“The Sandy Mack Experience,” a documentary about the Asbury Park-based musician Sandy Mack, will be shown at The New Jersey International Film Festival in New Brunswick, May 31.
In “The Sandy Mack Experience,” a new documentary about the Asbury Park-based blues and rock singer and harmonica player Sandy Mack, bassist John Perry and disk jockey Stu Coogan both call him a “pied piper,” in separate interviews.
By that, they mean that he is more than just a talented musician. He leads open-to-the-public jam sessions, organizes benefit concerts, sits in with countless different groups, and mentors young musicians. And he has been doing this for decades. He is central to the scene, in a way that few musicians are.
After talking about playing with Mack at a jam session, Jeffrey Arevalo, formerly of the jam band Goose, says “I had a similar thing where I learned how to play in Sarasota, Florida. There was a couple of jams. There was like an open mic on Tuesday which I kind of became the drummer for, and then I would bring my bass later. But there was a blues jam on Monday night … a gentleman by the name of Al Fuller did a similar thing, in our community.
“So, it’s just so important to have a place to play. You need this everywhere.”
The Wonder Bar is one of many Asbury Park venues that has hosted jam sessions led by Sandy Mack.
The 71-minute documentary — which will be shown at The New Jersey International Film Festival in New Brunswick, May 31 at 5 p.m., and also be available online all day on May 31 — is the kind of thing that, in a better world, there would be more of: a chance for a unsung hero of a local music scene to get some attention, beyond that scene.
Co-directors Henry Frost and Sarah McCuiston (Mack’s daughter) shoot the film in a straightforward, unpretentious, low-budget style that suits its subject. They basically show Mack, onstage and backstage, at various Asbury Park nightclubs — there is a generous amount of performance footage — and interview him at length. They also get various people involved with the Shore music scene to talk about him. Among those singing his praises are original E Street Band keyboardist David Sancious; Phish lyricist Tom Marshall; Stone Pony house promoter Kyle Brendle; members of Little Steven’s Disciples of Soul, Dogs in a Pile, Juggling Suns, Secret Sound, The Gab Cinque Band and other groups; singer-songwriters Carlotta Schmidt and Niki Arrowsmith; fans, and others.
Marshall says Mack is “not trying to, but he IS the music scene in Asbury. He invites disparate people from disparate bands and, without knowing it, has introduced them to each other, and then they go on and collaborate. His tendrils are vast.”
“He’s just so amazing: how he makes it look so rehearsed and everything’s so put together,” says guitarist Pete Tonti, who has played with One-Eyed Jack, Lovelight, his own Pete Tonti Band and others groups. “It’s always a different lineup, and just being able to make magic happen on the fly like that … it’s not an easy thing.”
Mack himself dissects a harmonica technique he learned from the J. Geils Band song “Whammer Jammer”; talks his childhood, his love of surfing, and the influence of the Grateful Dead (and, in particular, singer, keyboard player and harmonica player Ron “Pigpen” McKernan); and sums up his long history of helping other musicians with his usual modesty.
“If I hear something that sounds really good, I want to tell my friends about it, so they can hear it,” he says.
“The Sandy Mack Experience” will be shown at The New Jersey International Film Festival at Voorhees Hall at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, May 31 at 5 p.m., and also be available online all day on May 31. Visit njfilmfest.com.
_________________________________________
CONTRIBUTE TO NJARTS.NET
Since launching in September 2014, NJArts.net, a 501(c)(3) organization, has become one of the most important media outlets for the Garden State arts scene. And it has always offered its content without a subscription fee, or a paywall. Its continued existence depends on support from members of that scene, and the state’s arts lovers. Please consider making a contribution of any amount to NJArts.net via PayPal, or by sending a check made out to NJArts.net to 11 Skytop Terrace, Montclair, NJ 07043.
