On a recent sultry August evening, we pulled up to Bernie’s Hillside Lounge, an old roadhouse bar surrounded by well-kept suburban homes, dense woods and a mosquito-infested swamp in this leafy Chester neighborhood. A few customers stood on the bar’s creaky porch, laughing and talking while swigging cold beers.
Inside the former hotel, pictures of celebrated music icons and other musical paraphernalia hang on the walls. Visitors might describe it as a rustic version of Asbury Park’s famed live music venue, The Stone Pony.
But live music ended abruptly at Bernie’s and virtually everywhere else as the pandemic swept through the country in late winter a year ago, darkening stages from Maine to California. But it wasn’t long before Bernie’s bounced back with a lineup of top-notch local and regional musical acts.
We dropped in to catch one rock cover band that is attracting a growing following of fans. Guitarist and vocalist Chris Repetto arrived with other members of his Grateful Dead cover band Diamond Eye Jack to perform at Bernie’s outdoor venue, constructed in an adjoining field in the midst of the pandemic last year. Bernie’s even cut up a tree trunk and turned it into tables for its pandemic-induced expansion.
When Muligo approached Repetto, he was already building up a sweat, lugging heavy amplifiers and other equipment, connecting wires and other set-up work. Unlike major acts, most cover bands still have to do double-duty as roadies.
DEJ’s other members who graced Bernie’s stage that evening included lead guitarist and vocalist Luke Youngman; drummer Jim Russo (no relation to JRAD’s Joe Russo); and bassist and vocalist Mike Malinowski. Keyboardist and vocalist Chris Shelley was unavailable that night, so the band recruited Steve Runyon to tickle the ivories. No stranger to the band or Dead music, Runyon is a former member of the defunct Grateful Dead cover band IDB, which included Repetto and Russo.
Following IDB’s breakup, Repetto and Russo created DEJ (a lyric taken from the Dead song “China Cat Sunflower”). The band, whose first show was held in March 2018, persuaded local Grateful Dead cover band Touch of Grey’s Malinowski and Shelley to join the group. DEJ, however, needed the talents of a lead guitarist who was quite adept in using the unique guitar tone and phrasing that the Dead’s Jerry Garcia was known for. Their search ended when they found Youngman, who was still in high school. DEJ’s current lineup has been together since November 2019.
Unlike other Dead cover bands, DEJ doesn’t play their songs note-for-note. Because musical interpretation is the key to creating a band’s own signature sound, DEJ provides its own twist to those tunes as well as plays different sets every performance –just like The Dead. It would get quite monotonous if they cranked out the same song in the same order night after night. One of the band’s members compared DEJ’s sound to JRAD’s “high-energy” output.
Even in the pandemic, DEJ found enough venues (including Bernie’s) to attract attention, even at the big and stuffy white tent at Village Brewing Company in Somerville. But the one advantage that Bernie’s has over tented venues like VBC is that there is plenty of room to dance without donning face masks and keeping a so-called safe social distance. Those restrictions would just fall on deaf ears anyway of the twirlers and neon-glowing hula-hoopers that turn out en masse whenever Dead music is played at Bernie’s.
The pandemic did not slow down DEJ. In fact, it may have benefited cover bands like DEJ because most of the major acts went on hiatus as a result of arenas and other large venues shutting down due to the pandemic pause. That meant live entertainment early on in the pandemic was mostly limited to cover bands performing in bars, restaurants, private clubs, vacant farmland, and other smaller venues. It also didn’t hurt that New Jersey, in particular, is home to legions of Dead fans. But public places weren’t the only ones interested in DEJ. Repetto recalled the time the band was hired to play at a private party in Lebanon, NJ, where the host built a stage for the band. DEJ also has performed stream shows during the pandemic as part of the band’s efforts to keep on performing and building its fan base.
Dead music has influenced DEJ members’ playing styles in different ways and at different times in their lives. Repetto recalled that his first concert at the age of 11 was a Dead show at The Nassau Coliseum in Long Island. He fondly remembers the date of the four-hour show: Nov. 1, 1979. How did he go to a Dead show at such a young age? His mom lost a bet to him and the payoff was the Dead show at Coliseum, though he had to be escorted by his older siblings. It was an experience that led him to join the ranks of millions of other Deadheads. He has attended about 50 Dead shows since his first show.
