Remember Jones isn't just a singer. He's a showman.
ANTHONY D'AMATO performed under the name Remember Jones for the first time in November 2014, at the Pollak Theatre at Monmouth University in West Long Branch. The show, titled "One Last Waltz," featured songs from The Band's classic concert album, "The Last Waltz," played by an all-star assemblage of Jersey musicians.
During the original "Last Waltz" concert in 1976, Van Morrison delivered the fieriest performance, on his song "Caravan." And on this night at the Pollak Theatre, the task of singing "Caravan" fell to Jones.
In a performance that can be seen on YouTube, Jones follows Morrison's ferocious lead, singing with commanding soul, gesticulating wildly and improvising new vocal lines.
There's a sense of liberation in the performance -- something akin, maybe, to the first time Anna Mae Bullock took the stage as Tina Turner, or Farrokh Bulsara began performing as Freddie Mercury, or when Stefani Germanotta adopted her Lady Gaga persona.
Like those artists, Remember Jones isn't just a singer. He's a showman.
Remember Jones isn't just a singer. He's a showman. Jones, who was introduced at the 2014 show as "the artist formerly known as Anthony D'Amato," says the idea behind his new identity was to create "an amplified version of myself. Instead of me being human and being small ... well, let me be me, to the 10th power."
So far, it has worked. In less than two years, the 32-year-old Jones has presented a series of concerts at New Jersey venues -- including Convention Hall in Asbury Park, the Axelrod Performing Arts Center in Deal and the Strand Theater in Lakewood -- that have not been mere shows, but unique, unforgettable events. He also has sung '60s classics in Glen Burtnik's "Summer of Love" concerts and has helped revitalize the Strand as its producing artistic director.
For his first full-length, headlining show as Remember Jones, in April 2015, he performed Amy Winehouse's "Back to Black" album in its entirety -- with a 25-piece band crammed onto the relatively small stage at Asbury Lanes.
He and some other musicians "were kind of hanging out, talking about covering the song 'Back to Black,' " he says. "And I said, 'Man, but there's that song on that album. And that song.' And I jokingly said, 'What if we just did the whole album? How crazy would that be?' "
The crowd ate it up and other theme shows followed, including ones devoted to Joe Cocker's "Mad Dogs & Englishmen," Jeff Buckley's "Grace" and R. Kelly's "Trapped in the Closet" rap opera. At the Strand, Jones has produced shows devoted to the first three U.S. albums in the international "Now That's What I Call Music!" series (compiling the biggest pop hits of various years), with Jersey rock musicians playing smashes by the likes of the Spice Girls, the Backstreet Boys and Britney Spears.
A Brick native who now lives in Ocean Grove, Remember Jones says he was a "theater kid" growing up, though his family was always into music, too.
His first experience as a performer was in musicals at the Strand, the Count Basie Theatre in Red Bank and other Jersey venues. This led to projects such as directing "Hair" at the Basie, producing "Hedwig and the Angry Inch" at the Baronet Theatre in Asbury Park, and directing and starring in an immersive version of "The Rocky Horror Picture Show" at the Strand.
For "Rocky Horror," the theater's regular seats were not used and 200 spectators sat onstage, watching the action. "The audience participation part of 'Rocky Horror,' where you throw stuff at the screen or at the performers ... we kind of did it right back on top of the audience, tenfold," Jones says. "We'd drop stuff from the ceiling. When they'd throw toilet paper when Dr. Scott came in, we had eight rolls of toilet paper on leaf blowers, and as soon as you pressed the button, the rolls were gone in five seconds, all over the audience. It was kind of a Blue Man Group-type treatment."
Eventually, though, he became more interested in music than theater.
"I realized that the musicals thing ... while it was fun and fulfilling in certain ways, it was really limiting for me, because I have this soulful rock voice," he says. "I didn't want to be stuck to a certain sound. So I started doing clubs and bars as myself, as Anthony D'Amato."
Remember Jones performs in May at Asbury Park's Convention Hall. This soon morphed into a large band called Anthony D'Amato and the Emancipation Congregation. Some of the Emancipation Congregation musicians, including keyboardist Mark Masefield, bassist Billy Vegas, percussionist C.J. Thouret and singer Bre Cade, continue performing with him to this day.
There have been other projects along the way, too, including a music-and-comedy duo called Ike & Mike, and a stint in a Chicago-based band, The Live Debate! He moved to Philadelphia for a while. Then back to New Jersey, where he reformed the Emancipation Congregation.
Meanwhile, though, another Jersey singer-songwriter named Anthony D'Amato had started performing in Jersey clubs and, naturally, people sometimes confused the two. In 2014, the other D'Amato released an album on New West Records -- a well-established indie that has had artists such as Steve Earle, Patty Griffin and John Hiatt on its roster -- and this D'Amato felt the time had come to make a change.
And so, Remember Jones was born.
"I kept thinking, 'What's a name people are going to remember?' " he says. "And the word 'remember' was always important to me."
Something about that word had always stood out for him, Jones says. He even recalls learning to spell it as a child. And when he directed "Hair" in Red Bank, in the wrenching scene in which one character goes off to the Vietnam War as the others sing "Let the Sunshine In," he had a cast member hold up a sign that said "Remember."
As far as "Jones," he liked that it has the slang meaning of yearning for something and that many musical luminaries have had that surname. "I like it as a music theme," he says. "Quincy Jones. Sharon Jones. Davy Jones. It kind of rolls off your tongue."
With the help of more than $18,000 donated by fans through an Indiegogo crowdfunding campaign, he released his first album "Ladies and Gentlemen, Remember Jones!" in May.
Recognizing that songwriting is not his main strength, he leaned heavily on other writers -- mostly Jersey friends such as Burtnik, Bob Burger, Arlan Feiles and Rick Barry. He closes, though, with a disco take on Marcy Playground's 1997 alt-rock hit "Sex and Candy" that's so different from the original, you almost don't recognize it.
It's a theme that runs through many of his projects devoted to the work of other writers.
"I don't like the word 'tribute,' " he says. "It's a revival of the music, as if a new director and a new team came on and reopened a musical on Broadway, or something like that. They're taking a look at every part of it: the arrangements, the vision, everything.
"I don't want to be stuck singing it the way they sang it. I want you to feel it as if you hadn't heard it before."
So, in other words, it's not just about remembering what has already happened.
"I want it to be reminiscent of the feeling you had when you first heard it," he says, putting his finger on the difference.