BobFest originally began as a night of Dylan songs performed at the Downtown Cafe in Red Bank . As the show ’ s popularity grew , it eventually moved to the Two River Theater and then on to the Count Basie Theater , where it remains one of the top events each Memorial Day Weekend . Guadagno performs as a solo artist throughout the years , but puts together a 10 piece ensemble for BobFest . The lineup includes Rob Paparozzi ( Original Blues Brothers Band ), Jeff Kazee ( Southside Johnny ) Steve Delopoulos ( Burlap to Cashmere ) Marc Muller ( Shania Twain ) Arne Wendt ( Jon Bon Jovi ) and Joe Bellia ( The Weaklings ). New Jersey Stage spoke with Pat about this year ’ s show and how BobFest got to this point …
In recent years , the show has moved from a night of Dylan songs from throughout his catalog to spotlighting albums on major anniversaries to this year ’ s War & Peace motif . What inspired this year ’ s theme ? Well , when the 50 year anniversaries started popping up for Bob ’ s first albums they were all very interesting . This year would have been John Wesley Harding and I just thought we ’ d done it enough . And when he won the Nobel Prize for Literature I got to thinking that maybe we should honor the fact that he is a poet . I put the War & Peace logo together with the book and we ’ re promoting it that way and doing songs about war and peace , which there were quite a few .