Dead Äire on the Asbury Park boardwalk (from left, Jim Monaghan, Tom Kaminski, Mike Trinker, Chris Flynn, Sean Seymour).
Asked to sum up the appeal of The Smithereens’ music, Jim Monaghan refers to the title of one of the band’s songs, “Beauty and Sadness.”
“Pat captured both in his songs,” says Monaghan, referring to the band’s co-founder and frontman Pat DiNizio, who died in 2017 “For the most part, Pat’s songs are simple. And I don’t mean that as a putdown, because it’s hard to write simple. But there’s a series of chords that he uses throughout his songs and every so often, he’ll throw in an odd major 7th (chord) or a minor that you’re not expecting that kind of takes the song in a slightly different direction. But he always comes back to it. There’s beauty and sadness in the melody and in the lyrics of his songs: That was what did it for me.”
Monaghan, who hosts the “All Mixed Up” free-form radio show on WDHA (105.5 FM), Sunday mornings, is also a musician, and his band, Dead Äire, will be the house band for a DiNizio/Smithereens tribute that will take place at Tim McLoone’s Supper Club in Asbury Park, Jan. 18 at 12:30 p.m., as part of this year’s Light of Day WinterFest. For information, visit lightofday.org.
The Dead Äire name refers to his roots in radio (he was on WNEW-FM before moving to WDHA), which he shares with the band’s drummer Tom Kaminski, a helicopter reporter for WCBS (880 AM) from 1988 to 2024. Joining them in the group are guitarists Chris Flynn (a member of The Crash Combo who will also play elsewhere at Light of Day with Deni Bonet) and Sean Seymour (of The Crash Combo and Richard Lloyd’s band), and bassist Mike Trinker.
Dead Äire has performed at past editions of Light of Day, including last year’s fest, when they were featured on a night of covers at the Silverball Retro Arcade. This year’s show, in fact, has its roots in a conversation Kaminski had with Light of Day president and frequent festival performer Joe D’Urso, last year, at that arcade show.
Dead Äire at The Wonder Bar in Asbury Park (from left, Mike Trinker, Jim Monaghan, Tom Kaminski, Sean Seymour, Chris Flynn).
“He said, ‘I have an idea: I want to do a Pat DiNizio tribute at some point, with you guys being the house band, and we’d bring in a whole bunch of guest singers,’ ” Kaminski says. ” ‘Would you guys be up for it?’ We’re loading our equipment out in the snow. And we’re like, ‘Yeah, sure, we’d be up for it.’ So it finally came around to sometime in the fall, like September or October, when we really started talking about it and figuring out what we were gonna do.”
The show’s guests will include D’Urso, as well as John Easdale of Dramarama, Marc Jonson (who co-wrote the Smithereens song “Groovy Tuesday” with DiNizio and Steve Forbert), Glen Burtnik of The Weeklings, Jake Thistle and Mike Rocket. Also, Rick Winowski and Sam Fairley, who played with DiNizio in the band The Scotch Plainsmen (named after DiNizio’s hometown, Scotch Plains).
“One part of the set that we do will be in honor, not just of The Smithereens and Pat, but of Pat and The Scotch Plainsman,” says Kaminski. “That was a big part of Pat’s musical imprint in the last few years of his life.”
In addition to being admirers of Smithereens music, Monaghan and Kaminski are also longtime friends of the band. For Monaghan, this dates back to when the band was just starting out, in the early ’80s.
A vintage photo of The Smithereens (from left, Dennis Diken, Jim Babjak, Pat DiNizio, Mike Mesaros).
“The first time I saw them play live was at a showcase at The Bottom Line (in New York),” he says. “WNEW-FM had a series called ‘Prisoners of Rock.’ A bunch of people submitted music for that. Most of it was local artists in the New York/New Jersey area. Some were outside … REM actually submitted something: I think it was the first version of ‘Radio Free Europe.’ Anyway, we put together a couple of shows at The Bottom Line with bands that had submitted music for ‘Prisoners of Rock,’ which Meg Griffin had curated. That was the first time I saw them live, and I was blown away. Then when the first full-length album came out and they came up to ‘NEW for an interview, I had a chance to meet them and talk with them.
“They were a big part of the radio station. They did a number of shows for us, including one of the Asbury Park beach shows, on Memorial Day. Then Pat came up numerous times at ‘DHA. In fact, the whole band did a few ‘DHA shows as well.
“Any time Pat came on my morning show, he always told me to bring a guitar. I’ve got a few recordings of us doing stuff together. And when they played the Mayo Performing Arts Center (in Morristown) in 2009, I was in a trio that opened for them that night, and Pat brought me out to do a song with them. Then I was part of that (DiNizio) tribute show at the Count Basie in January of 2018: I was one of the MCs of the show and I also did ‘Blue Period’ with them.”
Kaminski first became aware of them as a college student, working for the radio station at Montclair State University.
“I always loved the band, right from the very beginning,” he says. “Then over the years, I got to meet (guitarist) Jim and I got to meet Dennis a couple of times and they were just the nicest guys, and they were always very good to me, and to my family. When my first wife Lyn passed away, Jim had reached out to me when she was ill. The guys sent her a get-well video, and things like that.
“And Pat was just that kind of guy. He was always very cool, very gracious. For me … as a guy just, like, on college radio, and doing what I did at CBS … I was still kind of fanboying over these guys, and I still do, even though I’ve gotten to know them pretty well. So when Joe came up with the idea, I was on board immediately.”
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