Progstock, aside from being the only prog rock festival in the Northeast, is one of the fastest growing prog festivals in the country. The 2025 edition will be held in Rutherford, NJ on October 9-12. The weekend will not only feature the giants of prog rock, but an appearance from an actual Gentle Giant. Festival founder Tom Palmieri recently took some time to talk about all things Progstock.
Please press the PLAY icon below for the MisplacedStraws Tom Palmieri Progstock interview –
On the 2025 lineup – We curate these lineups usually many months if not years in advance. And some of these. Occurrences that are coming this year are things that we talked about with artists, not just even in the lead up to last year and a little bit after last year’s event, but also that have been on our list for a few years. Figuring out when to slot them in, when it might work. Because it takes a lot of advanced planning on both our sides and theirs, of course, depending upon what their lives bring them. We’re really, really proud of this year. We’ve been proud of every year. Every time I’m asked to pick a something right out of a list, like a favorite or what, I don’t want to slight anybody else, so I never go there.
We’re proud of how this one came together. So, our headliners this year we’ll start with a band from England that has actually been here a couple of times and they’re coming back this year. From Birmingham, there have band called IO Earth and they’re great friends of ours too, which is really great. It’s always good to work in the music industry with people who you get on well with too. Mm-hmm. These guys have been a perennial favorite on Cruise to the Edge. They have been on every Cruise to the Edge, but one and it’s tough to get a seat whenever you’re trying to see them on their home turf or on the floating festival ship.
So, they’re coming mostly under the kind of the auspices of this idea of a phoenix rising from the ashes. Because IO Earth had suffered about a little under a year ago, they suffered a horrendous fire, which destroyed their studio and everything they own, burned it to the ground. All they saw were ashes and burned pieces of paper. It was atrocious and we spent the whole year helping fundraise for them. They’re here to play what will, in essence, be their first real gig back on a stage, and they’re gonna bring a full orchestra section effectively. So, they’re gonna have strings and horns as they do this, which is a show they normally only do in their home theater in Birmingham. We’re really, really proud to have our good friends come back for that.
Our second headliner is someone, a band that has also been with us a couple of times. They have a new album, it seems every 20 minutes. They’re so prolific. And that’s the wonderful Pattern-Seeking Animals who will be our Saturday headliner. Of course, in that band at least the beat is laid down by one of our best friends in the world, Jimmy Keegan one of the best drummers on the planet Earth. So, he’s also a co-host of the festival, so he’s all in with us and we’re all in with him.
Then our last headliner, we’re extremely proud to have, this gentleman came last year to the festival in order to a kind of let people know that he’s coming this year and prove it to people by actually setting foot in the United States, but also, to try and you know, give the crowd an idea of what he might do. That is Mr. Steve Hogarth, the lead singer of Marillion, whom you probably know extremely well. He came last year to do some Q&A work with us. This year he’ll be performing for the first time on US soil his h natural project. It’s Steve, or H is, is commonly known, a microphone a really nice piano and a stage.
On the live line-up of Pattern-Seeking Animals – It’s on our website and we, one of the things that, perhaps it’s not apparent, but I am extremely afflicted with the OCD. I and my, and my wife as well, we take great pains to make sure that we provide a whole lot of information and detail. We spend so much time curating and nurturing our website. Anyone can go to Progstock.com to see everything that we have at that moment. The minute we have something I’m running to the website to update it or correct it or whatever.
