Sandy Mack
Early history: Mack joined the Asbury Park music scene with his first band-Bank Street Blues Band in the early 70s where we played the notorious Asbury Park club the Student Prince 5 nights a week one summer. Many of the local legends(Bruce Springsteen, Steve Van Zandt, Southside Johnny, Lance Larson) were frequent guests, which was highly inspirational for a young aspiring musician. During this time he started really digging into blues, studying Little Walter, Muddy Waters and most all of the blues greats. Along with Springsteen & other locals, early inspiration came from shore area guitarist Sonny Kenn whose band Sandy played in for several years. Other early inspiration came from NYC harp player Trip Henderson who helped Sandy learn harp tone & positions techniques. After a break from performing for family obligations, Mack joined up with some Hoboken based musicians, playing Hoboken/NYC scene for several years & where he did his first session work. Later he formed the Treble Brothers band with shore area guitarist John Fernandez & played Red Bank Festival for the first time. His first music promotion work began with booking an Asbury Park club, O'Shea's (later The Saint) & running an open jam there and a short time later booking at Jason's Jazz & Blues club, and also running the open jam there. Around this time he started The Tonemasters with guitarist Ron Rauso and also started the yearly music charity event now known as Harpin' Help.
