Affiliations: Everyone I meet

Joined PRX: November 13, 2003

Joe Bevilacqua has always immersed himself in radio. Growing up in Iselin, New Jersey; he would make crude Willaby and the Professor shows on his tape recorder as early as age 12. And the beauty of it is, Joe is still doing it today: except now Willaby is spelled Willoughby and the technology he's working with is a little more advanced!

A self-professed "crazy wacko multi-tasker" in college, he lived on 2 1/2 hours of sleep and the rush of juggling classes, theatre work, radio projects, and English tutoring. While other kids were rockin' out in the Kean College radio studio, Joe would be coordinating his 4-hour radio version of Hamlet.

After college, Joe interned at WBAI in the early 80s, worked at WBGO as the Events Coordinator from 87 to 89, and was WNYC's Senior Radio Publicist from 89 to 95. During all of these jobs, Joe continued to "guerrilla produce" at night, just like in college. This crazy work ethic got the job done, but left Joe frayed around the edges. One evening he finished a play about 4:00 in the morning and, at Penn Station waiting for a train, he fell asleep and was mistook for one of New York's homeless.

Joe took time away from radio from 95 to 99; he went into technical writing and "made lots of money but hated it." He slowly integrated himself back into radio starting in 1999, as fill-in host and documentary producer for KUT in Austin. 2001 saw his ill-fated move to Hawaii to become Hawaii Public Radio's first arts and culture producer. Joe could not afford to live there and left after only five weeks. He and his wife, Lorie, lived in Lorie's parent's basement for six months until he found work in radio again. He and Lorie moved up to the Catskills after visiting a friend there, and he's been successfully freelancing in radio ever since.

This year has been a lot like Joe's days in college and early days in radio. He's still doing 15 projects at once, including 18 new half-hours of "Willoughby," over 60 hours of "Comedy-O-Rama" radio theater shows for XM Satellite Radio, lots of NPR feature pieces, teaching acting workshops, traveling around doing book signings for (and promoting) a Daws Butler script book, voice casting for a Comedy Central animation pilot, writing political essays for TomPaine.com, and starting to write the Daws Butler biography book (Daws, voice of Yogi Bear and other Hanna Barbera characters, was Joe's mentor for 13 years).

Currently Joe and his Lorie are renovating their house in the woods in the Catskills to look like a Ranger's Station, keeping up a large organic garden which this past Summer and Fall provided them with about half their food. Plus, Joe is always thinking up new potential projects and networking by phone and e-mail. He's also an activist and volunteer for environmental and left leaning political causes and marches in protests when he can. Still, Joe does find time to do all this and keep a fairly relaxed Zen lifestyle. He exercises, rides his bike, hikes in the woods with his dogs, meditates, reads, and watches a bit of TV.

And yes, Joe Bevilacqua does get 8 hours of sleep every night!

- Matthew Payne - "Airwaves," MURRAY STREET PRODUCTIONS, 2003