Pop Music : Southside Johnny Shows Off New Band While Palomino Crowd Sings the Blues

The spiritual connection between the Stone Pony, the near-legendary Asbury Park, N.J., bar where Southside Johnny & the Asbury Jukes got started some 15 years ago, and North Hollywood’s Palomino club, where the throaty singer performed with his new band Blues De Luxe on Saturday, derives from more than just the horse references in their names.

The history-laden clubs have each played host through the years to some of the foremost roots musicians, served as a springboard for new talent and provided a haven for acts that have seen better--or at least more lucrative--days.

The similarities were not lost on the Palomino crowd, which began calling out for favorites from Southside Johnny Lyon’s Stone Pony-era rock ‘n’ roll repertoire before he even took the stage--despite Blues De Luxe’s billing as a Chicago-style blues band. Impervious to shouts from the steadily thinning crowd for “Fever” (the Bruce Springsteen song, not the Peggy Lee hit) and “I Don’t Want to Go Home,” Lyon stuck to his guns and to his blues.

That showed admirable determination, but there’s something to be said for listening to the audience at times. The session-musician background of the four Blues De Luxe players was all too apparent as they indulged in the sort of endless blues jamming that accomplished instrumentalists thrive on, but that tests the devotion of the average late-night rock crowd. It’s next to impossible for anyone other than the person behind the kit to sit through a 1:30 a.m. drum solo.

Blues De Luxe’s best moments came when Southside Johnny himself was center stage, as on a rollicking version of Elmore James’ “Shake Your Moneymaker” and a near-perfect rendering of Sam Cooke’s soulful “That’s Where It’s At.”