The Wag have been staples in the New Jersey original music scene since 1998. This is an incredible feat, as anyone who’s covered the scene, been in a band or just caught a local show knows — bands come and go faster than a drummer can count off “1! 2! 3! 4!”
During their epic run, The Wag have played every venue that matters in the state — captivating audiences with their undeniable pop rock sensibilities and their four-lead singer approach. Their popularity has allowed them to produce long-running shows at the historic Strand Theater in Lakewood including their famed Christmas Show.
Recently, we caught up with Brian Ostering of The Wag to discuss their Strand show (which takes place on Saturday December 14) and their fundraising Christmas show for the Monmouth County SPCA on Saturday December 21 at the Middletown Performing Arts Center. We also talked about their tour of the U.K., their longevity and more.
The Wag Is (Band Members & Instruments They Play): Brian Ostering – bass & vocals, Alicia Van Sant – keyboard, vocals, percussion, Don Lee – guitar & vocals, Joshua Van Ness – drums, vocals, percussion
Year We Were Founded In: 1998
The Story Behind the Name of The Band: We couldn’t come up with a name; a friend said that we reminded her of happy puppies wagging their tails, because we’re such a positive bunch. She suggested “The Wag” and it stuck! It’s not all capitals, and it’s not an acronym for anything. We’re just The Wag.
You May Have Seen Us in Other Bands Such As: We’ve only ever been The Wag!
Our Sound Has Been Likened To: Being that we have four lead singers, we have been likened to the Beatles. We’ve also been likened to bands such as Squeeze, Fleetwood Mac, with a vocal and guitar influence reminiscent of King’s X.
Your annual Christmas show at The Strand Theater in Lakewood, NJ takes place on December 14. Fill us in on the history of this show and how its grown over the years?
Giving back has always been important to The Wag. Early on in our career, we would produce smaller Christmas shows where we collected toys for needy children. As our audience grew, so did the shows, which now include scenery, costume changes, guest musicians, dancers, and special character guests! These shows naturally require larger venues. Now, we produce multiple Christmas shows every holiday season, one of the staples being the one at The Strand. This will be our fourth Christmas show there.
The show features a theme of “Christmas Around The World” — can you talk about what people can expect from this theme?
“Christmas Around The World” is a fun way to introduce Christmas songs that people may know but not know where they originate – and sometimes there may be a song they’ve never heard! It also gives us the opportunity to play with costumes.
What’s the band’s signature Christmas song?
Our original — “Feels Like Christmas.”
You’ll also be performing a week later at the Middletown Arts Center to benefit the Monmouth County SPCA. Can you talk about this show and what people can expect.
Another one of our staple Christmas shows is the one we put on at the Middletown Arts Center (this year on 12/21/24); that one is always a benefit, with the proceeds from ticket sales going to the Monmouth County SPCA.
People can expect the scenery to be slightly more geared towards animals and pet adoption, along with raffle baskets to help raise even more money for the MCSPCA. A representative from the MCSPCA will also talk about their mission, and how we all can help support them. This will be our 5th Christmas benefit show for them at the Middletown Arts Center.
The MCSPCA holds a special place in our hearts, and we have been taking part in benefits for them since 2001. We are so happy to help them raise some much-needed money over the holidays. The MCSPCA’s vision is to make New Jersey a place where every animal is treated with respect, kindness and love. Even though the animals in their care reside in state-of-the-art housing, what they really need is a permanent, loving home.
The Wag isn’t just a holiday band (you also do a special Halloween show at The Strand as well), you’re performing all the time and producing new, original music. Can you talk about the band’s career to this point. What have been the biggest moments in the band’s history?
We love performing – making people happy doing what makes us happy is the best feeling ever! Just like most original bands when they begin, we wrote songs and performed as much as possible, honing our sound. As we continued to write, release, and perform our music, we developed our own unique sound, and gained a following that has grown throughout the years.
With our specialty shows (Christmas, Beatles, Halloween) we’ve been able to perform our original music in larger venues, to people who may not otherwise have heard those songs. In the Halloween and Christmas shows, we actually perform some originals as part of the show itself. For the Beatles shows, we sometimes “open up” for ourselves by doing a short set of all originals, before the Beatles portion of the show begins.
