64 Rolling Stone February 2020
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EDUXI
N DECEMBER 2000, Bruce Springsteen
stood onstage at the Convention Hall in
Asbury Park, New Jersey, and debuted
“My City of Ruins.” It was an elegy for his
adopted hometown, where he learned to
perform by playing nightly near the ocean-
front boardwalk and saw acts like the Who
and Janis Joplin as a teenager. But in the
decades following the city’s race riots of 1970,
Asbury Park had become a shell of itself due
to neglect and political corruption. “Young
men on the corner like scattered leaves,”
Springsteen sang. “The boarded up windows,
the empty streets.”
Two decades later, Asbury Park has staged
an incredible comeback, reclaiming its long-
standing status as a go-to resort town with
a musical heart. Joining classic Springsteen
haunts like the Stone Pony and Wonder Bar
are a host of sleek new spaces like House of
Independents and the Asbury Hotel, located
next to Asbury Lanes, which was a key punk
venue in the 1980s that now hosts bands like
Black Lips and Jukebox Criminals. “I think the
most rapid growth period in Asbury Park has
maybe happened over the past five years,”
says Asbury Lanes-Asbury Hotel proprietor
David Bowd, one of the key investors in the
revitalized town.
Music festivals are springing up, too. The
Asbury Park Music + Film Fest, which benefits
underserved kids in the area, featured sepa-
rate screenings of unseen material from the
Springsteen and Dylan vaults last year (both
of those events will be reprised in 2020, and
there will be a new retrospective celebrat-
ing Sopranos creator David Chase). There’s
also the epic Sea.Hear.Now, one of the most
successful U.S. fests to spring up in recent
years. The event — which Dave Matthews
Band and the Lumineers played last year — is
co-produced by veteran music photographer
Danny Clinch, who opened a gallery of his
work in Asbury Park in 2016. Clinch, who grew
up in nearby Toms River, spent his teenage
years seeing shows at the Stone Pony. “I used
to come to Asbury Park and think to myself,
‘How could a place like this, right on the
seashore with such beautiful architecture,
not come back?’ ” says Clinch. “It was this
diamond in the rough. I’ve heard that now
there are more music venues per square mile
than any town in the country, even Nashville.
It’s incredible.” ANDY GREENEASBURY PARK,
NEW JERSEY
Once a city of ruins, the beach
town is thriving again, with sleek
new hotels and multiple festivalsJ
ACK WHITE REMEMBERS the first time
he stepped inside Cain’s Ballroom, a
1920s Tulsa dance hall where Bob Wills
and the Texas Playboys once broadcast their
weekly radio shows. “I basically almost fired
my booking agent the moment I walked into
that room,” White said recently. “Why do I not
know about this place? I was really upset that
nobody had ever told me about Tulsa.”
White fell in love with the rest of the city —
including its art-deco architecture, and rich
history in film (Francis Ford Coppola shot The
Outsiders there) and music (Woody Guthrie
and Leon Russell are Okie legends) — and
bought a house in Tulsa. As the city grows
and develops, its musical scene has exploded
again; while Cain’s was booking about an
act a month back in 2002, it now books 120.
The city is also a major destination for music
historians, with the recent additions of the
Woody Guthrie Center and Bob Dylan Archive.
Those buildings were both funded by George
Kaiser, a businessman-turned-philanthropist
who wants to make Tulsa a major destination.
Here’s why he might be right.
HONKY-TONK HEROES
In the early Seventies, J.J. Cale brought Tulsa’s
country-soaked rock nationwide. His spirit is
alive at Paul Benjamin’s Sunday Nite Thing.
Benjamin, a grizzled guitar slinger, welcomes
a rotating cast of talented local heroes like
John Fullbright, whose piano-based heartland
The oil town is experiencing a resurgence, thanks to rappers,
folk singers, and a billionaire who wants to make it the next Austin
TULSA, OKLAHOMA
folk songs made him a hero in Nashville and
beyond. “A different guest each week keeps it
fresh,” says Benjamin. “It ties together a bunch
of different styles, from honky-tonk to R&B.”REVOLUTION ROCK
While folkies like Fullbright and John Moreland
are channeling Guthrie’s spirit, a new group
of rappers are making music described as
“politically conscious, subliminal street,” says
Steph Simon, who just released a concept
album about the city’s 1921 race riot and
massacre. “Tulsa is much more diverse than it
was 15 years ago,” says R&B singer Branjae.DYLAN’S GOLD MINE
The Bob Dylan Archive, which opens in 2021,
is already home to 6,000 artifacts from Dylan’s
personal collection. They include his leather
jacket from Newport and the “Visions of
Johanna” lyrics. A public museum will feature
highlights. “As this stuff becomes older, you
want it to be more organized for generations,”
says a source close to the Dylan camp.BEST DAYTIME HANG
The Gathering Place, a new 66-acre park full
of trippy sculptures, is largely the result of
hundreds of millions in donations by Kaiser,
the billionaire behind the Guthrie and Dylan
centers. JONATHAN BERNSTEINRAISIN’ CAIN
Clockwise from
left: White
onstage during
the Raconteurs’
three-night stand
at Cain’s (pictured)
last year; the
Gathering Place, a
66-acre park that
opened last yearCHURCH
STUDIOS
Take a tour of
Leon Russell’s
old Shelter
Records
studio.
GREENWOOD
CULTURAL
CENTER
The spot
where
Count Basie
discovered
jazz is now a
museum.Hidden
History