Local music gets even more local when it’s happening in your neighborhood.
A lot of us here at The Coast have been musicians or close to the scene for a long time. We’ve watched local music evolve, selling CDs and T-shirts at merch tables, burning demos, handing them out after shows, trying to get people to follow us on MySpace, and cold messaging strangers to like our band pages. That was the grind back in the early 2010s. The tools keep changing, but the heart behind it hasn’t.
About two and a half years ago, we came across a group of bands, one of them we already knew, called Pocket Gum. They were playing at an event called Northern Lights in Dunellen, a literal show house where local bands filled the garage with sound, murals, and color. The whole space was painted in swirls of blue and green, with a hanging sculpture of a moon overhead. The lighting made it feel like you were stepping inside a dream.
That night reminded me of something I hadn’t felt in years, the same energy I had back when I was running shows out of my own house. It was loud, imperfect, and real. The kind of thing you can’t replicate at a bar or a club because it’s built on community, not commerce.
Seeing that scene come alive again felt like a reminder from the universe: don’t forget this part of who you are. It’s what inspired me to find a new way to support music, this time through The Coast Press.
Starting this month, every Monday we’ll be spotlighting music. Some weeks it’ll be local favorites or new discoveries from our own backyard. Other times it might be a touring act passing through, or a genre you’ve never heard of from the other side of the world. The point is to keep music alive by keeping it personal.
And speaking of personal, I should tell you the story of Trevboozle.
The Story of Trevboozle and Local Legends
It started with Bamboozle in 2005. I had gotten free tickets, and it was the coolest concert ever. I had been to Warped Tour once, but I didn’t realize that five years later I’d actually be playing Bamboozle myself.
That happened through The Break Contest with my friend Kyle and our band, The New Royalty. We didn’t really know what we were getting into, but we gave it everything. Going from watching those massive shows to standing on one of those stages was surreal. It lit something in me.
A few years later, that same energy turned into something different. I started hosting shows out of my house, and before long, we had over thirty bands come through. We called it Trevboozle. I don’t even remember why, but the name stuck. It was chaotic and fun and full of heart. Bands from all over came through, people packed into the basement and the yard, and somehow it all worked.
By the time we got to Trevboozle III, it had become huge — so big that it ended up getting shut down. My friend Ryan Hanratty even made a documentary about it, which really captured what that time felt like. The energy, the people, the passion — it was something special. After that, I knew I couldn’t do house shows anymore. Every time I tried to move it to real venues, I couldn’t break even. Eventually, I had to stop altogether. I left to go work in Hawaii for a while.
When I moved back, I still couldn’t shake that feeling. I missed the scene, the people, the sound, the energy. So we tried again, this time on a bigger scale. We put together The Local Legends Festival — three days of camping and music with over fifty bands.
It was incredible, but it still carried the same lesson. Even with all that effort and planning, and as fun as it was, we couldn’t break even. Festivals like Coachella, Firefly, and Bonnaroo have massive budgets and corporate sponsors. Local Legends was the opposite — a true grassroots festival built by musicians, artists, and small businesses. It wasn’t about money, it was about community.
And that’s really what all of this has been about from the start. Trevboozle, Local Legends, every show and every band… well, it’s all part of the same story. You can’t beat that house show feel. That’s what music was supposed to be.
Written by Trevor H. Smith
Co-Founder, The Coast Press
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