The lineup is gonna be really, really cool for Pattern-Seeking Animals this year. It’s obviously the people you expect to be in the band like Jimmy Keegan and Dave Meros, who you’ve mentioned, and Ted Leonard fronting the band with his extremely amazing voice in guitar playing. But on keyboards, normally they used to have Dennis Atlas playing with them when they played live, but Dennis is a little busy with another really, really, really big band. I dunno how many “reallys” you could fit in there. But he’s now the keyboard player and backup vocalist for Toto. So that’s really a really good gig and we’re really proud of him. He’s been with us before and he’s really great, but the keyboard player that Jimmy has roped into this is a friend of so many people and of ours. In fact, we expect him to come back next year with a few of other bands that he’s in, and that’s Mr. Bill Hubauer of the Neil Morse Band and many other things, and now of Crack The Sky, so he’s really getting around too. So, we’ll see him. It’s great to see Bill every time he comes around. So, and John (Boeghold) is coming to the festival. He doesn’t perform live with them, you’re absolutely correct. But he is coming. In fact, he got on the phone with me and Jimmy and said, “All right, let’s do it. I’m coming with, we’re gonna make this a real thing”, so he’ll be in the house. It’s gonna be a lot of fun.
On how they secured Steve Hogarth – First of all, I’ll say unequivocally that most of the talking into, I mean I do a few of them, but most of the talking into is the superpower of my amazing wife Ann Rinaldi, who is my co-conspirator here at the Progstock. We’ve met with and seen Steve many times on multiple Cruises to the Edge and things of that nature. We had not yet made it to a Marillion weekend. We almost made it to one this year, but it was a little bit too close to my recovery time from my recent surgery and time just didn’t work for me to take the long trip up to up to Canada, which is where we would’ve done it. We when we last met with him on Cruise to the Edge a couple years ago, we sat down, finally had a good conversation, all three of us. Then I pretty much left it in my wife’s hands, who tends to make everything cross the goal line. It was agreed to that effectively he would be playing later this year and also coming for the Q &A last year, all on a Cruise to the Edge conversation for a good 20 minutes.
It also helps that we have some common friends. We’re very much in partnership with an organization you might know called the Bandwagon, USA which is run by Rita K Drew and Sven Henriksen, both of whom are staples, they’re regulars at just about every large Marillion event going on around the world. Of course whenever Steve comes here, and he’s been here a couple times now Rita is always the person who helps him out locally. So, the fact that she is heavily involved with what we do also made H feel a lot more comfortable about working with us, I’m sure. It was just a, a frank conversation to try and work something out and offer him the opportunity and also tell him we’d be extremely honored to have him.
I think it’s really great. will say this too I don’t wanna cross any lines or make anyone upset, but I will say no matter what side of anything you’re on, we can all agree that things feel a little bit weird these days in our country. Whether you agree with the weirdness or you’re angered by the weirdness. Regardless, it makes people who aren’t in this country feel a little bit worried and a little bit leery. I will say that we are extremely grateful that h is staying, staying on course and gonna be with us. So, thank you Steve. If you’re out there listening.
On how ProgStock started – I have three words for you…Unmitigated, unmedicated, insanity.
It’s a great question. I’ve answered questions like this before and it all centers to me around, well, first of all, new Jersey’s my home state. As far as I’m concerned, I’m not going anywhere. My roots are here. I’m staying here until, I don’t know, they put me in a wheelbarrow and cart me off. New Jersey, I’m smack dab between two extremely highly populated centers, the Philadelphia area and the New York City area. And whenever you talk about progressive rock in the United States, if the city and the area of Philadelphia doesn’t come to mind, there’s something wrong with your understanding of progressive rock history in the US. A lot of events have taken place in Pennsylvania, and I just wanted to do it here in New Jersey where I live and where I grew up and found my love for Progressive Rock when I first heard 90125. That was the beginning of going forward in the world and backward into catalogs. I’m still working really hard to meet as many of my musical heroes as I can and hopefully work with.
So, in fact, it reminds me, real quick, a quick aside for just a few seconds, the conversation I had with someone who has become a good friend as well over a couple glasses of wine. When he asked me, “Why the hell are you doing this?” And that was Eddie Jobson. I looked at him. I said, “What do you mean? Why the hell am I doing this? I’m sitting here with you.” Seriously. So, to answer your original question, so I’d always been a fan, obviously from, I dated myself by saying 90125, so you’re talking about the eighties.
