Few festivals have the lasting power of ProgStock. Since 2017 ProgStock has brought the top names in progressive rock to the Northeast for a multi-day festival full of music, art, and memories. Once again, founder Tom Palmieri is on to talk about the artists playing this year’s festival and what fans can expect!
Please press the PLAY icon for the MisplacedStraws ProgStock 2026 interview –
On the 2026 lineup – Our festival this year, for the first year in our program’s history we’re now officially starting the festival on a Thursday and ending the main festival on a Saturday. So, it’s Thursday, Friday, Saturday, October 8th through 10th. But of course, because we can’t have enough, we’re throwing an after party on Sunday, October 11th at an alternate location, because the theater has other activities going on every Sunday of the year. So, we’ve pivoted a little bit, and now we’re doing that at a brewery about a mile and a half away from the theater. That’s gonna be a great place to do a nice, appropriate after party.
Anyway, so our three headliners in the order Thursday, Friday, Saturday. The first is Nektar. If people have been watching Nektar’s own advertisings lately, they can all see that this is the final run of shows starting in about two weeks or so, the final run of shows that Derek “Mo” Moore, the founding bassist of Nektar, will be involved with in the live performance of Nektar. So this is the last year to see Mo on stage. They’re doing a run of shows in July and early August, and then they’re going to reprise that in October with a couple of shows. We’re graced to have them on our stage, I should say on Thursday night as our headliner that night.
Our, on Friday night we have a band that has never played ProgStock to date. Members of this band have in other bands or in other walks of life. But finally, the premier US prog band, Spock’s Beard, will be on our stage. That’s gonna be a lot of fun. It actually marks the first time that Ryo Okumoto will be playing us in any way, shape, or form. So we’re gonna have fun. He’s gonna have fun. We’ve been friends for a long time, and it’s finally great to have him there. And then on Saturday night the festival closer is due to the return to the stage after a fair number of years in retirement of Eddie Jobson, and he will be bringing his UK Revisited project, which earlier this year played on Cruise to the Edge.
Hopefully people who, who were aware of that or were on that ship and enjoyed those two shows really will be happy to see him come back to our stage. Of course, he played with us a number of years back before he went into his self-imposed retirement. But he’s coming back and he’s bringing one hell of a band this year.
On the lineup for Eddie Jobson’s UK Revisited – Obviously there’s Eddie himself. Leading in the front of the stage, taking on what people may, who are UK fans would know was largely John Wetton’s responsibilities in the band is Mark Bonilla, who has done this before with Eddie, and has also had many other projects that included or were centered around UK music or other prog music in general, and of course, his band with Keith Emerson. He’s been in so many things related to the prog world. So, Mark Bonilla’s great, a great fixture for that. Vocally perfect, bass is great, everything is good about what he does. Back on the kit this year this time around Marco Minnemann is back playing with Eddie. We’re gonna have to have a lot of replacement drumheads around, I think, because Marco gets a little bit effusive in his drum playing. It’s awesome to watch and see. He’s such an amazing player. On guitar from our perspective, is the return of someone who has played with Eddie many times for a long time and that’s Alex Machacek who for all intents and purposes, if he’s playing the guitar and he’s in the zone and you close your eyes, you hear how much Allan Holdsworth just flows through his body.
So, it’s an incredible band. For those who saw the UK shows on the Cruise to the Edge earlier this year, you will have remembered that the guitar player for those shows was Mike Keneally. He did his own great interpretations of the music, did a great job playing that part. It was a wonderful pair of performances. But this time around, Mike is actually gonna be overseas in October playing with the Band From Utopia doing some Zappa licks out there, as well as some other shows that he’s doing. Unfortunately, Mike won’t be with us this year, but fortunately Alex Machacek will be there.
