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Move over, Imus. A real live New Haven radio personality is snagging your syndicated AM drive-time spot in these parts — - and returning to the studio where he started his career as Glenn Beck’s sidekick.
That personality is “Average Joe” Vinnie Penn, proud son of Morris Cove.
His “Vinnie Penn Project” will air on WELI (960 AM) five days a week from 6 to 9 a.m. starting Monday.
It marks the return of a live local human being doing a morning rush hour (or any weekday) talk show on local AM radio.
It also marks the return of Vinnie Penn to the cluster of Clear Channel-owned studios at Radio Towers Park, home of WELI-AM and KC101-FM. Call it the Vinnie Penn Story, Act II.
Expect to hear the same old not-for-nothin’ wiseguy Vinnie who ruled the KC101 morning show for years until setting off in 2005 for the world of Howard Stern guest spots and published authordom (latest title: Guido’s Credos: The Paisan Point Of View On Everything From Marriage To Macaroni). Only, no music this time. Just talk. Instead of simply squeezing four-minute comedy routines with a sidekick between Top 40 songs, he’s going full force for three hours.
And he plans to mix in deep thoughts thoughts about Martin Luther King and Obama and New Haven schools between the E! headlines about Paris Hilton.
OK, maybe not deep thoughts. But not just slapping knees, either.
“I’ve got things I want to say,” Penn said. He said it in between bites of one of his two favorite lunch specials at Educated Burgher: the $5.55 pastrami and melted swiss on rye. The Independent was buying, so he felt out of politeness he should forgo the pricier “EB special” (hamburger with mushrooms). The man has class.
“I can’t do a ten-minute rant without being a wiseguy. But there’s gonna be meat on the bones. People are gonna be surprised by that,” he said.
When he assumes the mic on Monday, Penn said, he foresees a “week’s worth of material” just from Martin Luther King Day alone. Ten years ago, on KC101, he was dumping on Wallingford for refusing to recognize the holiday. Now the world has changed. “I can bring the layperson’s perspective. I’m an average Joe. The whole racism thing is a head-scratcher. Imagine if you looked at women that way.”
He boils the subject matter of his new show down to three words: “Neighborhood, Parenthood, Hollywood.”
“I’m living in New Haven. I’m a taxpayer in New Haven. Kids in schools in New Haven. Plethora of parking tickets in New Haven,” he said. Like many parents, he finds himself “torn between Catholic school and public school” for his children. Queue that topic up for the show.
Penn lives in the same neighborhood where he grew up, Morris Cove. Now 42, he’s married. He has two children, ages 6 and 3. He’s rooted in the Elm City. His show will reflect that, he said.
Penn wasn’t sure he’d end up settled here when he decided to leave KC101 in 2005.
He started there in 1996 as the sideman to host Glenn Beck. Yeah, that Glenn Beck. (Note: Penn ranked higher than Beck in the Advocate‘s readers poll at the time.) When Beck left FM in 2000 to launch his second career as hot-talk political wild man, Penn became the top host.
“I was making six figures,” he recalled. “Limos were picking us up for events. We ate wherever we wanted.”
He gave it all up in 2005 to pursue big-time comedy. He hustled for spots on satellite radio and cable TV. He gave up the high life for “the urine-filled air at Metro North [to ride into New York] for $36 a fare to do a radio clip that you crossed your fingers would air and you would make $90. But you were chasing your dream.”
He landed spots on Howard Stern; there was talk of a show of his own on one of Stern’s Sirius channels before the company decided to fill it with all-Howard all the time. He had a stint on VH1’s “Best Week Ever” show. He Penned humor books. (Click on the play arrow to watch him read from the latest.) He negotiated with stations for slots on radio shows in Cincinnati, Denver, Atlanta.
Meanwhile, he was settling down. His wife got a good job. The idea of packing up the kids for a dicey gig in a boring, unfamiliar town on a station that may or may not keep the same format or management a year down the road lost its glamour.
“They said, ‘We’ll fly you over to Denver to see if you get along with Bronco Billy’ [on a show]. You fly out there wondering: Is it ‘Bronco Billy & Vinnie’? Or ‘Vinnie & Bronco Billy”?”
Instead of wondering that, Penn decided to return to his roots. New Haven radio. Radio Towers Park. No more six-figure salary. No more vibrant local programming-dominated airwaves, either. Act II is a risk. An exciting risk, in the view of an “older and wise-cracker” homeboy.
“The Vinnie Penn Project” will lead in each morning to the syndicated Glenn Beck Program. Not for nothing.
