They say never do business with family, never touch a stove coil to make sure it’s hot and never do anything by halves. They also say never to put a guy on the radio whose catchphrase is “Mazel Tov motherf*ckers.” And yet WXPN’s the Connie Club was a resounding success.
For 10 weeks this summer from June 1 through August 3, Adam Weiner, frontman for Low Cut Connie, hosted an hour-long program on WXPN featuring special guests, live tapings from Ardmore Music Hall and classic tunes. Not to be forgotten were three live performances of the show at Ardmore Music Hall on June 13, July 11 and August 8.
For these shows, Weiner brought out even more guests, conducted meet-and-greets and played full live sets for his hometown. With the conclusion of the Connie Club for 2024, Weiner has embarked on a fall 2024 North American tour, which will see him play 19 shows across Canada and the eastern United States.
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Before the tour, we sat down with Weiner for a retrospective on the Connie Club and insight into what the future might hold for him.
Main Line Today: Who came up with the idea for the Connie Club?
Adam Weiner: My very, very, very, very dear departed pal Jerry Blavat, ‘the Geator, with the heater,’ the most legendary radio DJ from Philadelphia. I grew up listening to his broadcast, and he told me 10 or 12 years ago, “You’re going to end up on the radio because the way that you make people feel at your shows is the way that I made people feel through broadcasting.”
He said he would look out at our crowd and he would see how diverse it was and what a joyful room it was. He said, “You’re going to figure out how to make people feel like they’re in that room when they’re sitting at home listening on the radio.”
It took me a few years to understand what the hell he meant. Then sadly, he passed away and WXPN asked me if I would take the slot and do something with it. And I said, “I’ve got to do what Jerry told me I was going to do, right?”
I came up with this idea that the Connie Club is a virtual imaginary club that we’re all hanging out in where everybody is welcome. Everybody, rich, poor, black, white, gay, straight, everybody’s crazy little bit. Everybody wants to have fun. People want to flirt. They want to dance. They want to let their hair down. That’s that club in my mind, where we all should be able to go, and sometimes life gets in the way and we don’t have a place like that we could go. So, I try to create it on the radio.
MLT: Beyond the success of the Connie Club, what are you promoting on your upcoming fall tour?
AW: I made my first film called Art Dealers. And I’m excited to announce that it’s coming out in theaters in September all over the country, including in Philly. Then the soundtrack comes out November 1. It’s the first time I ever made a film, and I couldn’t be more proud of it. And [there’s] the fact that it’s been picked up for distribution, which I never thought would happen. That’s our focus with this tour because this film really captures the energy of what our live show is.
MLT: Where does the footage come from and what story is it telling?
AW: It was some of the first shows we did after COVID. [When] we start doing these shows with crowds, initially it was outdoors and it was 25% capacity and masked. Then finally when we got to do a real show. There were more people, but the people were very emotional. I noticed that the crowds at our shows all of a sudden were laughing, crying, hugging, dancing. They were just so much more present and magical. And I said, “Right now, right at this minute, we need to film our show.”
These people from Sony had asked me if I would do a commercial for them, for Japan. They bought a Broadway theater, named it Sony Hall and wanted to hire Low Cut Connie to star in this commercial. They said, “We’re going to have 10 cameras and surround sound recording.” It just so happened that it was one of the most magical shows that we ever did in our entire life, 13 years with the band, and it was captured for this TV commercial. So when we saw it, I couldn’t believe what I was seeing: the quality of the footage, the emotion of the audience, the intensity of the show. We asked if we could use it for a film. We used that, and then we kept filming.
We cut together this incredible portrait of what we do. I gave my co-director Roy Power 20 years of my hard drives and access to all the sh*t that I did when I was younger and had no fans. I used to play in gay bars and dive bars all over the country, playing to two drunk people a night. He was fascinated by that. He took some of that, and I gave him access to all my COVID-era home broadcast footage. He created this incredible portrait of what it is to be an artist these days.