Some of our “biggest moments” have been playing a sold out show at the Half Moon in Putney (part of London), opening for Norda Mullen (flautist for the Moody Blues), playing a sold out show at the Vogel in Red Bank (this was one of our Beatles shows, opening for ourselves with an original set), hearing ourselves on the radio (that never gets old!), and of course opening for national acts: Rick Springfield, John Cafferty and the Beaver Brown Band, Peter Tork, Jefferson Starship, The Motels, and closing for Jason Mraz, Ben Folds, Phillip Phillips, and Gavin DeGraw.
In the same vein — what’s the proudest moment you’ve had as a member of the band?
Our proudest moment is honestly every time we touch someone’s heart with our music and our performance. We’ve had so many instances that someone has come up to us after a show to say how they were feeling so down before they saw us, and our show just lifted them up. Two examples: the first time we toured London, a man came up to us to say that he didn’t even like music, but his friends brought him to our show, and when he watched us perform, he was moved. He was almost crying as he told us this. Another example is when we toured in Japan, after one of our shows, a young lady came up to Alicia with her phone open to her translation app. The Japanese translated to English as, “I was healed.” That brought all of us nearly to tears!
What’s the greatest lesson you’ve learned as a band during this time? And what have you learned about yourself on a personal due to being in The Wag?
One great lesson is to plan carefully! Don’t plan a tour with a gig on the day of your arrival – because things can happen. Another lesson is to let songs breathe for a while before recording them; play them out a lot. They tend to change and grow with each performance, until they finally become what they were meant to be. Then you record them.
I’d be remiss if I didn’t ask about the tour of the UK the band did not long ago. How did you all navigate booking shows, networking, promoting and getting crowds to venues thousands of miles away? Also, your favorite experience from that tour?
We got an anchor gig first (which was our favorite experience – more on that later), then built the tour around that. To do that, we contacted a bunch of different venues that we thought would be a good fit, and chose from the ones that got back to us, depending on the days they had available.
Social media is great for promoting, so we did a lot of that – posting on our pages and on the venue page, tagging them, tagging our opening acts, having them promote, etc. We do have some friends in the UK, but most of the people who came to see us were people we didn’t know. That’s part of what’s good about having a local opening band; their fans come to see them, and stay to see you. We’ve remained friends with the bands who opened for us, so hopefully there will be a “next time” that we’ll be able to share with them.
Also, the venues themselves did a lot of promotion, and some had built in crowds. As for our favorite experience from that tour – that definitely has to be the sold out show at the Half Moon where we opened for Norda Mullen, flautist from the Moody Blues since 2002, and her band. The Moodies’ second drummer, Gordy Marshall, attended the show, as did Lee Thomas, widow of original Moodies flautist Ray Thomas. We felt very honored to share the stage with Norda and her band, and honored that Gordy and Lee came not only to see Norda but also to see us. We’re very friendly with all of them now, and hope to repeat that experience.
We’ve seen so many bands come and go since Pop Break started, yet The Wag has been at it for over 25 years. What is it about this band that you love that has kept you and the others so invested in keeping this project going?
We continue to enjoy writing and playing music; we enjoy spending time together, and the friendships that we’ve made not only with our bandmates but also with fans who have become friends. When it stops being fun, we’ll put it to rest, but we don’t see that happening any time soon.
What’s on the horizon for 2025 for The Wag?
Lots of new original music, and lots of shows! Our first big show for 2025 will be on March 22nd at the Strand Theater (we love it there) – that will be a Beatles Spectacular show with an opening set of our originals.
Catch The Wag at the following shows…
12/14/24: The Strand Theater, 400 Clifton Ave, Lakewood, NJ 08701 – $15/$20.00. *$15.00 Discounted tickets for kids under 18, and adults over 65. Click here for tickets.
12/21/24: Middletown Arts Center, 36 Church Street, Middletown, NJ 07748 – MCSPCA benefit – $15.00. *All profits at this show will be donated to The Monmouth County SPCA.
Click here for tickets.
