Surf and Turf in Asbury Park
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[Music] [Applause] [Music]
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forever what's up everybody welcome back to another episode of greetings from the
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garden state i'm mike hamm we are here in asbury park today uh with tim mcloone at iron whale tim welcome to the show
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thanks mike it's great to have you here yeah yeah so this is a place asbury park has been up in a place that i've been coming to for a while been coming to
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iron whale for a while and when i got into as long as i have well i'm sure yeah
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definitely not that's how i ended up here yeah i love that um but uh but yeah so this
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is a place we like to come to a lot uh so we're here um i didn't even realize obviously i've seen the name mcloone on
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other restaurants around the state of new jersey which i'm sure we're going to talk about in a little bit i didn't even realize that this was that this was
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yours and then when they put us in touch that was pretty intentional yeah um there are landlords here uh madison
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marquette who are actually tremendous yeah we really enjoy the relationship um
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they were concerned because we had the supper club right here and also robinson ale house and that it would look like it
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was just one company which it is actually sort of taking over over the pavilion and they were concerned so we
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basically came to an agreement with them not that they were pushing it that hard right that we would do everything
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differently here than we do at any of our other places including the name yeah just iron whale i i don't even remember
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where it came from and i'm silly enough that i thought well you know iron that's for like the beef product that we have
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and the whale is for the seafood and everyone's looking to be like what are you talking about it's got nothing to do with that right it's just a goofy name well it sticks
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yeah but it kind of but it's memorable right thank you yeah no i love that um so talk to me a little bit about like
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when did you first start getting into like the restaurant world i think you told me on the phone that that wasn't like your background no not originally
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no um you know my my first venture well i've been a musician all my life yeah so and
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i was full-time uh coming out of college uh i play piano i've got a 10 10 piece
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band called tim mcloone and the shirley's oh okay and we do a big cross section of things nice you know a lot of
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obviously music we grew up on in the 60s and 70s but a lot of r b and just different things um
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but that's what i was going to do but then i found out pretty early on that trying to be a full-time musician to
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support yourself is not an easy road so i took another not easy road and opened
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up a retail store called the running store because i've been a runner all my life and uh so i did that for like 30
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something years actually to supplement what i was doing musically yeah and then eventually i got away from playing
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full-time because it just you know it was just endless numbers of weddings and banquets and parties and
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it's it's a hard life yeah you know for my friends who are full-time musicians god love them and i've always said that
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among my musician friends they consider me to be nothing short of a business genius
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like i am the businessman right right when i'm when i walk into the bank i am so clearly a musician yeah first first
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of all i'm late wow i'm dressed like this um no but so what ended up happening was
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i was playing with my band at a place called the rum runner in seabreak okay and i offhandedly mentioned to the owner
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on the way out i couldn't believe it was a saturday night in the summer yeah and the place was empty yeah we were doing a private party upstairs and that stairs
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there was nobody there and it's right on the water you know and so i said if you ever wanted to sell this place which is
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hilarious because i was making probably 400 a week yeah cash right but uh 400
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nonetheless and without boring you with the whole story or your audience um basically a
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year later he recalled the conversation and told someone else that i knew yeah that he was selling the restaurant to me
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and so we got in touch and he said if you give me a million dollars by new year's eve of 1986 and to
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yeah which is crucial the reason he said that was that the capital gains taxes were changed this is where i become a
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business genius yeah yeah yeah right so i'm getting that that's the flavor but the taxes were tripling okay and so
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anyone that was selling anything was going to do it before 1987 right came in yeah so he said if you give me a million
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dollars by new year's eve it's yours otherwise i'm going to have to put it in the market at a higher price and so as i said to you on the phone i
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thought he said if you give me a bazillion dollars i mean i'm sure a million making 400 a week sounds like
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bazillion well it ended up being a second mortgage on my home yeah and a bunch of my friends uh who all chipped
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in and we all did it yeah and i literally went to the closing in a tuxedo on new year's eve because it took that to that last minute to get it done
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because i was playing the opening of the oyster point hotel okay new year's eve party with my band yeah
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genius so that's how it started and i didn't know much and we almost went out of
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business uh we had a funny running in a way with uh bruce springsteen because
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um bruce asked if he we'd known each other for a long time and we'd played occasionally together
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and he said i'm gonna have a new album it was the tunnel of love album okay he said can i rehearse at the rum runner
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because we had an upstairs room with a little stage on it yeah to think that he was still that small right
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with the tunnel of love that he would need to yeah you know so it's wild but what happens is he's
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there every day okay like you know they'd show up at like 10 in the morning 11 in the morning and they would rehearse until the sun went down right
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well needless to say the world went crazy trying to get in and you know overhearing it and my staff was like if
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he plays that song one more time i'm gonna quit like that annoying upstairs neighborhood