I’m also a fan of eighties rock, and yacht rock, and all this stuff. Lots of crossover, lots of stuff. But that’s where my love of progressive rock really started. I went to only a handful of shows. I did get to see Yes for the first time during the Union tour, so that was great. That’s also dating me. So that’s early nineties, right? What it comes down to is I really didn’t get out there in the world until kind of in the well late 2010s. It’s kind of weird because I didn’t have a lot of time for going to concerts and, and really getting into the scene, but I really started to love doing so roughly around 2012, 2013.
In 2013 I learned about this amazing event that had been going on for years, not far away from me in the Lehigh Valley originally, in Pennsylvania. That was NEARfest. Unfortunately, I also learned at the same time that its last ever performance was in 2012, and I had already missed it, so that was my kind of thinking about, “Well, what else is there?” Then I found other events. I found RoSFest. Which was a great storied festival that was going on in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania at the time. I went to that as often as I could in the mid-20teens. Then found some others, but that was my real outlet, close to home.
Then I learned about another, organization here in New Jersey called the New Jersey Prog House, who’s been doing local shows at small venues for 20 plus years now. I started getting out there and then I just looked at it and realized, I’ve got a lot of my own understanding of how to run a business because I’ve been in the startup world in the computer space for quite a long time. I figured, well, this is a great opportunity to maybe put my loves together, the things I love to do together. On a whim, I threw a party in the summer of 2016, and I invited a, a bunch of friends. A typical party you invite 80, 90 people, what do you expect? 20-25 (show up)? I invited like 90 people and, and almost 70 showed up. I had this party outside at a park near my house at the time. One of those parks with the, the pavilion overhangs. Aluminum roof, one of those picnic tables under a big, huge roof.
Put together an impromptu stage and had a party. It was warm out until it rained and it rained cats and dogs, and it rained so loud the aluminum roof was louder than anything else. We actually have a recording of our good friends Echo Test, which is Julie Slick’s band, playing with that tin roof it’s pretty interesting to hear. That’s surreal. But we had that party and had about four or five bands and, while I was on stage announcing the last band and the rain was getting harder and harder, we kept moving the electronics further in away from the water. I was talking about how this was a party that I really was really happy that friends had come to. We were thinking about making this a regular thing. I mentioned that of course, I hope the next time we do this, it’s not raining cats and dogs and sheep, and a few other livestock out there. The bathroom’s right over there. It’s not exactly like going to Woodstock 99 where there’s mud pits everywhere and we’re not charging you 10 bucks for a bottle of water. So and then someone from the crowd literally said, “Yeah, this is kind of like Woodstock”. I said, “Yeah, sort of, but it’s more like ProgStock.” There it was.
A couple of months later, friends of mine who came to the party and I came together and decided, why don’t we take this indoors, first of all, because we don’t want the weather. Secondly, why don’t we give it a go? Because there’s nothing like this going on in our area anymore. In the fall, we specifically pick the fall. There’s plenty that go on in the spring. RoSFest is in the spring or was in the spring. The cruises eventually became happening. Well, they were going on for a few years by then in the spring. We just started to do it in the fall, and so it kind of came together as an idea in late 2016. Now, late 2016 is not a great time to start planning a brand-new event from the ground up if it’s gonna happen in October of 2017, but we figured out somehow how to make it happen. Great volunteer team, most of whom are still with us, and I really appreciate them for that.
On if tickets are still available – Absolutely. So I always tell everyone your first stop is progstock.com. I’m wearing it on my shirt, so you know how to spell it. That’s the website that always shows the current year and all the information about it. It’s basically a blog. So, you’ll see our latest announcements, our latest newsletter right up there, any other news that we provide. You’ll also see navigation to get you to a page for each of the artists, a page with a schedule for each day. Every other activity that’s going on is documented. All of the musicians the artists and performers, all of the fine artists and other attractions if you will, that will be available at the festival are there.