On the other bands playing – Okay, so let’s start with Thursday, the first day of the festival. This needs to be nowhere near just a mere footnote but doing a short opening acoustic set before Nektar does their headline performance on Thursday is a wonderful member of Jon Anderson and the Band Geeks, Andy Graziano, who will be doing his renditions, as he’s done sometimes before on stage before Nektar, of some great prog classics on an acoustic, perhaps classical guitar. So, he’ll be with us. He’s actually gonna put a few extra specials that he hasn’t played before on his tours with Nektar before. Now just after Nektar plays, Nektar’s playing at about 8:00 in the evening, so a traditional, kinda typical headline set. But later at night we’re gonna have a night closing set after Nektar for those who wanna stick around later.
We think it’s a time appropriate kind of thing. Not only is it the month of October, but it’s late at night, it’s dark. We’re gonna keep the theater very dark, and that is Paul Bielatowicz bringing his “Nosferatu” project. That’s gonna be really great, so it’s gonna be, the silent movie “Nosferatu” on the screen behind him while he and his band will play the music, the score that he composed to go along with that movie. It’s gonna be a lot of fun, and his band is also shaping up to be rife with guests. We hear that first of all, our great friend Tobias Ralf will be sitting in as his drummer those who remember Tobias from his many years in the Adrian Belew Power Trio and many other places. We also hear there might be a guest or two from the rest of the roster sitting in with him every once in a while. We know, of course, that Dave Bainbridge will be there playing guitar with him. So, it’s almost the Paul and Dave adventure coming back, in a different form.
Earlier that day on Thursday, we have two bands from the Chicago area that are coming to us. They each contain people of international origin. So, to say they’re a Chicago band is really, they’re a Chicago-based band. That doesn’t mean that they actually all come from there. They’re two very different sounds with very much a similar lineup to one another in terms of personnel. The first is a band called The Devil’s Staircase which is a project that Luis Nasser from Chicago, originally from Mexico and Mattias Olsson from across the pond in Scandinavia a Swedish master on the drums have together. Then after them, Luis’s other band, Sonus Umbra will play. So that’s Thursday rounded out, and both of those bands, first time ever hitting our stages.
Now on Friday, prior to Spock’s Beard playing, we have someone doing an opening set that I don’t really know if people have yet heard about him, although they may recognize his familial lineage by hearing his name, and his name is Chris Jobson. He has released an album recently his first album engineered by his father, of course. He will be playing a short opening set of his music right before Spock’s Beard. We hear that there may be one or two people who join him as well during his short set. Earlier that afternoon, we have two bands one of which has graced our stages before. They came together for the first time last year to play a set for us, and this is the new project launched by Michael Sadler and his son, Seren Sadler with one heck of an of an all-star lineup included in this band, and that’s Serengazer. They’ll play a set for us. They’re returning to our stages. We hear that they are going to have an album available for people. Quick aside, every year we kinda hear about, we don’t really seek it out, but it kinda comes to our attention the, kind of the ground swell of folks who, who launch their opinions that there was a standout band or something that surprised them, or something that was like their takeaway from the festival. Very often people said Serengazer. After Serengazer is a band that played its first show on Cruise to the Edge earlier this year, coming together as a brand-new band. This is the all-female prog band known as Estronaut.
The members of this band each have their own fan clubs. They’re all independent artists that are absolutely renowned. You’ve got Rachel Flowers, Jane Getter, Julie Slick, Durga McBroom, and Ruby Dunphy. It’s just gonna be another great presentation of their music. I don’t know if they’ll have a recording ready for the world yet to take away, but I’m sure that they probably will actually, because I know they were doing some pre-orders on the cruise. The question is whether or not it becomes available in time for the festival. People out there who have ever tried to produce, for example, vinyl, realize how hard it is to do nowadays and how much time it takes to wait for that stuff. Okay. And then yet earlier on Friday, we have a band that has played with us before. In fact, he, they were with us in our very first year in 2017. That’s the band from Rhode Island called Resister, featuring our great friend Steve Unruh, the multi-instrumentalist par excellence. Steve has been with us before. Those who remember Steve’s nearly solo, actually it was a solo performance, with him sitting cross-legged on a rug playing six instruments simultaneously. He is absolutely amazing to watch and his music is great. Opening for him is our great friend Phideaux coming back to play some of the new music that he’s recently released, as well as perhaps some old gems. He’s gonna be joined by Valerie Gracious and a couple of other members that he’s putting together for his band.