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but it ended up creating problems for us because we got overwhelmed and our neighbors were very unhappy and rightly
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so they were just cars everywhere was great and so we almost went out that first year but we built a deck on the water
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the second year because i realized that all these people were driving in at night and pulling up to the river
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probably making out or who knows sure who would do something like that but just looking at the water yeah and
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so we put a deck out there and and that changed it so we were able to we're still in business 35 years old
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right so so then kind of take me through like the progression of like finding success with that original location and
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then you know starting to open up more because if we were just chatting just before and you were talking about trying
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to put your daughter through confidence right and you're like let's just open up another restaurant a daughter who was probably 15 yeah or 16 approaching
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college age and i'm like she's not going to be going to a good college based on what's going on in
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seabright new jersey and so we got the opportunity to go to uh pure village and pierre it was brand new we were the
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first lease signers there yeah and we were very fortunate we opened up nothing else was open yet right and there was
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mud everywhere and just all kinds of pipes and things and they jammed us it was an instant hit um
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we weren't really ready for it because who would be you know to do 1500 people on a saturday night and yeah you know a
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big number at the rum runner would be 300 yeah and we would literally do 1500 that's called pure village um but
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fortunately you know that also creates a lot of income so once we figured ourselves out the second year through we
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knew what we were doing and so then i started getting arrogant i guess in a way i'm kidding
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sort of but we're like we're restaurant people in there you know and asbury as we're sitting here now looking at mata
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maria's sign had that nostalgic place in your life had it in my life and for all of us who
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grew up in north jersey as i did coming down the shore which gives me away as having grown up in the oranges um
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you know it was a place to go yeah and to to a date and you know i saw i'm so old i saw the first run planet of the
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apes at the paramount theater on a date yeah not that's a long time no no that is a wow i think it's like 1966 or
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something like that i don't know what it was unbelievable um but we had that nostalgic tie here so as it turns out
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there's a new developer here madison marquette and we were the first lease signers with them
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and we got crushed yeah so mr businessman um the rum runner was hurting because
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pure village was taking everything right and but pure village was great okay that's good but then down here not so
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good and then the stock market crashes right as we open yeah it was great yeah
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when we first opened the rum runner by the way that was the prior stock market crash in 1987. and now this was 2007
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2006 whatever it was the business guy you're the business guy apparently not i'm not good on dates
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but we we had to just slug it out there was nothing about me that was going to quit here right um i really liked our
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landlords we love asberry this is the greatest place in the world when we talk to people if you look out on the
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boardwalk in the middle of a summer night and it's packed there is no demographic here yeah it's an incredible
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place of acceptance and i think that in general or maybe specifically we all owe a debt
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of gratitude to the gay community if there is such a thing as a community but the gay people that moved here and just
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did so much great work and had shops and art galleries and and really kept it safe yep to a great
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extent right because there was a point where it was like yeah i remember a few years ago telling my dad i was going down to asbury park and he's like same
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thing like born in 1956 kind of like watched asbury's trajectory of its life and knew that it was like you know at
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least thought that it was not a place that you should be going yeah you know so i was like oh i'm going to asbury park at least what are you crazy now
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like and now i come down here like literally we were down here a couple weeks ago we're going to come back in a couple weeks like we're down here all
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the time it's a little bit morristown it's an hour away nothing ever happens here yeah in a good way yeah it just
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doesn't i can think of two incidents we've been here now for 16 years 17 i can think of two
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incidents and even they were not a thing right uh you know some some guy got into a scuffle right in front of the restaurant
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another person 15 years ago literally 15 years ago got you know hit over the head on the way to
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his car that's it that's the entire police bladder of our experience yeah
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and i hate to even put that negativity on it because it's been fantastic just all ages all denominations all
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everything that are here right and it's a city of great acceptance now you know of course we're on the east side and
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there is still a west side on the other side of the tracks that has not been dragged along as it should have been yeah and you know hopefully it'll
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you know you talk about trickle down it never happens right but hopefully better things will happen on the west side i
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think the current administration cares about that a lot right you know and you just hope yeah you know here all we can
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do is hire people from the west side which we're happy to do yeah yeah uh particularly in this environment but
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it's still a sadness that asbury will not be really fully back until that gets solved yeah for sure but you know all i
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mean like i think i remember we were re-watching the sopranos and like there's the one scene where he's having
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the dream because he's hallucinating from the bad indian food and he's sitting on the boardwalk like right
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right out here like with you know and you know uh everybody else and like i remember looking i'm like oh like
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that's literally like where iron whale is now but it was just like there was like nothing it was just you saw madame marie's in the corner and then it was
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like this whole strip was just like nothing it's been so cool to see kind of like how much it's changed since then
