Comedy Tornado Paul Venier featuring CJ Burney May 6, 2011

In June of 1980, Paul began performing at a well known restaurant in Lavallette, NJ, Ye Olde School Inn. It was there that yet another turning point was occurring. Paul played there every weekend for three years and what started out as a nice quiet restaurant with friends and family to come and watch Paul perform songs and ad-lib with them, quickly turned into one of the hottest nightspots on the Jersey Shore. Paul would perform a 3 hour show starting at 10:00 every Thursday, Friday, Saturday & Sunday without a break and would play a baby grand piano that was surrounded by a horseshoe bar. People would start getting there at 8:00 just to be assured a seat and wait until the craziness would begin. That is where the comedy started to become a staple of Paul's show and his interaction with his audience would soon become so prominent in his performances. Everyone would sing along and laugh and just have a fantastic time when they would go and the crowds began to grow so rapidly that people would start to be turned away and lines would form outside to get in.

Around 1984 Rascal's Comedy Club opened in West Orange, NJ and the owner Mark Magnusson asked Paul if would like to do his own one man show there every Thursday night due to the prompting of regulars Bob Bucella & Ric Roe. Paul agreed and he appeared there every Thursday for seven months. They didn't have electronic pianos on the market then and so Paul used the old upright spinet piano on Rascals' stage. The piano had to be set on ashtrays for the pedals to work and was so out of tune all the time that Paul began doing more and more comedy to compensate for the sound. Now his show had become comedy with music mixed in. A complete turnaround in Paul's show and yet still another turning point. Club owners from other comedy clubs and agents began asking Paul to headline other clubs and Paul became a major act in comedy clubs throughout the country. Rascal's opened another comedy club on the Jersey Shore in Ocean Township, NJ and it became Paul's favorite club in the whole country, due to the setup. Paul has said that it is the very best setup of any club he has ever worked and that says a lot looking at his credentials. The club, like Sully's, holds 250 people and no one has a bad seat and is very close to the stage, which is perfect for a crowd worker like Paul.