BY: Keith S. Shikowitz, Reporter
STONY POINT, NY – The Stony Music Fest was held from July 10 – 13, 2024 at Riverfront Park, overlooking the Hudson River in Stony Point. On Saturday July 13, the last day of the fest, five bands performed.
Two of the bands, The Loft and Joe’s Fired, were young adults, some of whom had just graduated High School. Prior to speaking with the entire band called the Loft, I had the chance to speak with the band’s bass player Vinnie Verzi. According to him, they play “a little bit of the older music. We like to follow the Growlers and The Beatles, of course, kinda a little bit in between a little bit far, you know.”
Vinnie said it was kind of funny how he got involved in the band. It was through his friends Billy and John a long time ago. “They were kind of conspiring to see how we can get something together and then kinda actually could, I reset that I can say.”
He added, “It just started from kind of a text message, be like you wanna be in a band and I was like, hell, yeah. So, a while ago Billy was kind of reaching out to us with this guy Morgan and we were kind of, me and Connor came to the band and from there we were kind of playing for a bit, did some little stuff. Now the band is Amelie, Jon, Billy and me.”
Verzi played French Horn in the North Rockland High School band. He said that this was very different from playing the bass in the Loft. “I love playing the bass, solos in there and sometimes, yeah, I mean, a lot of it’s like, I, I love playing musically. Like, that’s my whole bass playing style is very moving around. So I’m always kind of doing something.”
“I mean, like, it’s kind of like two different worlds. When it comes to like school bands, there’s the sheet music, there’s running stuff with the actual band making it as best as we can and when it comes to this, it’s similar, but it’s more in the thing of improvisation, working together, the chemistry that we have together to kind of make it what it is and kind of taking our four skills and putting the together to be kind of what we are. You know, it’s a almost completely different environment, the same fundamentals.”
When filming movies and recording music, there are always what the industry calls outtakes. These are flubs while trying to get it right for postproduction and then airing the movie or making the album. In today’s world with music videos, they are one in the same.
When talking about this Verzi’s response was, “Oh my God. So, like, you know, ok, so many times they’ll be like the littlest thing and we’re like, no, because, you know, you gotta make it just as the best we can make those little things redo them, kind of work them out and it’s less of restarting the whole song and more taking it by section by section to kind of, make it what it can be the best we can make those little things redo ‘em. Kinda of work them out. It’s less of redoing the whole song and doing them section by section to make it what it can be.
The members of the Loft include Vinny Verzi, Bill McGuire, Jon Negron and Amelie Barron. The band began according to McGuire, “Me and John were playing together for a long time, 2020 during the lockdown we started to mess around on the porch (they drag Verzi to the front of the camera). We had our friend Connor, he went away to college. He was the drummer and we brought Amelie along this year. It’s been slow going. It took four years, that’s a long time.”
The songs they like the best that they were playing that day, Backdoor Man by the Doors. Why that song? McGuire said, “I’m a big organ man. That is the one song that I don’t play the organ. He plays the organ. (pointing over to Verzi). I’m a Doors fan but we are not going to make the set Doors heavy.” Barron agreed with McGuire.
Verzi and Negron had a different opinion as to their favorite song and why.
Where do they see this venture going? McGuire said, “We’re trying to make this go as long as possible. We’re working on our album right now. It’s all home recorded. Verzi interjected, “We’ve still got some songs out. We just released some. Originals.”
Negron added, “A lot of people say the Loft is not going to exist after this year, but I don’t believe that. He said that it was because they all graduated.
Verzi stated, “We all have our own… John is staying home. Pointing to McGuire, “We’re both going to Fredonia, which is tearing us apart, but our connection won’t be torn apart.”
Another band of young adults which played at the Fest was named, Joe’s Fired. Four young men named Anthony, Nathan, Brian, Joey comprise the band. Bands usually know what kind of music they play, when asked this question, Anthony laughed and responded, “That’s a good question. Like a very broad answer,
Joey responded, “We do lots of rock music, alternative.”
As a young band with only a few songs of their own, they fill their sets by covering songs from other bands. Some of the ones they like to cover are according to Joey, “Nirvana and we do Pink Floyd songs sometimes and all sorts of others.”
One question that is always asked of a band is how did they get started. The Loft got started with some text messages asking if the person wanted to be in a band. Joe’s Fired got started according to Brian, “Well, me and Anthony were wanting to start a band and I was talking to Joe about and he was like, oh, hey, I’m a drummer and then, after a while we were like, hey, you can’t really have a band with one guitarist.”
Anthony said, “Yeah, the band really took off on your bass guitar.” They agreed that you can’t, you can’t do it without a bass guitar. You need that. He added, “That’s why I switched from guitar over to bass. There’s like no bass.”
Sometimes a band decided to do a song and they just have a tough time getting it together. The toughest song this group had to deal with, according to Nathan was Blue Oyster Cults, “Don’t fear the Reaper”
Nathan, “Yeah, we always have trouble through the song. A song that we’re not playing today, but we’ve also had trouble with this hotel California by the Eagles.” Joey added, “In the song, the guitar solo is. We practice and we get it down.”
With one of the bands practicing in the background, they explained what was the major issue that made those songs so tough.
As far as the future of the band, right now they are just trying to make music and have fun. But they are looking towards doing more.
Joey said, “But this summer we definitely wanna try and record some original songs and post them on the internet and you know, play them at gigs and stuff.”
Nathan chimed in, “Hopefully get an album.”
They are working on that album. They have one single out that is called ‘She’s the One’ that is on all platforms.
The other three bands as well as The Loft and Joe’s Fired had the crowd up and dancing and singing along with them.
This was the last time this event will be held at Stony Point Park. Starting next year it is going to be held at Boulder’s Stadium in Ramapo.