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well it resonates with the country yeah where it used to be when i was a kid if you watched the johnny carson
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show or any late night shows if they mentioned the word brooklyn it would get a response from the crowd yeah the crowd
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either laugh or cheer or whatever right asbury park has that same kind of cachet
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around the whole country yeah and let's face it ninety percent of it's due to bruce yeah and everybody that followed them right right but then they also
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realize that what a cool place yeah you know i mean there's lots of seaside communities up and down
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jersey and certainly into new york and long island this one stands alone
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partly because of how people are treated here yeah and i don't mean to start singing a big song about it although i'm
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a musician but um yeah i wrote a song years ago called the sound of asberry park which was me
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complaining that i couldn't get my band to play at the stone pony i was just whining for three minutes and 24 seconds
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yeah uh won't you let me play two was the big turnaround the retrospect it was not good a song
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yeah i love it well i mean you know now you're you could throw a stone and probably hit the stone pony from here so
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that's and we do occasionally yeah right why not just take some stones awesome so this has been a great first segment so
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we're going to get into our second segment here in a second uh we're going to talk specifically about iron whale and what people can come to expect when
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they're here uh so this is the greetings from the garden state podcast i'm mike hamm we're here at the iron whale in asbury park with tim mcloone we'll be
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right back it is time for today in new jersey history new jersey governor chris
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christie dedicated a statue of atheia gibson at the athena gibson tennis court complex in newark new jersey on march 28
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2012. atheia gibson was a professional tennis player and the first african-american to cross the color line
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in international tennis she was the first african american to win a grand slam title as well as at wimbledon and
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the u.s nationals and that is today in new jersey history
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all right we're back for segment two of our episode with tim mcloone at iron whale uh in asbury park this is the
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greenies from the garden state podcast of course and i'm mike ham as always uh so in the first second we kind of learned a little bit about your
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background the restaurant background how you're just this business savant picking all the perfect dates
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oh it was great uh but uh the level of lying that i'm capable of yeah it's incredible
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but uh so this segment we want to talk specifically about iron whale so like i had reached out uh to you know i was
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reaching out to different places around asbury park because this is the first time we're recording episodes down here and so started with iron whale because
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that was one of the spots that we come like every time we're down here we make sure we stop in for like a cocktail or an appetizer even if it's just you know
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something remember i told you about my daughter you know how we're gonna afford her going to college well there's three more after her okay and one of them's
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still in college so you keep coming here keep ordering cocktails she decided the five year program suited her just fine
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might be time to open up another restaurant you know who knows yeah so um so i didn't ask this in the first segment but so how many restaurants
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right now do you own we have eleven eleven okay and then there's like we said there's some of which are successful yeah right
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that's good not all of them well you know we all can't be winners i guess but um okay so let's talk about specifically
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iron whale so someone one of the things that you mentioned in the first segment was you wanted to make this place
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different than most of the other places that you have um so what can like just do bro and the reason by the way yeah if
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you don't mind my interrupting because i do that yeah a lot conversation
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one of the reasons was that we knew we would be recycling our own customer base right we have people that just like our
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restaurants yeah and they like the idea that there's more than one then they can go from one to the other and the other right and uh it was really pretty funny
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actually when we opened up the robinson aile house in red bank to diverge a little bit my wife's name is robinson
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and our niece was sitting at the bar we'd been open about 10 days and the couple sitting next to the
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man says the woman you know tim mcloone owns this place and the his wife i guess said no he doesn't
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it's the robinson ale house yeah he goes no robinson is his real name tim mcloone is his stage name
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if i were picking a stage name i don't think it would have been that yeah no offense i'm used to it now but right
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no but at any rate the whole package of it was that we didn't want to recycle our own customer base right i mean we're
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happy that a lot of our regular customers did figure out it was us yes and particularly if they see us here but
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uh we wanted to have a whole new experience as i mentioned here earlier so did our landlord they wanted to be totally
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separate so we went into new york to a showcase of just stuff that it's really
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kind of the one of the best parts of being in the restaurant business i hate to say it is picking out plates and glassware and
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silver and all that stuff yeah it's a lot of fun candles and right you know sort of design it we had a great
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interior designer who uh really listened to us and our landlords didn't beat us over the head too much about what we
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were doing here right the idea was it's supposed to be sort of a seafaring look yeah like you were in a ship if you look
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at the wooden slats overhead know that uh sorry you can't see them right yeah we'll take some videos afterwards take
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our word for it there's a whole bunch of what's so cool but we were trying to get that kind of look and it and the building we
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inherited the ceilings are low yeah which is kind of cool too right yeah so everything from the colors the design
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the plate wear everything was trying to be totally different than anything we've done before yeah the wine list here is
