Joe Brown might be the king of making Spotify playlists. After all, a playlist is the first domino in the effect that led Brown to create Asbury Park’s Melting Waves Music Fest.

Before Melting Waves, though, Brown simply had a passion for sharing music.

“I think music has the ability to timestamp where you are in life,” he said. “The time-traveling aspect of how music can transport you, but also how it makes you feel, how you can relate to it— there’s nothing better than it. And then sharing it is the next closest thing to listening to it.”

This sentiment is what prompted Brown to create a Spotify playlist all the way back in 2017 while flipping burgers at Asbury’s Bond Street Bar and dreaming about what his own festival lineup would be. After building the playlist for a few months—which included adding song recs sent by his mentor just to keep up with the new music—Brown discovered that it had gathered 500 followers. He noticed you could add a bio to the playlist, included his email for bands to reach out to him to be featured, and the rest, as they say, is Asbury Park history.

“At a certain point, the light bulb went off,” Brown recalled, “when I realized I’m in Asbury Park, I’m working the door at the scene, I’ve already had a taste of booking music, and now I have this active organic audience that’s reaching out to me looking for something different. I can direct them like, ‘Hey, how about I add you to my playlist, and I’ll do you one better. Next time you’re planning a tour, hit me up. I’m in Asbury Park. I have a home for you.’”

From there, Brown has heard from bands all over the world to be featured in the playlist. What started as just planting seeds has turned into its own ecosystem, with bands actually reaching out to be booked on the East Coast. Now, Melting Trends—Brown’s own entertainment booking agency whose name is an ode to psychedelic culture—is set to host its first music festival at Asbury Lanes spanning the weekend of November 14.

With 18 bands set to perform over two days, Melting Waves Music Fest will be a crash course in psych, garage, stoner, and shoegaze bands, with bands traveling in from New York City, Philadelphia, and even Indianapolis. Though it’s more than a local fest at this point, Melting Waves is Brown’s own full circle moment.

“Some of the bands are bands that reached out to me nine years ago that I featured in the playlist,” Brown admitted. “Like the band Cairo Jag from Indianapolis; I literally still have an email from them and can look in the playlist and see that I added them over six years ago. They just happened to be touring the East Coast when I put [Melting Waves] together. I think of how this all started with bands reaching out for the playlist, and now this one band that reached out for the playlist is playing my first-ever festival, which is my dream come true.”

Brown’s hopes for the festival don’t revolve around it being a one-time event, either. With Asbury’s Sea.Hear.Now going eight years strong, Brown aims for a festival that makes a name for itself and pulls in inspiration from iconic fests like Glastonbury or Bonnaroo.

He said, “Next year, the goal would be just run it back and make it better, whatever better means. I don’t think I’m married to just being in Asbury Park, although I love this community and it means a lot to me to be a true festival. I can envision this on a piece of property somewhere, with maybe a camp, like a true fest vibe. That could be years down the road, but I would love to get it to that point.”

For this year’s festival though, Brown’s purpose for Melting Waves is pretty simple and echoes that of its festival forefathers: send listeners home with their next favorite band.

“I want to look back, and I want people to say, ‘Oh, yeah, I saw them at Melting Waves,” Brown said. “I want to be known for the place that platformed bands before they had their big break. Emerging artists are the emphasis here… I want this place to be like where you go to mine for your new favorite band and discover new tunes, like a playlist.”

And of course, for Brown, it all comes back to the playlist, the place where this all started. Melting Waves isn’t just about seeing a bunch of bands in one place but is rather about discovering the ones you’ll keep listening to after the festival ends. It’s like digging through a friend’s vibe-specific playlist, only to find that every track is a new favorite. And what feeling is better than that?

“I want you to walk away being like, ‘Man, there wasn’t a miss. All killer, no filler, not a miss in sight,’” he concluded. “And yeah, hopefully you’ll throw them into your own playlist and be rocking with them for a while after the fest.”

Images courtesy of Joe Brown | Interviewed on October 23, 2026