It’s more than just music. It’s basically a Prog Rock convention, so lots of other things to do and see and be entertained by and involved with. There’s one of those navigations for tickets, which takes you to a full explanation of how to buy the various passes or tickets to the festival and a link everywhere to get to our ticketing site. You can actually pick the seat you want from your seat map and join us. As you say, it’s Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday, the ninth through 12th. The festival itself is the three-day weekend, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. We sell passes for all three days. Both combined as a three-day pass and individually on a daily basis. You can get any of those at our website and our ticket website right now.
We also have other tickets for other parts of it. So, there’s the Thursday night, October 9th event we think of as a pre-festival party, if you will. It’s an event that we open to the public for a relatively small ticket fee to join us, but largely it’s a party we throw for our volunteer crew and everyone else to just finally have one big good, fun time together before the nose hits the grindstone the very next morning. Then there are also, when we have them, tickets for our special events that we open to the public there will be one again this Sunday or that Sunday in the morning. So, we could talk about that soon when we get to what our special events will be, but there will be one more ticket made available for people very, very inexpensively. So, you can go there. If, for those who want to know the exact URL of a ticket site, it’s ProgStock Box Office Events.
On the Special Events of the festival – Your timing is very good. Literally the last one got accepted and agreed to this morning. So, we’re in good shape here. A bit of a scoop, if you will. We have three special events that are that are basically limited seating. One on Friday to start the whole festival at the early afternoon, and then one on each of Saturday and Sunday in the morning at 10:00 AM and they’re the same event. But the one on Saturday, just like our one on Friday, is meant for our VIPs, if you will, the people who have bought passes to our festival as what we call Prog-Ducers, which is our upper level three-day pass, which gives a bunch of perks that are all explained on the website. Even bigger supporters, the people who are known as our Five-Year Patrons. These are people who have purchased a rather hefty pass to the festival, but it secures their seat in the theater for five straight years. They never have to go fight to go buy a ticket in each of those years and they get a lot of other perks and handouts and give outs from us, as well as access to special events that we do not only at the festival, but actually all year long under the ProgStock Presents label.
The Friday and Saturday events are for those people, and the Sunday event will be a repeat of Saturday morning’s event. But we’ll shortly make tickets available for the public, the general public to come. As long as they are coming to the festival and they purchase this small extra ticket, they can attend that one as well. Our special events are limited seating, so it’s only roughly about a hundred seats or tickets available, so we will control that. By the way, you asked if the tickets were still available. Of course, they are. Three-day passes. Single day passes, but our Prog-Ducer level has officially sold out about one week ago. We sold out of our VIP class tickets. So, we’re really grateful that people who climbed on early it’s the earliest we’ve ever sold out of that class of tickets. So, it’s really, really great.
The special events themselves, to start off the festival on Friday at one o’clock, will be an intimate, private acoustic performance by our friends from Germany, Melanie Mau and Martin Schenlla in the setting we’re gonna have it in the small performance theater that’s a part of the Williams Center. People will have a great experience with them. There’s no bad seat in the house. You’re very close and intimate. It may even have a lot of interaction, maybe even by request=type playing going on. Those who’ve seen Melanie and Martin play, their own music is incredible, their cover work is second to none. So, it’s gonna be a real fun time.
On Saturday and Sunday at 10:00 AM, for approximately one hour each morning, our good friend, someone who I’m proud to say I have taken out to a show and it was great in the New York area. It wasn’t hard because he lives in New York. But this is a gentleman who we’ve known for quite a while who was the frontman for a band that’s very special to me, one of my favorite progressive rock bands. That is Gentle Giant. That gentleman is Derek Schulman, who will be with us both Saturday and Sunday morning to talk about his new book, which will be coming out being released on October 7th. So, the timing is perfect. He’ll be able to provide copies of the book. We’ll have a nice intimate Q&A. We’re figuring out who his interviewer will be soon and sit and talk to people and he will likely be around for most of the weekend so people will be able to interact with him as well.