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almost 100 different than any of our other places um just to make sure that we've made a clear demarcation as it
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turns out we were very fortunate we started with our basically our senior chef and then he handed over to a man
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who's over on the other side of that wooden wall named charles collins and charles just does a great job
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um i think in many ways i don't want anybody that is involved in our other restaurants so
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no but this is kind of a flagship for us now yeah the original rum runner in this one um i think that we do probably the
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best job here in terms of the overall presentation yeah uh we were very fortunate here one of the reasons we do
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a good job honestly is there's always been money in the building uh from the minute we opened up we did well right so
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that means everybody was making money now obviously there was a big road bump in there when it came to that and we did
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nothing right uh we were not set up to do to go so we laid off in our company we laid
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off 700 people two years ago almost exactly two years ago it was march 15th or 16th i remember we're getting close i
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had to lay off 700 people including me and my wife yeah my wife was pretty upset
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she said it's okay for me to go yeah yeah um so we all had to go through that thing but when this that following
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summer came around it roared yeah because we had outside dining right and we had a miraculous summer yeah the
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weather was nice every time oh yeah it was almost like a payback okay you got the corona virus but there's some
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sunshine okay i'm wondering on this story yeah but what if you get our plate wear here
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for instance it looks like handmade pottery yeah right it's just really cool very cool and it's funny i was in here
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the other night and i uh shockingly got a martini glass what was i how would i have a martini guys and our day-to-day
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operations manager lauren kotu came by the table and said that's the wrong martini glass that's the one we used
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next door i'll be right back she takes my drink and switches it with the actual martini glass yeah but that's how
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determined we were to have this look differently yeah no i love that it definitely has that feel because like i
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mean i've had eaten at some of your other restaurants too and like that's why when we were talking about before like i didn't realize that this was part
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of it until i reached out and was trying to get the process started to get this interview set up which is really cool and i think speaks to like how well you
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guys got that all figured it out um but uh let's talk about like the menu so like what are like the staples of the
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menu maybe fan favorites things that you guys like know like if we put this on the menu and then i'll give you my
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favorites after you're done all right yeah can't wait yeah i'll tell you um well the first thing about the menu is
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that one of our principles and our company from the beginning is that we want there to be something on that
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menu that anyone who should be going out to dinner under any circle but no matter
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how modest their financial circumstance that they can find something here and they're not
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going to be embarrassed right now it might be a simple salad or something like that or a burger
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you know but we wanted them that it was all-inclusive that way yeah so there was no don't go there it's too expensive
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right yeah we're all fighting the fight right now um because of food costs yeah um i felt we were
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semi-immune to it for a while but over the last three four months it's been roaring yeah the amount of money it
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costs us to put a pound and a half lobster on a plate is shocking yeah we
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we're to a point where we almost shouldn't serve it right because what are we going to do charge people sixty dollars for a pound and a half of
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lobster yeah and i don't care how well they think of us they're still going to get mad like 60 bucks
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yeah you know right so we try to find things you know and and uh you know well
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crab cakes has always been our deal you know no matter what we do and yeah we try to make you know jumble up crabs so
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that people are really getting crab in it yeah i mean for someone who grew up on mrs paul's fish cakes as i did
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uh fish sticks actually yeah and i always said there was no amount of ketchup that could beat that to the ground it didn't exist
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it was not possible why my mother insisted on us eating those on friday nights yeah but
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so we did a big thing here about appetizers too go ahead tell me what you like jerk shrimp it's like definitely my
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favorite one that you guys do like by far yeah yeah what is it you like about it if you
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don't mind by being specific it's like so the spices well it's like a spiciness but it's such like a because normally
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you get jerk chicken you know like that kind of stuff but it's like a different type of flavor that you're gonna get
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like at most seafood places i think you know what i mean because it has like it's like refreshing because it's like a
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shrimp and seafoods like light whatever but also has like that salty spiciness to it that kind of just like balances it
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out and i don't know what kind of sauce is on there like the it's okay the white sauce i mean like you dip that
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they keep me out of the kitchen yeah yeah oh here he comes yeah yeah like hide the stuff but uh but yeah so that's
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what i like about it so like any time we've come here i think we've probably been here in the last year maybe like
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five or six times and i think every single time we've gotten it like the first time we came down here me and my girlfriend together
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was over the summer last year we were sitting at one of the tables outside and we were just going to get like a couple apps and we got like i got
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fish tacos she got the lobster tacos because she's you know very bougie but um
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but yeah so we got that and i just remember like the the jerk shrimp just like blew me away so that is my favorite
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all right so mine actually are the little spare ribs okay appetizer
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and for a while we were serving three of them okay um three sets of it kind of
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and we're sitting at a table for four making decisions so i actually made a decision raise the price by a dollar and
