When Brian Wilson retired from touring in 2022, Al Jardine, one of the five founding members of The Beach Boys, and Wilson’s backing musicians—now known as the Pet Sounds Band—decided to continue touring. “We’ve always enjoyed it; that’s what we do,” says Jardine. Following Wilson’s death last year, Jardine took the helm of the Pet Sounds Band, touring the country with the songs of The Beach Boys. This year’s shows spotlight the sixtieth anniversary of the watershed 1966 album Pet Sounds alongside the 1977 cult favorite The Beach Boys Love You. On August 9 the Pet Sounds Band will be at Point of the Bluff Vineyards in Hammondsport. For Jardine, it’s sort of a homecoming: When one thinks of the Beach Boys, the quintessential California band that wrote and performed odes to warm weather, surfing, girls, and cars, it doesn’t usually evoke Lake Ontario or the Genesee River, but for three years, Al Jardine called Rochester home.
Jardine was born and spent his early childhood in Lima, Ohio, where his father, Don, worked as an industrial photographer. In 1949, Don accepted a position at Eastman Kodak and uprooted the family, which included Al’s mother, Virginia, and older brother, Neal. Al enrolled in second grade at the Seneca School, while Neal enrolled at the Iroquois School. Their father soon moved on to Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT), where he taught English and photography. During his time at RIT, Don created a course in industrial photography and oversaw the development and construction of what was then a state-of-the-art darkroom and camera room. The Jardines lived on Parkview Terrace and later in Summerville near Lake Ontario, the only time Jardine has ever lived in proximity to water. It was on Lake Ontario that he learned to swim—entirely by accident. Jardine recalls that one day, “I wandered a little too far into the water, and I found myself floating right off the beach next to the Coast Guard station.”
The Jardines took the St. Paul bus to reach the city, where Al enjoyed visiting the local Boys’ Club. Like many boys, he loved throwing snowballs at passing trucks. On one occasion, he threw a snowball not realizing there was a piece of coal inside; it hit the side of a truck and broke the window, incensing the driver. “Oh, he was mad, really mad!” Jardine recalls. “Fortunately, I was too young to be thrown in jail, so I got off with a warning.”
Don didn’t particularly enjoy teaching, however, and, in the summer of 1952, he accepted a job in San Francisco, uprooting the family once more, a move immortalized by Al on the title track of his 2010 solo album, A Postcard From California. In 1956, Don was transferred to Los Angeles, and Al enrolled at Hawthorne High School, where he met Brian Wilson while playing on the football team. The Beach Boys formed five years later, and the rest is rock ’n’ roll history.
In 2019, Al Jardine was inducted into the Rochester Music Hall of Fame, something he describes as “a very pleasant, very nice experience.” He has returned to Rochester and the Finger Lakes many times with The Beach Boys, and, more recently, Brian Wilson’s band. With the Pet Sounds Band, he is joined by veterans of Wilson’s band, including keyboardist and musical director Darian Sahanaja, Rob Bonfiglio (guitar), Michael D’ Amico (drums), Gary Griffin (keyboards), Debbie Shair (keyboards), Bob Lizik (bass), Jim Laspesa (percussion), Paul Von Mertens (saxophone), Emeen Zarookian (guitar), and Al Jardine’s son Matt Jardine on vocals. “These are the musicians that Brian chose to represent his music, and I’m carrying on with that tradition.”
Touring was difficult for Wilson in later years, and contracting COVID-19 during the pandemic made it all but impossible. After Wilson retired from the road in 2022, Jardine sought his blessing to keep going. “I told him, ‘I’m going to take the band out with me. Is that okay?,’ and he said, ‘Sure, of course!’ You know, he was very happy to have that.” They hoped to bring Wilson out for a few shows, specifically ones in the Los Angeles area, but those hopes were dashed when Wilson died in 2025. “We thought he might join us for a couple of shows, and that would’ve been great.”
Jardine plans to play many Beach Boys favorites, but the emphasis will be on celebrating Pet Sounds and The Beach Boys Love You. Inspired by the Beatles’s Rubber Soul, Pet Sounds is an early concept album about coming of age and the introspection and disillusionment that sometimes follows. It is considered to be a profound influence on rock and pop music and inspired the Beatles’s Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. Paul McCartney believed that no musical education was complete without hearing Pet Sounds and gave each of his children a copy. Jardine previously toured Pet Sounds with Wilson for its fortieth anniversary in 2006 and for its fiftieth anniversary tours in 2016 and 2017.
Lesser known is The Beach Boys Love You. Save a favorable review in Rolling Stone and a memorable review from Patti Smith in Hit Parader (“You’re into it or you’re not,” she wrote), it was largely panned at the time of its release, but it has acquired a cult following in the almost half-century since. It is the only Beach Boys album written entirely by Brian Wilson (he usually relied on others to write lyrics), and features odes to airplanes, the solar system, and Johnny Carson. According to Jardine, it was Wilson’s favorite Beach Boys album. “It’s quirky and fun, and it’s something that we’ve never done before. This album is a rarity, you might say, in our catalog. I said to Darian, ‘What do you say we go out and do “Love You?” And he said, ‘If you do “Love You,” people will just go crazy.’ I said, ‘Are you sure?’ And he said, ‘Yes.’”
When in Rochester, Jardine likes to walk around downtown and visit the Genesee River and reminisce. When he left for California in 1956, he took a souvenir with him. Jokingly, Jardine says, “I still have a railroad spike that was behind our house across from the river. It’s kind of a funny memory. I’ll have to go and put it back where I found it.” The Pet Sounds Band is Jardine’s opportunity to have fun with friends while keeping Wilson’s memory alive. “I’m just happy doing what he loved doing the most, and that is singing great songs. When you have his music, you don’t miss him so much. He’s always there.”
This article originally appeared in the July/August 2026 issue of (585).
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