Then on Saturday, again, going backwards in time, so before the Eddie Jobson festival finale we have another band that technically this band has played at ProgStock before, but I’ll make a small asterisk. I don’t mean it like the record isn’t real. It’s just that, people will ask. There was that one year in the last 10 years where no one had an indoor large audience event, and that was in 2020 during the COVID lockdown. But we did our best to march on that year. Not only did we produce over 150 shows remotely, all live streaming from artists’ homes, but we also had a virtual festival in October of 2020. One of the bands that played for us at one of our performances at Tellus 360 in Pennsylvania was a band from West Virginia, Maryland. The members are from a lot of places, but all in that part of the country, and that’s the absolutely wonderful Crack the Sky. Another band who’s been doing it for nearly or up to 50 years.
This is a great lineup in the band. John Palumbo still heads this monster. It’s a great band that also played Cruise to the Edge earlier this year. They’ll play a set. Prior to Crack the Sky, there will be a short opening set from another great friend of the festival, and a lot of people know him in the prog world, and that’s Gabriel Agudo Who’s coming to us from Argentina. He hasn’t been with us in quite some time since he was part of Dave Kerzner’s In Continuum project a number of years back. But he returns to us, and we’re gonna have one heck of a hug fest out front because we haven’t seen each other in a long time. Then to top it off, earlier on Saturday, we have the phenomenal US progressive rock band from Long Island, and that’s IZZ. They’re gonna be playing a nice long 90-minute set.
Prior to them, opening for them is perhaps someone who has become a lot more name aware in the prog world because of his recent roles playing with Steven Wilson in one configuration or another with his solo band or with Porcupine Tree and that’s Randy McStine, who will bring his trio and doing all original Randy McStine music.
That rounds out the lineup for the main festival. As I said earlier because three days is never enough, we have our after party on Sunday the 11th of October at the Bolero Snort Brewery in Carlstad, which is just one town over, so it’s very easy to get to. There we’re gonna have our own Robert Schindler, known as Robeone, playing a solo set, and then after that we’re gonna have Jane Getter Premonition playing their, a lot of their newer music because it’s their album release party for their new album, Transmogrify.
So, and then after that’s done, the rest of the night will be what’s become a tradition at Progstock, which is what we call Last Call Live, which is a pro-am jam, which is a somewhat organized listed songs jam of people coming up to play their favorite tunes, mostly from the prog world, sometimes from adjacent to it, and doing so as basically unrehearsed bands that, that haven’t come together before but have wood shedded their parts. The combinations that come from that and the moments of glory that come from that are really to take home. They’re really good. That whole after party starts at noon on Sunday and ends at 8:00 PM.
On other parts of the festival – Let’s start with Armando Gallo. Absolutely. He’s a phenomenal historical rock photographer who’s been almost everywhere on the Earth. In fact, he may still be, but he was just in Italy because they, they did a night of Genesis music being performed by an orchestra out there and he was a part of that. Having Armando is just amazing. And he’ll be back again this year. He’s in good health. He had a little bit of a scare earlier this year. We went down to see him and made sure everything was okay, and it is. We’re gonna see him a little later this year. He’ll have a whole selection of things. We’ll set up a nice little booth and a nice display area where there’ll be some sort of way for him to show a lot of his rock and roll photography more than just physically, and then people can talk with him. He’s so open to everyone going up and talking to him. Please do so if you’re there. Don’t feel like you have to stand behind any ropes.