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give them the fourth one which is great yeah yeah but i'll tell you what i had to do with the menu which was funny
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because the menu was totally different than anything we'd done before i basically stayed out of the way yeah i
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wanted to make sure that it featured a lot of seafood because nobody else in this boardwalk does that yeah and i mean
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really features it you know but by the same token for the carnivores like myself okay we have that too
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but we got probably two weeks away from opening and i was starting to panic and i said okay i'm just going to ask
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you to put three things on the menu yeah just three right and the three things were the tacos yep that we have a taco
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bar yep so there's all kinds of choices one was calamari the number one selling
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appetizer in the universe yeah and the other was a hamburger right because i said if you'll just put those three
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things on the menu i don't know why i was asking their permission i'm pretty sure i could have told them
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but if you knew how our company works you know i was asking right right but i felt okay just give me those three
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so the person coming on the boardwalk looking at the menu board outside yeah sees okay they got calamari let's go
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yeah right that's right we'll we'll try this other stuff later yeah yeah and it ended up our top three sellers are those
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three items yeah uh but the other one that actually i shouldn't say that anymore what surpassed it is something
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that i eat if it's kind of the moment but oysters okay we sell more oysters here than you would ever guess in a
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trillion years yes i don't know what it is you know aphrodisiac whatever everybody
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wants to say right but it has been if i were gonna say what's the one thing over the last three years the boom and sales
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of oysters yeah there's not i guess there's not really like just thinking about it there's not like a ton of places around here that do that i mean
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we operate we operate the oyster bar inside okay uh convention hall gotcha but even there we
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you know we sell them but it's not like it is here here it's a thing tuna tartare nachos at their that might be my
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favorite thing in all of asbury park just you know sidebar um but uh tell us everyone you know yeah well i do like
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anytime people like well where should we go like just stop in the convention all get the nachos you're good to go then obviously come here and then you know
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hit all the other spots that tim mcluhan we secretly operate the food uh service okay out of that one and the
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um the one on the other end too the seahorse yeah yeah yeah seahorse and there's two bars so awesome no you're
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doing great it was it was part of uh our relationship with our landlords really yeah they didn't have anybody to do it
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right and they're kind of looking at us like would you guys you know so they do the beverage service and we do the food
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gotcha it's been a good partnership there's no money there it's not that it's more like just keeping everything
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moving forward you know convention halls under a little bit of assault right now is it a viable building yeah physically
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yeah yeah and so as long as we can keep customers walking through there and enjoying it yeah you
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know it helps the urge to keep it you know i don't know that there's there's some people suggesting it should
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just be torn down and replaced that's so which i could understand right but the iconic nature of it i know that's it's
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so great yeah it just was so great like because usually we'll stay over at the berkeley then we'll go over to the beach
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because it's right there and it was just so nice to go over the summer you come into the convention hall like you sit down you get the a drink or whatever get
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cool off a little bit when it's like 100 degrees out the problem is it was actually as a venue the paramount's
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great yeah but as the convention hall itself on the other side it was ill-designed i mean at the time it
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probably made sense they were going to do trade shows there okay so it's just a big square rectangle whatever right with
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seating way far above so you really it's not comfortable for basketball games or other things
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but the whole idea of conventions here disappeared yeah there was too many other locations atlantic city not the
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least of which right and uh so it's not a functional building the way it's currently set up yeah my band
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we played there a bunch of shows over the years but you have this humongous state space in front of you yeah where
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people are standing right it's just you know yeah odd but awesome so we're going to take our
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our second break of this episode last break so we just learned all about iron whale and other stuff that you've got going on
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around here i'm learning so many things over the course of this episode it's crazy but will you remember any of it yeah i'm gonna listen back okay i just
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like like the sound of my own voice you and me both it's amazing either of us gets a word i know yeah but this has
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been great so far um so second segment or third segment coming up this is the greetings from the garden state podcast
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i'm mike ham we're here with tim mcloone at iron whale and asbury park we'll be right back
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it is time for new jersey fun fact of the day the garden state is much more than the state's nickname new jersey is
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a leading grower of produce in the united states new jersey ranks fifth in blueberry production third in cranberry
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production third in spanish third in bell peppers and fourth in peach production and that is your new jersey
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fun fact of the day all right we're back for our last
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segment of the greetings from the garden state podcast i'm mike ham we are here in asbury park at iron whale with tim mcloone so tim in the first segment we
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kind of did your background your background in the restaurant world we talked all about iron whale in the last segment
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but in the last segment what we do for every episode is talk about the relationship that these businesses that
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we've talked to in the nonprofits and all that uh that they have with the community and we've touched on it a few times over the course of this episode so
