This wild band packs fans into an adventurous club, even on Mondays

The synonym for Monday is "dead."

Certainly in the world of live music — where it can be difficult, these days, to get an audience even on a Friday or Saturday.

Except for one little spot, recently opened, in Asbury Park. There, the improbable has happened. At The RBar, it's Mardi Gras — every Monday night.

"RBar, how you doin' out there?" said Ian Gray, leader of the The Ocean Avenue Stompers, the raucous house band that is the RBar's secret sauce.

"Thank you so much for coming out, we love y'all," he told a cheering audience, who had just gotten what the New Orleans folks call "lagniappe" — a little something extra. Local musician Al Holmes, guest-singing the Louis Armstrong classic "What a Wonderful World." "What about this band?" Holmes asked.

Like there was any need.

Their mix of jazz, funk, down-home favorites like "Do You Know What It Means to Miss New Orleans?" and "You're a Mean One, Mister Grinch" (this was a few weeks before Christmas) had the crowd tapping and clapping. But when the band ripped into "When the Saints Go Marching In," it was party time. People were parading all through the restaurant.

"This scene is just fabulous," said Jack Kielty, a regular, who was sitting up front. "It's bringing an iconic sound from New Orleans to New Jersey."

Mondays have been like this in the small joint since January — when co-owner Casey Ritchings was persuaded to try an experiment.

A counterintuitive one, for sure. Who comes out to hear a band on a Monday?

But bandleader Ian Gray did have one good point. Nobody else has a band on a Monday. They'd be the only game in town.

Try it and see

"I knew, in my heart, how dead Asbury Park gets during the winter," Gray said. "I said, 'Casey, give us a chance to show you that Asbury people will come out.' "

And Ritchings gives him most of the credit for the crowds that have built and built, ever since.

The RBar is probably one of the few clubs these days that has a bona-fide house band — something that was a fixture in the old days of Asbury Park, when Southside Johnny and Cats on a Smooth Surface held court at The Stone Pony.

"This was Ian's idea," Ritchings said. "It was me that said yes."

Gray's hunch, and Ritching's gamble, came from a shared background.

Both are musicians — Ritchings is a guitarist who plays in his own band, Old No. 7 (less now, since he got into the restaurant business). Gray has toured Europe and all over the U.S. He's played with Southside and Steven Van Zandt.

Both have a shared appreciation of Asbury Park as a music town — the town of Springsteen and La Bamba and Sonny Kenn, a town full of musicians, traditions, and the people who love them.

And both share an appreciation of another town. A sister town in some ways. A town that lives and breathes music. A town that — like Asbury — has known hard times and always seems to bounce back. New Orleans.

They have bands on a Monday night. They have bands every night.

"When you go down to New Orleans, it just feels so natural," Gray said. "The music just exists there, and breathes and ebbs and flows. Bands come and go."

Bringing it north

When Ritchings and his partners Connie Nappi, Lindsey Taylor and Kelly Victor (also his life partner) conceived their new restaurant in Asbury last year, they decreed it would be New Orleans-inspired. Seafood Gumbo, Crawfish Pappardelle, Vegan étouffée, the works.

The name, too, would have a Crescent City vibe. They took it from a joint in the city's Faubourg Marigny section: The Royal Street Inn and Bar. "The locals nicknamed it 'The R Bar,' 'because of Royal Street," Ritchings said.

At Asbury's RBar — on the site of another well-remembered music club, the now-defunct Crossroads Bar & Cafe — a neon sign blinks out the name in alternating letters. R — BAR... R — BAR... R — BAR...

But whatever the inspiration, The RBar, like all new restaurants these days, was facing an uphill battle.

A two-year pandemic had scared everyone away from nightlife. People were out of the habit.

That's where the restaurant's interests, and the interests of a band called the Ocean Avenue Stompers, came together — in exquisite Louisiana harmony.

"I think it's a perfect storm," said Ryan Gregg, the band's ace keyboard player. "A lot of things happened at once. With the way the Stompers formed, at the same time the RBar started. Here's a band that's New Orleans-based, and here's a restaurant that's New Orleans-based. It's kind of co-dependent."

