Today is the big Riverview Jazz Festival, an amazing event featuring the most talented musicians from in and around Jersey City. I first heard Bryan Beninghove last year at the Festival, and took a mental note that I needed to interview him. Bryan is actually now one of the organizers of the Riverview Jazz Fest and a few weeks ago, we finally linked up for an interview. I met him at his friend’s studio in Journal Square and we kicked it old school style; talked about music, Jersey City and he even let me pose with his amazing Saxophone. Bryan is a cool cat. If you are around today, check him out at the Riverview Jazz Fest in Riverview Park in the Heights!
What’s your name? Bryan Beninghove.
What do you do? I’m a saxophonist and band leader.
How long have you been in music? I started playing in bars when I was twelve. All throughout high school I was playing in blues bands and all different types of stuff.
Is this your full-time gig? Yeah.
Not a lot of people can say that. No. You have to have your hand in a lot of different baskets.
That’s what Pay Van Dyke said when I interviewed him. There’s not just one source of income. That’s why I always get jealous when people do their taxes, and they have one statement. I have to track down my money from twenty different places.
What would you say is your genre? I’m all over the place. One thing that I pride myself in is I try to be the kind of musician that you can drop me off anywhere in the world, and I can get a gig that night. Right now, I write a lot for a band where I call the music surf noir which is like music for a Tarantino movie. I play in Manouche Bag, a French band.
Oh yeah! I know Manouche Bag! Me and Mattias started that together eight years ago, and I play melodica and sax with that.
How did you get into music? I know you mentioned you started when you were a young kid. I started in the school band like a lot of kids do, and I naturally gravitated towards the teachers at the place where I was taking music lessons that smoked cigarettes. So they were all outside there, and I would hang outside with them when I was eleven-twelve. They were all jazz musicians, so they started making me tapes of different music, and I started getting into it from there.
How long have you been living in Jersey City? I moved here in ’99.
What brought you to Jersey City? I was bouncing around from a couple of places like I was in Nantucket. Cheaper rents, that’s why I moved over there. It’s funny now; I lived Downtown either the second or third apartment after that, and I was living by myself for $500 a month.
That’s insane; it’s changed a lot since then. Yeah!
So what studio are we in? We’re at 9 Lives Studio run by Nicola Stemmer in Journal Square.
You also mentioned that you are part of the Riverview Jazz Festival. Can you tell me a little bit more about that? A buddy of mine was trying to get some bands to play in the park. I was playing with all the bands, and then we said, “Shit this is a ton of work. Let’s do this for real if we’re going to do it.” So I grabbed it by the reigns, we became a non-profit. We’ve had a big turnover right now, but it’s been good because now we have people with festival experience, Margo Parks. This year we have the City of Jersey City as a co-presenter, we have over forty events all throughout Jersey City and Hudson County, June 3rd through June 11th. And we throw our flagship [event] that we’ve done every year which is June 11th, that’s Saturday in Riverview-Fisk Park. This year we’re excited, we have two stages, nine bands, beer trucks with permits so you can walk around with the beers.
We have the band from David Bowie’s last record playing, Donny McCaslin Quartet; we have a band comprised of all Tito Puente’s former members, Tipica 73; we have a lot of fun bands, Slavic Soul Party, a ten-piece brass band from Brooklyn. We’re expecting a big turnout this year, and we’re just trying to put a shine on music going on here in the area. When I would talk to them before we started this up, it was like, “I don’t play in Jersey.” I’m like, “Dude; there’s so many great players living right here in Jersey City. One of my missions was not only to get them playing a little bit but also to put a shine on the clubs that are doing something and also to throw an event where it’s not a semi-pro or amateur thing. A lot of them get asked to play for $50 for the band; it’s like who are you going to get to come out on a Friday night for $10? So that’s one thing that we wanted to do is to say, “We’re a big city here, we can do something here.” It’s been exciting seeing the growth and the support all throughout the community here.
I love that place; it’s so sexy in there. And great drinks, the treat you right, it’s hip, good food. I dig it.
What’s your favorite Jersey City hangout spot? My little under the radar spot is Healy’s; that’s where I go. I love the jukebox, and I get a couple of cheap beers and a hotdog, and that’s where I pregame before Madame Claude’s.
Anything else you’d like people to know about you? On a personal note, I have two young children.
How do you balance it all? One I have to weigh down a little more because it’s not as heavy as the other—I’m just kidding.
How old are they? So I have a six-year-old daughter named Stella and a one-and-a-half-year-old son named Theo. It’s crazy, right now with the festival it’s been nuts because it’s just emails, phone calls and the hardest thing you can do is shoot back an email with a kid trying to hit send before you want it. I put my stuff aside, like my writing, write a lot at night. So midnight, I’ll get up and do some writing and go to bed around two and wake up at six, and this is how I plow through.
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