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um if you could just talk about like maybe asbury park as a whole and then we'll talk more about some of the stuff
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that you guys have going on with the community sure all that i mean i think in general every people in the restaurant business you know we call it
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the hospitality industry yeah and the reality is it's always amazes us when we get people who want jobs here or who
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have jobs here who are not very hospitable like what are you doing here
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you're so in the wrong building yeah exactly um but and i think that implies that you get involved with the community and sometimes it's as simple as taking
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out an ad in a journal for the cub scouts or a little league team or something like that but in our and it
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also goes into hiring and trying to have outreach programs i know up in our place in west orange the boathouse we're
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reaching out to the local high schools partly because we need employees yeah but also it's a good thing right you
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know and down here monmouth university is right around the corner so we get a lot of employees from there but we had a
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much larger thing that happened i was working for the new jersey nets back in the 90s okay and to make it
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really quick um one of the players on the team wanted he was from newark and wanted to do a feed the homeless on
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christmas eve at the robert street hotel as a matter of fact i wouldn't say they were all home all homeless in retrospect now that
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we've been there all these years but certainly home challenged sure and financially challenged so we did the thing and there was no music no gifts no
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nothing just some food yeah shouldn't say no nothing but it it got me it was christmas eve you know
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and for those of us who grew up in a christian upbringing um you know you get to a certain point in
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life i think where the first time you say i can't wait till christmas is over what happened to you yeah there's no 10
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year old in the planet that's saying well i can't wait till this though but you get to that place oh i got to go get gifts and then there's a party and it
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becomes a burden it's like wow so at any rate it touched something i mean just being
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there on christmas eve and so over the course of the next year one of the net's owners was at that same event and he and
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i became friends and um i we kept talking about you want to do it again yeah right and so because i'm a genius
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which we pointed out in segment one i brought a boom box with me okay uh come on boom and and gifts yeah
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uh we did gifts in a bag you know yeah and uh it was an amazing experience
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and doing it again but then i realized no we could do this better right we could do i'm a musician what am i doing
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bringing a boom box and playing johnny mathis christmas tapes which they were it was cassettes in that
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era and uh so i started talking about it to my friends it was just like come on and
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then they started getting angry with me are you gonna do this or not just stop so on october 15th of 92 i called all
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the musicians that were still talking to me and 17 of them showed up at the rum runner cost to have a rehearsal yeah and
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i told them what we were going to try to do and i said if we're going to learn these songs you want to do more than one event right you don't just want to do
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christmas eve yeah so everybody agreed sure you know so we did 10 events that year but at that rehearsal if you
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remember though going way back to we are the world yeah and there was allegedly a sign at that rehearsal studio leave your
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ego at the door okay i didn't have the sign so i've got like 17 lead singers in a
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room yeah no i do that one right right oh we're rocking around the christmas tree that's my song
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somebody and this is absolutely true somebody at some point started singing and so this is christmas
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everybody got quiet and and all of a sudden the background harmony started coming and the whole thing had transformed
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everything yeah i've always said that john lennon actually helped found holiday express because that song at
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that moment changed everybody's thing and they they all kind of locked in right so we did the ten events
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we ended up christmas eve in newark um and everybody was crying
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because it touched us all yeah you know and you realized that what ended up happening now we're 28 years in uh
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obviously we were disrupted by covid too we did uh 19 in-person shows this year
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where they would let us go but the year before well the year before we did none yeah we sent a video we made a show and
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to the places we go to we go basically to homeless shelters soup kitchens aids
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hospices long-term residential psychiatric facilities we don't do schools and hospitals for the most part
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because they get a lot of attention yeah yeah we try to go to places if we're not there they get nothing at all right or
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little or nothing and but the year before that we did a hundred events uh starting in november
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we we start like november third fourth fifth something like that and we go to december 24 and we squeezed a hundred
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events in there and we have this small army of people now we've got about 120 professional musicians yeah to be in it
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you have to have sung for your supper as the saying goes at some point yeah um and we have another 1500 volunteers wow
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because it's a humongous thing i think the military could learn some things from us about delivering things yeah logistics
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and all that and i'm like back in the band now right in the beginning i was calling everybody every week and yeah
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okay here's the schedule and then i'd say okay where's the water and let's put it in the thing and we'd load the trucks
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now i just play piano right and sing and i hope we get there
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but it's the most touching thing we've all ever done and i think over the last few years
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i came to realize what actually happened people would talk and we get tremendous amount of uh adulation really people are
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so thankful to us and yet we realize that you know the old it's better to give than to receive we were receiving
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like crazy right because we had this door open to us where we were allowed into a world that none of us probably
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would have known existed unless we had a specific person in our lives exactly suffering from mental illness or
