E-Mail This Article to a Friend Funny business Former stockbroker Bill Blumenreich has found success and satisfaction as owner of the Comedy Connection BY TAMARA WIEDER

HE CLAIMS HE’S never laughed so hard that he’s wet his pants, but Bill Blumenreich certainly has had his share of opportunities for incontinence. After more than a decade of dissatisfaction as a stockbroker, he opened his Comedy Connection chain — with outposts in Boston, Providence, and Chicopee — in the early ’90s and hasn’t looked back since. Now, in addition to his Comedy Connection achievements, Blumenreich also promotes comedy shows around the United States, and is recognized as one of the most successful comedy-club owners/producers in the country.

Q: How did you wind up in the comedy business?

A: I was a stockbroker for 16 years, and hated being a stockbroker. But I needed the gig; I had a wife and kids and a mortgage. I couldn’t afford to quit it. I always wanted to start my own business, but I didn’t have any money. So I kept looking and looking, and I had gone to school for the food business, the supermarket business, and I was trying to buy a food-brokerage business with very little money down. Nothing seemed to pan out, and then I realized that I’ve always been a huge fan of comedy. Even back in the ’70s and ’80s, whenever I went to New York on business, I would always go into the comedy clubs at night. And I noticed that most of the people who owned comedy clubs, especially in Boston, were nice people, but they had no business sense at all. They were just very lucky, because they got into comedy, like, in the early ’80s, when comedy was so hot that an idiot could make money in it. So I said, I bet I could do much better than them.

So I decided to open up a comedy club, and again, I had no money, so I decided to keep my job as a stockbroker, and open up a comedy club and work it at night. I was going to open up a big 600-seat comedy club right in the Theater District. And then the two guys who used to own the Comedy Connection, who I knew from going into the club, said, "Gee, don’t do that; you’ll put us out of business. Why don’t we be partners, and we’ll open a place in the suburbs?" I felt badly for them, I didn’t want to hurt them, so I said all right, and we finally found a location in Providence, Rhode Island, and we opened up a place together, and I realized after about two days that these guys just had no business sense at all. And I had to get rid of them.

Q: How long had they been running the Comedy Connection?

A: They’d been there for, like, 10, 12 years before that. But it was a very small place; it was in the Theater District, in the Charles Playhouse, on the main floor. It only held a little more than 100 people. And they never brought in national acts; it was local Boston comics, which were the thing back then. So I opened up the club in Providence, and for four years I kept my job as a stockbroker during the day, and at nighttime I’d drive down to Providence, for about a year or so, and run that club. And then after about a year and a half, I opened up the club in Boston at Faneuil Hall. That was probably ’91. And then I opened a place in Chicopee. And then after about four years of doing my job and running those at night, killing myself, I quit my day job and went into it full time, and I started promoting concerts with comedians all over the country. And that’s where I am now.

Q: How involved are you in deciding who plays your clubs?

A: Very. I mean, I do all the booking of all the major acts. I don’t book all the opening acts; I have somebody who does that for me. But at the Comedy Connection in Boston or wherever, I book all the headliners myself.

Q: What do you look for in a comedian?

A: It’s sort of a catch-22, because I’d like to look for somebody who’s very funny. But unfortunately today, just being funny doesn’t cut it, because you can have the funniest comedian in the world on stage, but if they don’t sell tickets, it’s sort of self-defeating, because nobody will be there to watch them. So you have to get sort of a balance between funny and famous. Famous sells tickets. I work with a guy, Kevin James, who’s in The King of Queens on CBS. Before he had his TV show, he couldn’t sell any tickets. He’s the same comedian now, but he can sell 5000 seats in almost any market now, because of the TV show. And every year that TV show is on the air, he sells more and more tickets because he’s more and more famous. I mean, personally, I would love to just put the funny people up there, who aren’t that expensive; I pay as much as $100,000 a weekend for some of these acts. It’s very, very expensive.

Q: Who are some examples of people you’d like to have that you just can’t because they won’t sell enough tickets?

A: You have a lot of very funny comedians in Boston. If you back up 20 years ago, when comedy was real hot — it’s still hot, but it was unbelievably hot then, like in the early ’80s — you could’ve opened up a comedy club anywhere. You probably noticed there were 30 of them all over the Greater Boston area. Anybody could go to a restaurant and say, "Hey, what time are you through serving dinner on Friday and Saturday? Nine o’clock? Okay, we’ve a comedy club. We’ll do a nine and 11 o’clock show." You just opened the doors up and people would come in. Well, when I opened up the Comedy Connection in Boston, I actually intended to use local Boston comedians who were very funny. But just about then is when comedy was started getting to the point where you couldn’t sell with just people who were not famous. So just about that time I was forced into bringing in these famous people to do business. The downside is they cost me a lot, a lot of money. But the upside is they do a lot of business, and people would rather pay $30 to see someone famous, or $40, than pay $1 to see somebody who might be funnier but isn’t famous.