After decades honing his craft in Trenton’s once-glorious rock, blues, and jazz club scene, keyboardist, vocalist, arranger, and bandleader Mike Hudak has found his niche. Beginning in the mid-1990s, he made the switch to playing music for senior citizens. Ultimately, he has found it much more satisfying than late nights in bars.
His gigs are during the day. He and his wife, Robin, are well compensated for their standard 90 minute or two hour shows. Déjà Vu is the acoustic / electric duo of Mike and Robin Hudak. It also happens to be the name for the six-piece band he led in dozens of Trenton, Princeton, and Morrisville clubs for most of the 1970s and ’80s.
The Déjà Vu duo’s next performance is Wednesday, October 29, from 3 to 4 p.m. at Avalon Health & Rehab, 1059 Edinburg Road, Hamilton. The show is free and open to the public. Call 609-588-0091 for more information.
Ever the humble musician, Hudak recalls he was lost as far as repertoire goes on his first nursing home gig in the early 1990s.
“I approached it the wrong way,” he admits. “I thought they would want to hear old fogey music — and don’t get me wrong, I love Dean Martin and Frank Sinatra,” he said. He quickly learned to change it up and include pioneer rock ‘n’ roll tunes from the Beatles, Elvis Presley, the Everly Brothers, Buddy Holly, and the like.
He met his second wife, Robin, at a gig in Morrisville on New Year’s Eve, 1999. They got married in the early 2000s. When not on the road, they base themselves near cranberry bogs in Browns Mills, in southern Burlington County.
“When Robin and I play out in these places, we play upbeat, get-them-moving music,” he explained. “We want to get them standing up and moving, and we always try to pick songs you can sing along to. We really don’t play that much Dean Martin or Frank Sinatra. We play familiar rock ‘n’ roll that will get people moving.”
Hudak, now a spry 73, is accompanied on his keyboards and vocals by Robin, who also sings and plays keyboards and percussion. Hudak plays harmonica and various percussion instruments and some guitar and bass.
“We stick along the lines of classic Motown staples, familiar songs from the Beatles and Sam and Dave,” he said, “and you have to remember there are people in some of these places that are younger than us! This one place we play in Lakewood, some of the women in there should be having babies, but they’re in a nursing home because of some disability or Parkinson’s disease.”
Hudak contends Déjà Vu became popular in senior facilities around the state precisely because they didn’t play “that old fogey music.” Their classic rock ‘n’ roll approach seems to be working, as they are booked at senior care facilities into spring of 2026, down the Shore, and at facilities throughout Mercer, Middlesex, Monmouth, Ocean, and Burlington counties, but also places as far north as Bergen County.
Their website proclaims: “Déjà Vu are two full-time musicians, a husband-and-wife team who have devoted their lives to music!” Their repertoire includes radio classics from the Supremes, Martha & The Vandellas, Aretha Franklin, Carole King, Carly Simon, Joan Jett, Patsy Cline, Etta James, Chuck Berry, Little Richard, The Jackson Five, Billy Joel, Elton John, Ray Charles, Johnny Cash, Elvis, Tom Jones, The Beach Boys, Sonny & Cher. Given Hudak’s background in Trenton-area clubs and Robin’s background in the fertile Virginia club scene, they also take requests from their audiences. While they specialize in care facilities, they are also known to play outdoor festivals, like their son Mikey Junior’s annual Bucks County Blues Festival in July at Snipes Farm in Morrisville.”
Mikey “Junior” Hudak is an entrepreneurial ball of fire, having started his own record label, 8th Train Records — named for his father’s first band at Trenton High School — back in the early 1990s. At his live performances, Mikey Junior exudes a commanding stage presence and puts a lot of sweat and soul into his singing and harmonica playing. He knows how to read an audience.
He has accompanied Déjà Vu at many senior care facilities and was impressed beyond belief when he first accompanied his dad at one of these gigs. Unlike the nightclubs Mikey Junior frequents, there was no “‘Doin’ the Gettin’ Paid Waltz’ ” — to quote a Mose Allison song — at 1:30 or 2 a.m.
Hudak Sr. began playing in Trenton-area night clubs the same time as pioneers like Joe Zook and Paul Plumeri began playing, “and we all played the same circuits and we all played the same clubs around Trenton and Morrisville,” Hudak recalled. “We played tiki bars down the Shore, the General’s Quarters inside Mercer County Airport, all over.”
“I went to Notre Dame High School briefly but mainly I went to Trenton High School after tuition at Notre Dame got too high for my family. I had gone to Catholic school all my life up to that point,” he recalled.
Shortly after 8th Train ran its course and after he got out of high school, he formed Déjà Vu, a band created deliberately to be busy in bars. They played a variety of familiar rock ‘n’ roll covers. He switched from guitar to keyboards while still in high school, after losing too many keyboardists and organists to other rock ‘n’ roll and jazz groups.
“I was the youngest in my family and the only boy, so my sisters all had tons of 45 rpm records. That’s what sparked my interest in music at a very young age.”
“It was also the glory days of AM radio, and all the stations played the same songs, no matter what station you listened to. I can vividly remember hearing all the Elvis records on 45, and also stuff from Fats Domino, the Coasters, and Ricky Nelson.”
“I was basically always the lead singer in the bands I had, and I got so tired of keyboardists coming and going that I taught myself piano,” Hudak recalled. “I can remember coming up the basement stairs while the sun was coming up after work on many evenings.”
8th Train did have the distinction of being one of the first integrated bands in Trenton, he recalled, “and we played all the outdoor parks, and there was the Incarnation Church and a lot of dances all over town.”
“With 8th Train, we were doing all original music, and I just wanted to play covers and make more money playing music that I liked. I ended up saying to my bandmates, ‘I don’t want to make it, I just want to make a living.’ ”
The club scene was different in those days, too, and he recalls playing the Colonial Pub on Business Route 1 in Lawrenceville and doing a month-long residency, not a few one-nighters each month. This gave the band a chance to prove itself and build an audience.
“We rode the crest of the nightclub wave, and that nightclub wave is gone now because of drunk driving laws, the smoking bans, the influx of DJs in clubs and karaoke, but the final nail in the coffin was open mic nights,” he argued.
“I recall a friend of mine, who played solo, complaining about not being able to get gigs like I did. I said, ‘Well, why should they hire you? You’re giving them free music on open mic nights!’”
Because there are no hassles getting paid for their work and there are generally easy daytime commutes from rural Burlington County to senior care facilities around the state, Déjà Vu are one happy team. And they’re booked into next year.
“We are popular now in the nursing homes because we are playing the exact same music I used to play in the bars. We get feedback from the audience, ‘Man, you guys are so good!’ We’re that good because we’ve been playing this music now for years in bars!”
For more information, visit dejavumusic.com/home.