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whatever yeah you know incredible and i realized that what we
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were really doing all these years was healing ourselves and i don't want to get too uh whatever preachy about it but we were
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healing ourselves from all the twists and turns and the mistakes and the things that happened and people that passed or people that were ill in your
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own families or something like that uh we just healed ourselves by doing this
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one good deed yeah we basically go to places for three hours
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we set up the biggest holiday show you could possibly imagine with decorations and costumes and that's awesome and then
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we play a rock and soul hour and a half of hard drive and music and in the beginning we used to be kind
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of gentle and now we're not gentle anymore right uh pull the doors off though yeah because it's it's basically all
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rock and roll music yes uh although we've had fantastic we've had broadway people and we've had
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you know bruce did shows with us and bon jovi and a lot of other cindy loper i know did a couple of them
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but it's not really about that actually we were on the rockefeller center tree lighting for three years wow um
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so it was all to just get enough support to make this thing happen because it cost us about a million and a half a
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year to do it but the great thing of the bottom line of the whole deal is that it's it still
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becomes a one-on-one experience right we go to some some of the places we bring like a 12-piece band 20 other volunteers
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and there's 30 people in the audience we don't care yeah we don't care right because their need is so severe yeah and
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they're getting nothing right that we're happy yeah you know we do a show for them you go to like the numbers like the same places every
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year or is it kind of like some rotating i mean in the beginning the first year we did 10 next year i can remember the numbers right it was 17 the second year
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24 the third year we were in the 30s the 4th here and then all hell broke loose and
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so we would tend to go back every once in a while we picked a place that was incorrect sure um either we were too
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much for them yeah yeah or they really weren't as needy as they portrayed themselves to us you know
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yeah that involved a couple of professional sports teams that we shall not mention yeah yeah but i will always be grateful to the nets even though
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they're in brooklyn now because that's where it started right working with them yeah but uh it was
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it's hard to explain really what it feels like because you're sitting and talk because part of it is just mingling
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right with people you know when you talk about the boardwalk here and in general you wouldn't have that opportunity to
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actually speak with people right who were in these circumstances you know and then you come to realize
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the old saying of you know there but for the grace of god go i right it couldn't be more true yeah you know
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you sit with some people and you realize that they may have mental flaws or physical problems or whatever
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and maybe it was a car accident maybe it was drug overuses you know it could be any number of things right but there you
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are it's you you know it's been an incredible learning experience that's awesome yeah yeah no i
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love that that's such a cool thing i remember when you you told me on the phone when we were talking about sitting in the city uh getting this interview
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set up i was like yeah we definitely have to make sure that we talk about that people want to see more about yeah they
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can go to holidayexpress.org awesome i remember when we did the rockefeller center tree lighting the first year
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the uh it was the beginning of the you know of online becoming ubiquitous
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and i'm trying to memorize www dot
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cause al roker is gonna ask me this question yeah dot uh holidayexpress.com.org.net
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edu yeah and i'm i'm trying to sing a song and i know this is next he's going to interview me and i can't remember
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what the hell in there is it's like ah and you get this national opportunity
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right i set it on that and the next day thousands and thousands of people came
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on with us yeah and this is back in like 1998 right i think 99. yeah yeah yeah
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yeah still had like the dial up wow dial-in internet whatever yeah that's
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unbelievable that's so cool um but uh so then like just before we round out this episode just talk to me a little bit i
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know we talked about asbury park before um but like talk to me just a little bit more about you know the maybe the
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relationship between like asbury park as like a community as a whole uh with iron
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whale or with the restaurants that you have here is it a good relationship i would assume well you know to some extent being honest about it which is
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unusual for me the uh we're we're separated a little bit the
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boardwalk is almost its own entity right there isn't a lot a lot of housing right here right i mean there's a couple of
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hotels yeah and there if you go around the bend over there by lake by the lake there's housing there yeah but you
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really have this feeling of separation and it's not necessarily a good thing yeah and that bothers a lot of people
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and i think rightly so it's sort of what we mentioned before about the west side literally on the other side of the tracks you know um there's a train track
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right over there that separates the city right so trying to get more of it to come here
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i think for all of us if we came back here 10 15 years from now you probably almost wouldn't recognize it right the
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fear is that it becomes so over gentrified that it loses the panic the coolness of
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what it is that's it's so cool how do you do that i know it's a tough it's one of the reasons i like our landlords and
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i hate to say such good things about them yeah um they're great yeah and they understand that and they respect it you
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know the fact that mata marie is right here right still yeah still there nobody wants to thoroughly disturb this right
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but by the same token you got to pay the bills and do all the different things so for us as an eatery or two or three well