As for Malinowski, he began playing guitar during his teens but Dead music did not make an impression on him yet. His musical taste leaned more toward alternative rock or grunge bands like Bush and Nirvana. But his musical path eventually led him to the Golden Road, and soon The Grateful Dead became a big part of his repertoire.
In 2007, Malinowski switched to bass guitar because The Long Valley School Rock needed someone to teach bass guitar to aspiring Phil Leshes. He still publicly performs on guitar if the situation warrants it. Earlier this year, Malinowski and Repetto played acoustic guitars at Woodbridge High School’s football field-turned-concert venue. Muligo was there and it was an incredible performance, and we hope to see more of their acoustic treatment of Dead songs at future shows.
When asked a couple of things that people don’t know about him, Malinowski said he doesn’t wear shorts during performances. However, he recently waived that rule when he played at a bar in High Bridge with a different band, Enjoy Every Moment, which Youngman is also a member. Fortunately, Malinowski made the right decision because the stifling heat inside the bar must have turned his red-white-and-blue unofficial Phil Lesh swag into a sweat rag. Muligo has since given him another one in the event of another heat emergency. Another thing that most people don’t know about DEJ’s bass player is that he met his wife at one of his gigs.
As for Youngman, he was born to be a musician. At the age of four, Youngman pulled his father’s old Harmony acoustic guitar out of a closet and started playing it, albeit minus two strings. Impressed by his musical talent, his father told his son that if he played “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star” on that guitar, he would buy him an electric guitar. Sure enough, he nailed the nursery rhyme and was presented with a Fender Stratocaster and an amplifier for his fifth birthday. Nearly 15 years later, Youngman is now channeling the ghost of Garcia. He credits mostly his parents for influencing him to play Dead music. Both of his parents are Deadheads, so it was only natural to hear Dead music played around the house or in the family car.
Russo, who picked up the drums in middle school, was more into British rock bands like Led Zeppelin, the Rolling Stones, The Kinks, and The Who and Southern California-based rock band The Doors rather than the Dead when he was growing up in northern New Jersey. Russo, who started out playing “an old, horrible used drum kit”, got a better drum set and played in various bands that performed mostly original songs. Later, he teamed up with Repetto, both playing together for nearly a decade.
Russo, like the others in the band, started playing Dead music because it transcends many musical genres: blues, country, folk, jazz, bluegrass, etc. Other band members found the Dead appealing because of its cultural aspect—sort of a global tribal community sharing similar musical and life values.
Although Runyon sometimes fills in for Shelley as DEJ’s keyboardist, he is very familiar with the band’s setlists probably because he spent an enormous amount of time listening to Dead songs on hundreds of cassettes (remember those?) of the band’s concert recordings that he borrowed from a college roommate. Runyon first started playing in the ‘80s with R&B bands in East Orange and elsewhere. And newsflash: He will be joining a soon-to-be-formed Allman Brothers cover band.
Lately, there has been an explosion of pent-up live music in New Jersey and elsewhere as a result of state governments reducing capacity restrictions for both indoor and outdoor venues. The COVID restrictions were lifted as cases dropped mostly due to the vaccination rollout. This in turn has caused bands, both major acts and cover bands, to play the same night, which Malinowski says has made it difficult for fans to decide which band they want to see perform. But judging from recent DEJ shows, there doesn’t seem to be a problem in drawing a crowd to their performances.
The recent surge in the disease’s variant may reinstate some or all of those restrictions—which would be bad news for live entertainment, especially for those indoor venues. Hopefully, government officials won’t push the “panic button” and will keep the current live entertainment scene status quo. If that doesn’t happen, there’s always a weekend at Bernie’s where music fans can find DEJ and other bands jamming away.
As for DEJ, they have adopted a positive attitude about playing in the pandemic and expect to continue playing gigs whether they are live or virtual shows. As for the longevity of DEJ, band members are optimistic about its future. “We’re enjoying the time we have together,” said Repetto. “We’ll do this as long as we can.”