In years past, Patrick Moraz has been with us. Armando was with us last year. We’ve had interview sessions with them. Our interviewer of late for many years now, has been none other than Larry Fast of Synergy and Nektar, and other projects. Larry is a great guy who has his own effusive personality. When we would tell him, “Hey, this year you’re gonna interview Patrick Moraz,” or, “This year you’re gonna interview Armando Gallo,” he had the same answer to us in both cases. “I will do my best, because once I ask one question, they’re gonna take off and own the rest of the conversation.” And it does turn out that way. Larry keeps good control.
We are doing a couple of talks this year. So, there’ll be a storyteller session of sorts, like a little bit of a Q&A, a little bit of a, of an interview, if you will, twice, of Eddie Jobson for those of our patrons who are five-year patrons or Progducers. We’re gonna do two of those because the audience of Progducers is larger than the theater in which we hold these little sessions. So, we’re gonna split it into two groups. Those who are veterans of Cruise to the Edge completely understand that whole notion of which badge do you have, like which color is the show you can go to that night. That interview of Eddie Jobson will be- hosted by Larry Fast, of course. So, they’re gonna have a great conversation.
Back in the, our Black Box room where the, where we have all the fine artists, there are many others who are coming. First, the return of our, at this point, completely perennial pumpkin sculpting team, led by Dean Arnold. He’ll be there with one or two members of his team with him. Then a new artist gracing our halls is Lynette Shelley. Those who are familiar with US Prog will also recognize Lynette’s name as the lead singer and co-founder of the band The Red Mask out of Philadelphia. She will be with us as a fine artist this year, and we’re gonna be telling people soon, we might as well say something about it now, that her band, The Red Mask, will appear on the roster at ProgStock in 2027. So that’s gonna be great. Another returning friend of ours Michael Bennet the current leader and grand poobah of Prog Day. The longest running US progressive rock festival down in North Carolina every Labor Day weekend. So, he’ll be with us as a fine artist and we’ll be seeing him shortly in September when we go down to his wonderful festival that has a great line-up every year. Another person who’s been with us before is returning, and that’s Victoria Flowers. She’s the sister of Rachel Flowers. She’s also a fine artist, and she’ll be there with wares.
Another returning champion, someone who took a break from us last year because of some health issues, but will be returning back this year, and that’s Mr. Paul Whitehead of lots of album art fame, including Genesis and Van der Graaf Generator and other, and the other album covers. So, he’ll be there. Of course, I already said that Larry Fast will be around. Let’s see. Now those who have, who are in the know about this, who actually visit this place in a town that otherwise probably people have never heard of in eastern Pennsylvania a town called Harleysville. Once they go to this place, they completely understand why there’s all the ooh and ah and buzz about it, and that is EMIAP, the Electronic Music Education and Preservation Project. Which is now launching a new a new brand for themselves called the Museum of Music Technology, MMT.
What they are is a huge well-appointed and laid out warehouse of vintage and classic instrumentation and equipment associated with rock music history. It started mostly in the keyboard world, but it has now extended to so many other things. I know every artist who comes to play us tries to make a stop at this place, because it’s only about a couple of hours from us especially if they’re coming from far away. They don’t wanna miss the opportunity. This is a great place, and they always come to us, they’ve come to us for a number of years now with some special items that are really key to the prog audience. Last year, for example, they brought the live touring Mellotron that Tony Banks used with Genesis back in the ’70s. Now, it wasn’t operational. But it was the one that he used at that time, so that was fun. This year they’re putting together a slate of things they haven’t even told us about yet, but they promised us it’s going to be amazing. That every day they’re gonna have something new on the floor. That’s just gonna be a great little thing to come and ask questions about. There’ll be knowledgeable people there to talk about its history or whatever elements they have, however many they bring, and for photography and all type of stuff. So it’s gonna be a lot of fun.
