Local band takes its show on the road
Nov, 18-2009 6:14 pm
By STEVE PRISAMENT
Staff Writer
GALLOWAY TOWNSHIP – A local rock band – Private Stock – will perform Friday, Nov. 20 at the fabled Asbury Park club The Stone Pony.
The band, which got its name from a suggestion by a member’s brother, based on Captain Morgan’s Private Stock rum, consists of four 2005 Absegami High School graduates.
Guitarists Mike Squitieri and Steve Schurtz have been performing together for about three years.
“We’ve been a duo, doing cover music,” Squitieri said Friday, Nov. 13. “We played in the summer and winter – when we were home from school. We went to different schools.”
Squitieri, Schurtz and drummer Chris Wheeler are 22 years old. Bass player Kevin Schwoer is 23. All are Galloway Township residents who graduated from college this spring.
“We started writing our own songs a year ago,” Squitieri said of the duo that still performs in clubs and at parties. “We made a little CD and got a lot of good feedback from our fan base.”
Their fan base usually sees them at the Seaview Resort, Gourmet Italian Cuisine, the Dubliner, parties, weddings and other affairs, Squitieri said.
“We’re kind of the bar band. We play all around Galloway and in Atlantic City,” he said. “Steve and I first performed together for a small show in high school. Our first regular, two-hour performance was in the summer of 2007 at a bar in Wildwood.”
The two invited Wheeler to play with them this year.
“He’d been coming to our shows,” Squitieri said. “He’d been drumming most of his life, but never for anybody or anything. We got a practice going. It was great. We meshed really well. We already knew what we wanted. He’d heard the songs. We worked it out pretty quick.
Schurtz, the son of Mary Ellen and Tom Schurtz, started playing guitar in college. He graduated from The College of New Jersey and works in a physical therapy office.
Wheeler, the son of Donna and Scott Wheeler, graduated from Stockton and works full time as a substitute teacher.
Squitieri, the son of Sue and Ron Squitieri, graduated from Emerson College. He doesn’t have a day job.
“I work full time on the band and will be substitute teaching soon,” he said. “This is all I want to do, so I consider it my full-time job.”
This will actually be the group’s second appearance at The Stone Pony, where Bruce Springsteen got his start.
“We played there Oct. 22,” Squitieri said. “Kevin wasn’t involved until about a week before that. I booked the date and then we realized we needed someone to play bass. He’d been playing. We figured he’d pick it up, and he did.”
Schwoer, the son of Tom and Mary Lou Olson, graduated from Long Island University. He works at GameStop.
He had also teamed with Schurtz and Squitieri in 2007 to produce a video that won them “burritos for life” in a contest where they used rap personas to plug Moe’s Southwest Grill.
Squitieri said Private Stock had a decent fan-following in its first venture to The Stone Pony.
“About 60 to 70 people showed up,” he said. “Our closest friends and family.”
The Stone Pony has a capacity of 600 to 700.
They are also playing at 9 p.m. Wednesday, Nov. 25 at Gourmet Italian.
“We’re working on an album now,” Squitieri said. “We hooked up with a friend who has a recording studio. We expect it to be out around Christmas. You can really make a professional sounding CD without being on a label.”
Squitieri said the songs Schurtz and he wrote have become favorites.
“No matter what the event, people ask us to play our own music,” he said. “They seem to enjoy it. It’s rock. Mix in a little bit of reggae and a little bit of funk.”
Learn more at www.myspace.com/privatestockmusic.
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email steve.prisament
@catamaranmedia.com.
If You Go
Private Stock
9 p.m. Friday, Nov. 20
The Stone Pony
913 Ocean Ave.
Asbury Park
Tickets $10 in advance, $12 at the door
(732) 502-0600
