Not far from Long Beach Island and just north of Atlantic City sits the small Ocean County town of Tuckerton. In that town stands an old Victorian house that has had many purposes over its history. That house has been transformed into a one-of-a-kind concert venue called the Lizzie Rose Music Room. Since its opening in late 2013, both artists and patrons have constantly returned because of its uniqueness and charm.

Reichert’s mission was to bring top-quality live music down to his “neck of the woods,” and a small South Jersey coastal town is not somewhere would expect to find a great selection of different bands and acts. On any given week, one might find world music, blues, singer-songwriters and tribute bands performing at the Lizzie Rose.

A new organization in north Jersey is striving to put the once-widely regarded genre of Blues music back into the cities and towns of Morris and other northern counties. Since its founding in 2022, the North Jersey Blues Society has hosted many events within the community. There are about 100 individual members in the society, which includes solo artists, bands and groups. Two performance areas host artists from the society one weekend day each month. The society partners with the national Blues Foundation to participate in the yearly Blues competition, and some of the society’s artists will play at the Rock, Ribs and Ridges Festival at the Sussex County Fairgrounds.

A large map of Princeton sits on the wall of the second floor of the Princeton Arts Council. On it, there are diagrams, thumbtacks and drawings penciling out an upcoming event that the Arts Council is holding. The event they are planning is called a Porch Fest, and ever since the first one occurred in Ithaca, New York in 2007, the number of these homegrown musical festivals have grown rapidly in communities around the country. Princeton is hosting this event for the second time and is one of about a dozen New Jersey communities to have a similar event scheduled in the next few months.