We also have two albums we’re gonna listen to. We have listening parties very often. On Thursday, before the festival actually opens in the mid-afternoon, we’re gonna have an outdoor listening party of a new album from a band called Built for the Future. This is their album called 2084. And this is actually the second part of a multi-album, multi-concept album that they’ve produced. So, we’ll hear that together as a group in the early afternoon on Thursday. Then on Friday and Saturday we’re gonna present the same listening party twice so that we can let the audience experience it, because it will be happening at the same time that Eddie Jobson’s storyteller sessions will be happening indoors. So, for those people who have a ticket to that, they won’t miss the listening party because it’ll be happening a second time. So, they can attend both of those as they occur. This is a listening party of the new album that is just coming out from the band notice, known as Edison’s Children. This is the other project of Pete Trewavas from Marillion. You probably know him quite well, and of course there’s Eric Blackwood, there’s Rick Armstrong. I know that Rick will be in attendance, Eric will as well. And we’ll see whether or not Pete will show up. Marillion might be busy, we’ll find out. I believe I’ve gone through the most of the list of things. You probably know because you’re staring at our website at some point.
On the venue –We moved to this venue in Rutherford, New Jersey in 2023. So, this’ll be our fourth festival there. Which this festival’s of course our 10thyear. Not our 10th anniversary, because people like getting arguments about that. When’s the millennium? When wasn’t it? But yeah, this is our 10th festival, and the fourth in Rutherford. Wefound ourselves after COVID and after a couple of more years in our original location at the Union County Performing Arts Center in Rahway, New Jersey, wondering what we could do to figure out a way to expand, because we’ve always struggled with the aspects of the festival that you just talked about.
We could have the music on a stage with lights and sound that were really good in Rahway, but what other spaces do we have to do all the other things that we wanna bring to it? For us, ProgStock is more than a festival. It’s a convention. It’s Comic-Con and a prog festival came together. That’s our vision, right? Now, we’ll put aside the fact that it, our weekend coincides with Comic-Con in New York City. At the Javits Center, that does pull our audience, to be honest with you, but and in fact, it’s why our friend Kevin J. Anderson can’t come this year. He’ll be at Comic-Con showing stuff that he’s done with Coheed and Cambria, believe it or not. But anyway, so we wanted a place that would deliver the lights and sound, that would deliver a great, theater experience. Again, the indoor feel, but also have spaces and ways for us to expand.
We found that at the Williams Center which was, at the time we found it in 2023, newly reopening, because it had been shuttered for decades due to damage and just basically no one taking on the job. But the borough of Rutherford, as well as a developer, came up with an idea and it’s been running strong since then. We started there, and it provides so many other spaces where we have rooms we can do things in, secondary theaters where we can have actual assigned seating events, things of that nature. So that’s allowed us to expand our footprint. The Williams Center, when you walk into it, the first thing you’d notice when you walk into the main Rivoli Theater is that, oh yeah, this must or used to be a vaudeville era theater, and it was. It’s over 100 years old. This still has the chandelier up there. It still has the ornate stylings and other things that show its wear and tear. So to be frank about it, it shows that it’s a prize fighter that’s been through it a bit. Okay? Never trust someone who tells you they have a fighting history that comes from Philadelphia and their nose hasn’t been broken twice, right? That’s the way it goes.
You’ll notice that what they did with the theater is they preserved the parts they could maintain, which is the orchestra section, where everyone loves to sit and enjoy the festival, but the rest of the room was turned into another performance space, and other things that we use it for. That’s what we call the Black Box. That’s where all the fine artists and meet and greets and everything happen. Then other spaces outside the Williams Center, they have three digital cinemas on the bottom floor, which is actually the basement floor, so it’s half submerged. They have working cinemas down there that they use to show movies. We don’t use those spaces, but they have those. They have other rooms, and they have a fully seated small theater in the front where they normally do either talking shows, like comedy shows, or small performing artists. That’s where we’ll actually have the Eddie Jobson storytelling sessions.
