The Sweet Sounds of Summer Music on the East End

One of the staple features of the East End during the summer are the numerous concert series held each week by different towns and villages. From Westhampton to Montauk, local bands can be found performing on village greens, in gazebos and on the beach on cool summer evenings, sharing their music for a crowd featuring those of all ages out for a night of fun and free live music.

These concert series provide a great opportunity for local bands to perform, as navigating the music scene on the East End — particularly during the summer months — can be a challenge for many groups. Some of these bands feature full-time musicians who rely on performing shows for their income.

Among the full-time musicians on the East End is Gene Casey, the frontman of Gene Casey & The Lone Sharks. Known by many as “the house band of the Hamptons,” Casey’s group is one of the staple bands performing at local summer concert series and at venues across the East End.

The group was formed when Casey moved to Sag Harbor in 1988 after he spent the previous years performing in the remnants of New York City’s punk and new wave scene. When he started the band, he never would have thought that it would soon become his livelihood.

“I didn’t think much about it,” said Casey in a recent interview. “It was like, ‘let’s put together a good bar band with my favorite types of music.’ And I never dreamed that it would be my main career and my main source of income all these years later.”

Casey and The Lone Sharks hit the local circuit with its organic sound based in rockabilly, country and western and old style rock ’n’ roll by playing local bars and parties. For the first few years, Casey said they would usually play around five times a month.

But the group’s big break came in 1995 when The Wild Rose Cafe opened up on the Bridgehampton-Sag Harbor Turnpike. This bar became the band’s home base, as they played every Thursday night there for six years. It marked a turning point for the group, as their residency at The Wild Rose got their name out there and led to them getting more gigs to a point where Casey became a full-time musician.

“That’s when I noticed our fan base really started to grow and we started getting offers to play more places,” said Casey, who lives on the North Fork. “And that’s when it really got serious for us and I stopped doing my day job.”

Today, The Lone Sharks play over 100 shows per year both on the East End and across the island. For Casey, finding shows is now easier than before after years of convincing venue owners to bring in his band, something that most bands have to do in order to get gigs.

“I don’t have to keep selling myself every time I pick up the phone,” said Casey, who also hosts “The Weekend Jamboree,” a radio show on WLIW FM. “And that’s really a relief because I don’t enjoy the hustle and self-promotion.”

Though Casey is at a point where he doesn’t have to “scramble and scrape” for shows anymore, he’s still faced some recent challenges. The pandemic proved to be a particularly difficult time for him, as like many other full-time musicians, he wasn’t able to go out and perform. In order to keep the music playing, he was hired by local libraries to do weekly livestreams where he would perform solo. These streams were a way for him to stay connected to an audience despite not being onstage.

And when he was able to return to the local stages of the East End, he found that the crowds were better than ever.

“Once everything lifted, people came out in droves,” said Casey, “They were so ready to dance and have a good time. It was very heartwarming to see people coming out and supporting music, and it’s actually been stronger than ever for us in that regard.”

But while Casey and The Lone Sharks have been able to find success making a living from playing music, other local musicians who frequently play the local circuit haven’t made the switch to using music as a full-time source of income.

One of these musicians is Joe Lauro, a bassist based in Sag Harbor who leads The Hoodoo Loungers, a funk and soul band. Lauro spent his 20s playing multiple shows a week as a full-time musician both on Long Island and across the Northeast. Though he recalled this as a fun time, he hit a point where he decided that he didn’t want to continue that full-time path, a decision that he doesn’t regret.

“At a certain point in my life, I said to myself that I don’t think I want to do this for my living and I think I made the right decision,” said Lauro. “I’m still surrounded by music with my work and with the band.”

Lauro is the founder of Greenport-based Historic Films Archives, which holds an extensive collection of television and film footage dating as far back as 1895. He has been able to utilize his passion for music for a career as an archivist and filmmaker, and at Historic Films, has preserved vintage musical footage and made documentary films about music.

But Lauro still performs regularly, especially during the summer, with The HooDoo Loungers. The group was founded in 2007 with the goal of bringing “authentically-played New Orleans music and the spirit of that fun to the East Coast.” The group has since moved in a more soul-focused direction, but the group’s vibrant, horn-powered sound has remained the same.

Lauro’s group is another band that makes regular appearances at summer concert series across the East End, which is the group’s most active season. Lauro, who does most of the group’s booking, spoke of his disdain for the process of gig booking.

“It’s the worst,” he said. “It’s the thing that you do because you want to play so bad, so you deal with having to book and sell yourself and deal with it.”

Lauro explained that while his band’s summer schedule is usually packed, their off-season schedule pales by comparison. Since the East End music scene tends to be quieter in non-summer months, he usually has to find places to play up-island in order to have any gigs at all. He said that he usually doesn’t book a ton of shows during the winter months because “I just don’t have the ambition to do the same routine that I did when I was 17 trying to book shows.”

Some of the challenges Lauro noted with the East End music scene include the tendency of many places to book solo or duo acts over full bands and he added that tribute bands get more traction than bands who play original music like The HooDoo Loungers. These factors, he said, makes it hard for young bands in particular to break into the scene.

“It’s just a difficult, uphill battle for young bands to find places to play if you don’t want to sell your soul and be a tribute band,” said Lauro.

But despite the challenges that come with booking shows and breaking into the scene, Lauro and many other musicians with day jobs have been able to share their music on the East End during the summer months and beyond. With all the challenges that come with being a musician out here, full-time or not, it’s all worth it once they get up on stage and play their sweet sounds to fans on summer nights.