New Jersey native Jack Antonoff is taking his band back home for a special performance for MTV Unplugged.
Performing at the legendary Stone Pony in Asbury Park, New Jersey, Antonoff’s Unplugged set will air tonight on MTV.
The Stone Pony helped launch the careers of Jersey legends Bruce Springsteen and Jon Bon Jovi and now Antonoff will bring his act to perform at the seminal venue.
Antonoff spoke about Jersey music and the feeling of escapism,
“You’re always looking in the window of the party — that’s the feeling of a lot of New Jersey music. There’s a hope and sense of, like, we gotta get the fuck out of here. We gotta do something.”
This will be a pretty special set, as Antonoff will bring out Lorde and Carly Rae Jepsen for guest appearances and it will be the first time Bleachers will be playing many of their tracks from recent album Gone Now live. Antonoff spoke about how special playing a set like this for Unplugged on his home turf,
“Unplugged was the first time I played the songs from Gone Now live. I had just finished making the album and I immediately went into rehearsal, deconstructing the songs I had just produced to play live at Unplugged. It was all months before the world heard it and we got to change the arrangements at my favorite venue in the world with a small room full of people who had no cell phones. I grew up playing shows at the Stone Pony and watching Unplugged on TV. It was incredible to bring these two together.”
It’s a pretty awesome experience for fans and artists alike and all part of the new vision behind MTV’s Unplugged reboot. The idea of the new series is to bring artists back to special venues that mean something to them personally, whether that’s a place they got their start or grew up going to.
The series premiered last week with Shawn Mendes playing at the Theatre at Ace Hotel in Los Angeles.
Amani Duncan, Executive In Charge of Music for Unplugged, told Variety back in August about the new idea for Unplugged,
“Let’s take it to cool locations” was the thought. Like where the artist played their first major show, or maybe they choose a location to make a pro-social statement, or it’s, ‘I always wanted to play Carnegie Hall.’”
That’s definitely the case for Antonoff and The Stone Pony. It’ll be a pretty unique and cool music experience. Watch the preview below and catch it tonight on MTV at 8 pm.