red Bank International Beer, Wine and Food Fest.
Bobby Bandiera, joined here by longtime tourmate Jon Bon Jovi at a past Hope Concert, brings the ninth edition of his all-star benefit show back to the Basie Friday.
It’s just about the last of the big holiday-themed entertainment events to take the stage of the Count Basie Theatre in Red Bank each December — a frankly awesome rock and roll extravaganza that plants a glittering star atop the tree at an eleventh hour when various Scrooges, Nutcrackers and vocal choirs have scurried off to their last-minute shopping excursions.
Ask Bobby Bandiera and he’ll probably tell you that a dose of charitable spirit is more important than ever in the final countdown to Christmas and Hanukkah — and that the day-to-day survival of our neediest neighbors doesn’t take a holiday break when the rest of the community settles into its family traditions.
Tim McLoone leads the Holiday Express musicians in a December 15 appearance at Christian Brothers Academy, where the big band entertained a group of special needs young people.
Press release from Christian Brothers Academy
On Thursday, December 15, the McKay Gym at Christian Brothers Academy was once again transformed into a rocking holiday event hall, as part of Tim McLoone’s Holiday Express Christmas Party.
“This is the best day of the year,” said Tim Sewnig, Director of CBA’s Campus Ministry, of the event held each year to help young adults with special needs get in the Christmas spirit. The Academy hosts several holiday season fundraisers each year — a winter coat drive, collection for children with pediatric cancer, and Thanksgiving food drive to name a few — but this event has a special place amongst them.
Tim McLoone (seen presiding over the annual Town Lighting concert in downtown Red Bank) conducts the Holiday Express band back into station stop Basie for a pair of public-welcome shows on December 19 and 20 — with an all-aboard for volunteer “warehouse elves” at the nonprofit’s Tinton Falls facility.
VIP-level attendees at many Count Basie Theatre events have never been averse to paying as much as several hundred dollars over base ticket price, to enjoy such perks as premium seating, autographed tour souvenirs, and personal meet-and-greet opportunities with the featured attractions. But as far as Tim McLoone and Holiday Express are concerned, there are some ultra-exclusive events that remain off limits at any price.
It isn’t because you’re not cool enough, connected enough, or cash-money enough to score tickets. It’s just that admission to those performances is available to you only if you’re one of the more than 15,000 residents of regional homeless shelters, psychiatric hospitals, developmental centers, children’s wards and other places that form the heart of the Holiday Express itinerary — places whose residents are often without any family or friends, and whose sole ray of light is that annual visit by the big jinglebell juggernaut of a band.
Fortunately for the rest of us, the Express regularly detours from its tight timetable at this time each year, to play a double-header of fundraiser shows at station stop Basie; a tradition that continues this coming Monday and Tuesday, December 19 and 20.
For the 24th straight year, the feel-jolly sounds of Holiday Express served as the soundtrack to a Town Lighting ceremony that drew thousands of visitors to downtown Red Bank Friday night. Were you among those who braved the drizzle for the dazzle? Check out our photos to see who you might recognize. (Photos by John T. Ward. Click to enlarge)
Tim McLoone, at left above, and the Holiday Express band get some help kicking off another silver-bells season on the sidewalks of Red Bank at Friday night’s annual Town Lighting concert. Jackie Evancho (below) brings a program of holiday songs and hits to the Count Basie stage. (Photo above by Susan Ericson. Click to enlarge)
If it’s accomplished nothing else during its quarter century of continuous service, Red Bank’s annual Town Lighting ceremony has successfully wrested the idea of “Black Friday” from visions of crushing chaos at the mall to one of sing-along harmony in a walkable-wonderland setting of merry commerce and activity.
When the lights are ceremoniously lit in downtown Red Bank for the 24th consecutive year this Friday evening, it will come not a moment too soon for an extended community that really does need a little Christmas, right this very minute. And summoned once more into service like a jinglebell-jukebox Justice League will be Holiday Express, the big traveling winter wall of sound whose founder and skipper Tim McLoone has helped sound the keynote and flip the switch on a generation’s worth of festive occasions in the heart of Red Bank’s downtown diorama.
The Holiday Express band performs at one of its annual Town Lighting public concerts in downtown Red Bank.The humanitarian organization behind the big traveling band is putting out the call for volunteer “warehouse elves” at their Tinton Falls facility.
Every year for the past several decades, Holiday Express founder and co-frontman Tim McLoone leads his big traveling band in a special keynote to the most festive of seasons, as the assembled musicians and singers preside over Red Bank’s annual Town Lighting ceremony with a free open-air, public-welcome concert.
The “Black Friday” tradition is merely one of the more visible manifestations of the musical humanitarian organization that performs dozens of concerts at places that exist well below most people’s radar — the nursing homes, rehab centers, homeless shelters, psychiatric facilities and other locales whose audiences are made up of what McLoone calls the “adult orphans” among us.
While the veteran musician, businessman and entrepreneur observes that the Holiday Express orchestra is the aspect of the organization that “makes the most noise,” he’s quick to point out that the energizing engine is backed up by a formidable freight-train of volunteer support personnel, drivers, techies, and donation/gift processing workers at the nonprofit’s Tinton Falls warehouse facility (938 Shrewsbury Avenue in Tinton Falls). And, effective immediately, the Express is putting out a call for just such a crew of “warehouse elves” — a call that includes, for the first time, an online sign-up.
The roofed deck at McLoone’s Rum Runner. (Photo by Susan Ericson. Click to enlarge)
By SUSAN ERICSON
On a clear day, Tim McLoone‘s newly rebuilt Rum Runner restaurant in Sea Bright offers bird’s-eye views south along the Shrewsbury River past the Rumson-Sea Bright Bridge, north toward Sandy Hook Bay, and to the east, beach clubs, interspersed with peeks of the Atlantic Ocean.
Stunning eye-candy aside, PieHole finds another reason to appreciate this back-from-the dead Sandy survivor.
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Press release from Mental Health Association of Monmouth County
On Monday, August 29, the Mental Health Association of Monmouth County (MHA) will present its Annual Golf Classic and Cocktail Party, as part of MHA’s continued efforts to raise awareness and necessary funds for the free mental health services that MHA offers to members of the military and all families in Monmouth County.
Hosted at the Navesink Country Club in Middletown, the event highlights MHA’s mission of promoting mental health and wellness and improving the care and treatment of persons affected by mental illness. This mission is accomplished through MHA’s strength-based innovated program, education, advocacy community partnerships, and the shaping of public policy.
A spectacular fireworks show closed out a beautiful summer day of food, friends and dancing in the infield in Little Silver as the town’s residents gathered at the fields behind borough hall for Little Silver Day Saturday.
redbankgreen grabbed these photos of the merriment. (Photos by John T. Ward. Click to enlarge)