Point Pleasant Beach, NJ Concert For Ukraine is a major success

In times of trouble, you can always count on Jersey Shore rockers to step up to the plate, whether it be in New Jersey or anywhere in the world.

Sunday night, Jersey Shore rockers and musicians including Bobby Bandiera, Jillian Rhys McCoy, Tommy LaBella, Tony Perruso, Layonne Holmes, Joe JoBonanno, Eddie Testa, Ron Haney, Joey Stann, Southside Johhny, Steve Forbert, Tommy Meares, and more came together at Jenkinson's in Pt Pleasant for the Concert For Ukraine and raised over $200,000, which will be split between two charities.

Mayor Kanitra shared on Facebook:

"I couldn’t be any more proud of the entire Jersey Shore and State of New Jersey for coming together as one for an amazing cause last night!!!! To say it was electric with thousands of you rocking and raising funds together is almost an understatement. I could spend a day thanking everyone that volunteered their time and talents to make it happen. Bobby Bandiera, Tom Parr, Kristen O’Rourke, Jenkinson’s and all our sponsors deserve some major kudos for being the backbone of it all. It’s going to take a few days to total up the numbers, but we’ve hit our goal of $200,000 for the refugees and that is going to make a HUGE difference in the world."

I asked Mayor Kanitra how much of the money will be donated after the overhead from the concert.

Mayor Kanitra shared with New Jersey 101.5 that overhead was low and likely over 95% of the money collected will go directly to the two charities, Help for Ukraine and World Central Kitchen.

Kanitra was a guest on my New Jersey 101.5 show. You can listen On-Demand starting at 1:29:00

"It was like a "Who's who of all the best Jersey Shore bands," says Kanitra, "and that was Bobby (Bandiera). I was driving to the Krakow airport leaving the border and Tom Paar who's a mutual friend of both Bobby's and mine reached out to me and said he'd been talking to Bobby and Bobby said 'Hey if the mayor wanted to keep this going and was interested in a concert, we could put something together.'"

"So from there, we wound up all going out and grabbing a beer at Amendment 21 in Pt Beach and we talked to Jenkinson's, we secured the venue and it just started rolling from then on."

Eddie Testa, who performed at the event called into my New Jersey 101.5 show, you can listen On-Demand starting at 1:37:53:

Eddie put things into perspective, he then turned his attention to the musicians who played:

"The guys in my band, Neil DeSimone, Illya Stemkovsky, John Farnsworth, Jeff Hawkins, Ron Haney, These guys gave up afternoons with their families which every band does. When you do a benefit, you're out to support the cause but these guys in my band, they're just fantastic and all the musicians that were there were just like one big family. All right, you need help, let's do it man."

Opinions expressed in the post above are those of New Jersey 101.5 talk show host Steve Trevelise only. Follow him on Twitter @realstevetrev.

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