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it's nice to have more people living here yeah definitely who can afford to go out right but you know you hate to push out other
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people i know so how do you find that line i don't know i think everybody including the town council i mean everybody has
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run-ins with you know political groups and other stuff yeah but they if you want to talk about meaning well they
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mean really well right and they're trying to straddle that too yeah you know and so there's a lot of push and
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pull we're getting ready to release upstairs here okay uh which has been an empty box up there for three years now
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we signed the lease for it so we'll open it up next year i don't even know what we're going to call it yet but there's a band shell
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connected to it okay which is one of my i've played on that bandshell years and years ago when there was an asbury park
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10k right road race here and i'd play up there with my band back in the 80s and i am determined before i no longer
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know how to play music that my band is going to be the first band that plays up in that band shell
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yeah yeah you know the arthur pryor band shell uh it's it's meaningful right it's meaningful that that bandshell operates
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again yeah it can probably only seat like 300 people stuff like that yes and it doesn't have to be a rock and roll
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venue there's plenty of them around here right the wonder bar is right over there stone pony right over there exactly there's other house of
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all the ones in town there could be a really cool opportunity up there for for big band and jazz and
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gospel right and me yeah exactly one time yeah one time i have to fire
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myself yeah right yeah um you know what i think it's just so cool and it's like funny that you were talking about that and like how do you keep the
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the um the uniqueness and like obviously with like the people and everything but one of the things that i think that i've
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noticed you know like i live in morristown and obviously morristown has come a very long way from its you know
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past and all that uh but like one of the things that i like about morristown and why i think i like asbury park is like you see all like the old school kind of
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like you know reasons why that place is cool but like all these new places like this building still gives it like that
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character i guess you know like it doesn't doesn't look like it's you understand what i'm saying well the
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big one across the way right you know upset some people but you know you can't build an intentionally
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old building right exactly yeah i mean you can use some used brick i suppose yeah but you know a little exposed
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there's got to be you know the balance totally when that was built that was extremely modern oh
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yeah after time yeah you know yeah so you just hope that it all works yeah that it all works that
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no one feels excluded from here and that's really what it comes down to yeah 100 percent love except you might
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exclude you yeah those morristown people yeah well this is the only time i'm ever coming back here so um i'll never be
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here again well i grew up in the oranges okay although the story i always tell actually is i'm the quintessential
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jersey shore experience grandparents from ireland okay who uh land in brooklyn my mom was from the
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bronx my father in brooklyn they met at breezy point had me in staten island
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grew and then they moved to the oranges yeah and then i came down the shore yeah next stop florida right i'm just never
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going to get there yeah yeah that's what's going on i don't want to leave it yeah you know i mean january
41:46
february march kind of are a little rough yeah but once you get past that yeah it's march 7th today it's
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70 something degrees out here you know like it's amazing not that that's probably good for the environment but that's like a totally other that's a
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different podcast um but uh awesome so if people want to check out uh all the stuff that you have going on where can
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they go to do that thank goodness it's simple as long as you remember how to spell my name it's mcloones.com but it's
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mcl no second c joe mcloone should have fixed this yeah but he didn't it's mcl
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oones.com simple as that everything's there yeah so we will make sure that putting holiday express and yeah we'll
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make sure we put holidayexpress.com and that's dot org that's that conversation okay yeah yeah i couldn't remember www
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okay yeah you said com network whatever when i'll eat you yeah so it'll be holidayexpress.org
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mcloones.com will be in the show notes so people can just go click on those if they want uh and we're in the fifth
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avenue pavilion yeah and asbury park right right i think it's 1 000 or something like
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that yeah but we're right on the boardwalk right next to convention hall you'll see over the summer when you guys come down here you'll see all the chairs
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out there full you know as they should be um i'll probably be sitting in one of them
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how many times have we removed you from here is it two or three hundred i've been here five times so probably five times
43:04
but we never got a conviction though no it's not you've tried you tried and then you invited me back to do this episode
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which was cool very very you invited yourself well that's true and i said let's make one more mistake with this character
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i can yeah yeah mike ham god just doing crazy stuff but um awesome so tim thank
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you so much for doing this episode with us today this was amazing as i expected it to be i had more fun than you did
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yeah i think you did you had to work i was just yeah i know that's that's like the hard part about being the host you got to do all the work and the guest
43:32
just sits back and just talks you know so i put stuff up yeah no i definitely appreciate it uh like i said one of my
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favorite spots in asbury park asbury's park one of my favorite places to come so it's just a cool experience to kind of get your perspective on everything
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and everything you have going on uh so make sure again mcloons.comholidayexpress.org will be in
43:51
the show notes go check those out uh when you're down here come grab a drink food whatever um and uh
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this has been the greetings from the garden state podcast i'm mike ham we were here in asbury park at iron whale with tay mcloone thanks for listening
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and we will catch you next time
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you