There’s so many different spaces available. We finally started expanding the footprint, and over the last four years we’ve been honing how to add all those extra elements to it to produce that feel that I’m happy to hear you say, Jeff you’ve felt and therefore you get the idea. Some people love it, some people don’t. Eh, doesn’t matter to them, but it’s the vision we were going for. I’m just glad to hear anyone say, “Yeah you’re there,” or close.
On the outisde of the theater – Plus we do our thing outside the theater. There’s a plaza, so it’s not right on a street. There’s actually like an urban park setting. It’s a brick floored area that isn’t for anything more than pedestrian traffic, and we set up stuff out there, including Robert Schindler, Robeone, who will have a stack of keyboards and make a lot of noise outside because we wanna draw attention to people who are passersby that we’re here and this is what we’re doing. But people can go out there. That’s where our listening parties happen. That’s where totally impromptu, once in a forever jams will happen, where an artist or two from inside the doors will come out and just sit there with Robeone and play. That you’ll never see that anywhere else. It’s just, it’s totally happenstance. We try our best to keep keep all the pilot lights lit, giving people a lot of things to do. Of course, as you say, the town has great food choices, and it’s only getting better.
On tickets and hotels – Okay, so first and foremost, the bible of all information about the festival at all times is our website. That is by far the appropriate place to to learn or confirm, or is it I, anything. That is at progstock.com. Hopefully people will go there frequently. We do our best through other media like social media and email campaigns to direct people’s attention to not only the news. Go back to the website, here’s how you get there, to find this or that or the other and confirm it all and make sure you’re aware of everything going on.
We have a rather intricate schedule, as you might imagine, with lots of different time slots on different days in different locations, so we do have that summarized on our website. As well as all the artists, all their bios, all the information that we have the exhibitors, everything is there. The venue, the hotels in the area. We have something near 20 hotels listed on our hotels page that people, Google will help you find them too, but at least these are ones that we know exist, and we’ve been there, and we know that they’re hotels that are good to stay at. When we have deals with hotels as well. We had one with our host hotel, the La Quinta in Clifton, New Jersey, which is where staff and some of the public will be staying. But that now we that we have the Renaissance going fast. Many of the hotels are hunkered down right now because they’re deep in the middle of the FIFA World Cup, which is taking place in lots of different places in the East, including in East Rutherford, New Jersey, which is next door. So, a lot of these hotels don’t have time, don’t wanna talk to us right now. So, wait until the World Cup is over, and then we’ll be able to renew conversations with many of them.
Tickets get you to our progstock.com everywhere. Once you go to our box office, you’ll see all the things that are available at that time. Right now, there are two things available as of this moment on this is July 7th, and so one is, of course, the three-day passes to the festival. You can get a three-day pass, pick your seat in the theater. You’ll have it all three days, eight, October 8, 9, and 10. You can, even if you wish, choose to upgrade your seat to our Progducer level when you buy it. That gives you access to lots of new interesting perks first in line for a lot of the things that are going on there everyone is gonna attend as well as attending Eddie Jobson Storyteller sessions, and some extra merch, and some extra benefits that come from being a larger supporter of the festival.
You have your choice though. You can choose either class of ticket for your seat. The second thing that’s available right now are tickets to our after party on Sunday which takes place, like I said, at Bolero Snort Brewery in the neighboring town of Carlstadt where we have some great stuff going on. It’s a very small ticket price, only $25. We hope that people will come to that because it is the album release party for Jane Getter Premonitions album, Transmogrify. What will become available later this weekend on the 12th of July are our single day passes. So there’s a short period of time left now to have your choice of the seats in the theater for your three-day passes, because come this Sunday, on the 12th of July, we will take a selection of those seats away and make them only available for single day purchases.
If you really wanna have your choice, get them now before, before that happens. But if you’re waiting for those single day passes, because you could only be there for one or two of the days, they’re gonna start being available at noon Eastern time on July 12th this Sunday.