I feel like part of what’s resonated with people who have seen the film is not just the power of the performance, but the poignant story behind it. [It’s about] what we sacrifice to be working-class artists in this country, why we do it, what our fans get out of it [and] some of the traumatic and terrible things that our fans have been through that they use our shows to release.
I think most poignantly for America in 2024, [it’s] a place where people of all different backgrounds put their arms around each other in a room and have a good time together. It’s so rare these days. I think that’s one of the most poignant things about the film; it shows people from all different walks of life in one room together.
Where does the name Art Dealers come from?
Well there’s a song on the Art Dealers album called “Art Dealers.” When I first started coming up, making music, doing performance art, I did theater, I did dance, I did all this stuff. [It was] all I wanted to do. I didn’t care about money, I didn’t care about success, I didn’t care about clout. None of it mattered.
I was burning to be among other artists, and this is something from my generation that’s not quite as prevalent today. We did crazy things just because we wanted to live and breathe art 24/7. I didn’t care if it was a job, didn’t care if it made sense, didn’t care if it was an unhealthy lifestyle, didn’t care about anything. I’ll sleep on a couch, I’ll sleep on a floor, I’ll put myself in crazy, sketchy situations just to be a performer every day.
I had multiple generations of artists that I met when I was in my teens and 20s who were older, who had lived that life, that art life, who were so inspiring to me. Because of so many forces in our society — HIV, gentrification, poverty and cultural changes that relate to social media and technology — it’s like a dying breed. We did it, and I learned to do it for the love of the game, the love of art, right? And I call those people “art dealers,” people who traffic every day in art.
MLT: Were there any guests you wanted to feature on the Connie Club that you missed out on?
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AW: Quite a few. I mean, we had some amazing guests, right? We had Frankie Valli, a bunch of Rock & Roll Hall of Famers, my friend Vini Lopez from the E Street Band and Nancy Wilson from Heart.
Swamp Dogg is somebody that I’m hoping to get next year. We came really close. He’s a very interesting artist, a black artist who’s working in country music and has an interesting story to tell. [I’d like to get] my friend Darlene Love, who’s one of the greatest singers in the world, who went through terrible, terrible, terrible, terrible racism, sexism and misogyny and yet has come out on the other side with with an amazing career. There’s so many. I just hope that we get to do this again and I get to have more conversations with people.
MLT: Are you planning to bring back the Connie Club in any form next year?
AW: Well, I can’t say specifically other than to say, yeah. We just finished this week, so we got to see if people demand it. But the station loved it, and we got incredible messages from people, not just in Philadelphia, but all over the country who streamed it. If people want it, I’m happy to do it. I love doing it.
MLT: If it returns next year, what do you think you can do to make the next batch of shows bigger and better?
AW: Even though it’s Philly-focused, I’m hoping that we can get on more stations around the country and have people watch what we do with these live Connie Club shows all around the country.
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I want to take that Philly flavor and not just broadcast it to Philadelphia people, but broadcast this Philly soul thing all over the country, all over the world. How do we do that? I’m not sure yet, but there are a lot of people in different parts of the country and overseas who have been listening and saying, “Please, please, please broadcast it here.” Hopefully we will.
MLT: Is there anyone you think deserves more praise than they’ve received for getting and keeping the Connie Club off the ground?
AW: A lot of people, but I have to give most of the credit to my friends Jim McGuinn and Bruce Warren at WXPN. Those two guys, they had the crazy idea to give me this time slot on the radio, right? And a lot of people think of me as a crazy rock and roll guy who says motherf*cker every two seconds on stage. Mazel tov motherf*cker! There were a lot of people who were skeptical, who thought, “I don’t know if that guy could be on the radio.”
Those guys absolutely had a vision. They believed in me. They knew that I could do it and they helped me do it, so I give a lot of the credit to those guys.
“Art Dealers” will screen in select cities throughout September, and will be available via streaming from October 1.
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