The members of Hickory are spread out over such Jersey towns as Denville, Lincoln Park, Pompton Plans and Ramsey. Yet when they jam, they are as close in spirit and chemistry as a single entity can be. That closeness is fully evident on their debut recording, Postcard Picture Show, due December 20.

The story goes that Bruce didn’t even want to include “No Surrender” on 1984’s Born In The USA but did so at the insistence of Stevie Van Zandt. It’s since become a concert staple, one of the most beloved songs in the Bruce catalog. It’s been covered 19 times by artists from all around the world but not like the one-named singer-songwriter Rowe from Hopewell in Mercer County.

Jenny Owen Youngs, 43, was raised in the woods of Sussex County. It was a decade between her third album (An Unwavering Band Of Light) and last year’s 10-track fourth (Avalanche). Why did it take so long? She was busy touring the world, writing hits for others, starting a popular podcast, writing a book, and having her songs placed in movies and TV shows.

For the fourth straight month, there’s Melanie news. The Long Branch High School graduate, who died earlier this year, but not before winning the hearts of multiple generations from the 1960s on, is the subject of Reimaginings (Cleopatra Records), a 42-track, two-disc gem wherein the artist who absolutely refused to settle, and continued to tinker with new and old songs alike, gets her catalog overhauled. And she did it herself!

The organization known as Violins of Hope has amassed such stringed instruments as violins, cellos and upright basses in an effort to protect the legacy of slaughtered Jewish musicians during the Holocaust and the instruments they once played.

There was always something special about internationally-revered piano man Bill Evans. He was especially popular in Scandinavia, Paris, London and South America. Was it the fact that his voicings included snippets from the great classical composers? Or was it that this Jersey Boy, born in 1929 Plainfield, added so much when he was in the band of Miles Davis to record the best-selling jazz album of all time, Kind Of Blue?

West Orange guitarist Dave Stryker got himself some strings and he’s taking ‘em all to the movies. The album—Stryker with Strings Goes To The Movies (Strikezone Records)—doesn’t come out until January 10 but he’s laid a little something on us for the meantime. And it’s a flat-out doozy.

The “Scumbags of the Universe,” GWAR, will meet and greet their fans for the first time in their blood-spattered career at the Trenton Punk Rock Flea Market for the last two days of the three-day December 13, 14 & 15 Cure Arena event on Hamilton Avenue.

If you’re in Hoboken, and you go west of Willow Avenue, you’ll not only find Sinatra’s boyhood home and the Café Visa but also the 503 Social Club. The West of Willow collective (WOW), an organization that hosts charitable events like the ones they’ve held for Ukraine and Planned Parenthood, will, on December 8, host a benefit concert at the 503 starring Hoboken rockers Karyn Kuhl and her Gang plus Debby Schwartz of the bands Psych-O-Positive and The Aquanettas. Poets Danny Shot and Vera Sirota will also perform.

Punk-rock fans in Jersey City will get to be among the first in the country to see the new documentary—Born Innocent: The Redd Kross Story—with Pearl Jam, The Go-Go’s, Soundgarden, Black Flag, The Bangles, Sonic Youth, The Melvins, Mudhoney, Dinosaur Jr., Veruca Salt, Circle Jerks, The Germs and more on December 22 at Monty Hall on Montgomery Street where radio station WFMU is housed.

Written and Directed by Scott Cooper from last year’s book—Deliver Me From Nowhere: The Making Of Bruce Springsteen’s Nebraska—by Warren Zanes, principal shooting for the much-anticipated 2025 Bruce bio-pic started last month in New York and three sites in The Garden State:  Bayonne, Rockaway (Morris County) and next month from the ninth to the 13^th in Asbury Park.

The 16^th annual induction ceremony of the New Jersey Hall of Fame will honor its 21 new Garden State heroes on December 28 at 6:00 p.m. and December 29 at 10:00 a.m. on NJ PBS. Hosted by actor Danny DeVito, and featuring appearances by Meryl Streep, Paul Rudd, Phil Simms, Cher and Elizabeth Moss, it was filmed at the New Jersey Hall of Fame at American Dream in East Rutherford, originally airing on My9 last week.

By any reader’s estimation, Little City Books—100 Bloomfield Street in Hoboken—is a great book store. It hearkens back to an earlier era when you could spend hours just browsing through its titles in a friendly atmosphere. Maybe that’s why the producers of the new Bob Dylan bio-pic—A Complete Unknown—due Christmas Day, picked the venue to film some scenes for actor Timothee Chalamet as Dylan.

The Bruce Springsteen Archives & Center for American Music (BSACAM) plus Stevie Van Zandt’s TeachRock have announced a collaboration with Canada’s National Music Centre (NMC; see video here), based in Calgary (the first such NMC partnership outside Canada). Housed within the 160,000 square-foot Studio Bell, the NMC will partner with the two American entities for what is being called “a cross-border cultural exchange.”

On January 18, The Count Basie Center for the Arts on Monmouth Street in Red Bank will host the 25^th annual Light of Day concert to benefit the fight against Parkinson’s Disease, Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis and Progressive Supranuclear Palsy. Brian Fallon (The Gaslight Anthem), John Rzeznik (Goo Goo Dolls), Brian Baker (Bad Religion), Pete Steinkopf (The Bouncing Souls), Dramarama, Willie Nile and Joe Grushecky & The Houserockers are the first—but not the last—confirmed artists.

It’s called Skid Row 18 and Life Single Origin Ultra Premium Rum. It’s been 35 years since Toms River band Skid Row launched the song “18 & Life” into the stratosphere. Now, after a year of development, “combining the artistry of Guyanese rum distillation with European aging methods, and after being housed in American oak barrels in Guyana, the rum was finished in rare teak wood leggers in Europe,” according to a band press release.

Guitarist-Composer Dan Lorenzo, from Paramus, founding member of Hades, Non-Fiction and Patriarchs In Black (who also partnered with Overkill’s Bobby Blitz in The Cursed) has announced the December 15 release of an all-covers EP from Brutal Planet Records called Covered In Black.

Cleopatra Records has been releasing Melanie music of late what with its reissues and “new” releases from the alt-folk singer who graduated Long Branch High School to become a 1960s icon. The latest of which is In Focus Live ’88 with Jan Akkerman of the Dutch prog-rock band Focus (known for its biggest hit “Hocus Pocus” in 1971).

It’s called “Hold On Me.” The new single from Newark’s Raheem DeVaughn and Louisiana’s Mariah. (with a period) is a sensual slice of sophisticated soul.

The two campuses of the Lakehouse Music Academy—in Asbury Park and Red Bank—teach performance, composition, recording, engineering, production, theory and marketing to aspiring musicians from age three onward. The Asbury Park band October Man is one of its success stories.