Under the influence

Gregg, from Red Bank, cut his musical teeth on the great New Orleans piano players: Dr. John, James Booker, Professor Longhair.

Gray, a trombone player originally from Manasquan, was equally smitten with The Big Easy's funky horns: Dirty Dozen Brass Band, Rebirth Brass Band, Galactic. Another link with Asbury, he points out. Also a horn town. What would Springsteen have been without Clarence Clemons, or Southside without The Miami Horns? "People define the sound of Asbury Park as horns," he said.

The Stompers had existed, in embryo, since 2016. But it was during the pandemic — when ironically, there were no gigs to be had — that they really came out swinging.

"No one had any work," Gray said. "It felt like there was no music going on in a music town. The best musicians and the busiest musicians were trapped in their apartments in New York and Philadelphia and itching to get out. So come summer, 2020, we all started talking on the internet. How can we perform? How can we create gigs, in this COVID atmosphere, that are safe?"

Where there's no way, you make a way. The Ocean Avenue Stompers started doing outdoor gigs. Essentially, busking. One performance in particular, on the sidewalk in front of The Stone Pony, drew a lot of attention.

"Before we knew it we were getting asked to play multiple gigs on front lawns, or parading someone from their birthday dinner back to their home," he said. They got a regular berth at Sea Hear Now, a newish festival (they first played it in 2019, a year after it launched) that's become a big deal in Asbury.

They also — on a more poignant note — got funerals. There were a lot of them, during the COVID days. A very New Orleans thing — to go out with a brass band. Celebrating, joyously, a life well lived. They still do 20 or 30 funerals a year, Gray said.

"We've seen so many losses over the past years," Gregg said. "The community feels the loss when somebody passes. It's a very New Orleans tradition to do a 'second line' for a funeral — a march, a celebration of life and the appreciation of still being here, and remembering the ones we've lost."

Blues Monday

All of this got the attention of Ritchings — who also took note of a regular Monday night session the band did in the arcade of Convention Hall (Gray's family once had a business there, Greetings from Geralyn).

The Stompers, he decided would be the perfect attraction to jump-start his new restaurant business. "I knew it was going to be good," he said.

He'd even try Gray's unorthodox suggestion. Monday nights — same as Convention Hall. "It was instantly a success," Ritchings said. "Ian is great at keeping people's attention, and creating a following."

The Stompers is in some respects a loosey-goosey affair. Some 40 musicians, all excellent, cycle in and out of the band on various nights. And there are local legends, like Holmes, who sit in. "Every instrument in the band has a bench of at least three guys, incredible players that are not better or worse than the guy before them," Gregg said.

The fort is held by a nucleus of regulars: Gray, Gregg, Charlie Patierno (drums), Declan O'Connell (bass), Joe Gullace (trumpet), Robin Clabby (sax), and James McCaffrey (guitar). But everyone's got chops, and everyone knows the material: "Iko Iko," "Big Chief," "On the Sunny side of the Street." All the good old good ones, as Louis Armstrong used to say. "This is street music, it's in your face, it's passionate," Gray said.

Which leaves one final question. The RBar, as noted, is named after a bar in New Orleans. But which Ocean Avenue is The Ocean Avenue Stompers named after?

Technically, the one in Bradley Beach. That's where Gray and Patierno happen to live. But every shore down, he notes, has an Ocean Avenue.

"Our goal," he said, "is to play every Ocean Avenue in New Jersey."

If you go...

The Ocean Avenue Stompers at The RBar, 1114 Main Street, Asbury Park. Monday nights 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. (Band is off in January). Reservations suggested. 732 776-7463. Oceanavenuestompers.com and itsrbar.com

Members of the band will also be doing a special holiday show at the RBar, "Vince Guaraldi's A Charlie Brown Christmas," on Dec. and 12 and 19 at 6 p.m. and 8:30 and Dec. 20 at 7 p.m.

This article originally appeared on NorthJersey.com: RBar in Asbury Park has a house band that packs fans in on Mondays