Dream Job: Rich Rogers’ Blue Collar Path to WMVY – A Profile

FALMOUTH – In May 2022 when Rich Rogers, more than 40 years old with no on-air radio experience, applied for a deejay job with WMVY, his friend Tom Bushy thought, “They’re probably not going to know what they have.”

But of the half dozen applicants for the job, said PJ Finn, executive director of the Martha’s Vineyard independent radio station, Rogers and his unusual resume of blue collar jobs stood out.

Rogers had co-owned a burrito restaurant, and he had worked at other restaurants including at Steve’s Pizzeria; and Sweet Tomatoes Restaurant. He had worked municipal jobs in the Falmouth Department of Public Works parks department and in the DPW water department; and in maintenance at the Falmouth Housing Authority; and in the facilities department at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. 

It turned out, the station did what know it had in Rogers. He was hired in June 2022.

The job was for an overnight deejay and, said Finn, “This person was also going to book shows for us.” The radio station puts on several live music shows a year at venues on Martha’s Vineyard and Cape Cod.

Rogers, in fact, had a lot of experience putting on concerts and shows, mostly in Falmouth. Finn had even met him while emceeing one of those shows at the Coonamessett Inn.

Of those hundreds of shows Rogers had put on, he said, “Finally, I could put them on a resume.”

Rogers background putting on shows helped, but Finn said, the most important thing was that Rogers’ can-do attitude and friendly personality fit perfectly into the station’s culture. 

One story landed Rogers the job, said Finn. After the interview process, Finn said applicants were put behind a microphone and asked to tell one story, as if they had two minutes of air time to fill. It was sort of a way to make them think on their feet.

Most applicants, said Finn, told a story about themself.

Rogers, he said, told how he contacted recording star Michael Franti before a Cape Cod Melody Tent show and told Franti, who does a lot of work with veterans, that his younger brother, Terry, a huge fan of Franti’s, had just returned from a tour of Iraq. 

Rogers hoped his brother might get to meet Franti, but the musician, who gave the two brothers backstage passes, did more than that. He brought Rogers’ brother on stage while the band played the anti-war song, “Yell Fire.” It was a highlight day of his brother’s life, said Rogers.

“His story was about him doing something for somebody else,” noted Finn.

A lot of his story is that way.

 

Deep Falmouth Civic-Minded Roots

Rogers, 44, is the third youngest of nine children, ages 66 to 36. His father, James Rogers, who married twice, was a longtime Falmouth firefighter, and served as the fire chief in Falmouth from 1978 to 1986. Rogers’ oldest brothers have a different mother, he said.

Besides himself working for the DPW and his father working for the fire department, several other family members have worked for the town of Falmouth.

His mother, Grace, was a bus driver, his brother Glen was Deputy Fire Chief and is now retired; his brother Mike was a Lieutenant with the Police Department and is retired; his brother Terry was EMS supervisor and is retired; his sister Ann, a bus driver, is retired; and his brother James is a patrolman with the police department. 

All together, said Rogers, his family has worked for the town for about 150 years.

He grew up in a house on East Falmouth Highway near the East Falmouth Fire Station. “My dad had the fire station built in East Falmouth so he could walk to work,” said Rogers.

It was a crowded house. “Everyone pretty much doubled up in bedrooms,” he said. The older kids in the family were sure to “torture” the younger ones, said Rogers. He learned to share, and to fend for himself. 

Rogers described his childhood as a Falmouth-centric one because “with that many kids, you can’t take a family vacation.” The only vacations he remembers was when younger siblings would visit older siblings, such as a brother in the army in Georgia.

He was a Falmouth kid who grew up loving music and sports. His mother loved Elvis, The Beatles, Dolly Parton and Loretta Lynne, and his older brothers were into heavy metal like Anthrax, AC/DC and Judas Priest. He learned by osmosis in his house.

When he was younger, he said, “I always wanted to be a sports broadcaster.”

Rogers said he was never very good at playing sports but he loved everything about being on a team, especially “the friendships and stuff like that. On the sports field you have people who have the same interests as you,” he said.

He played little league baseball, and he was on the football team in high school on both the offensive line and defensive line. “I loved it. It was a tight locker room. Nothing phased us. I am still friends with so many of those guys today,” he said.

“I met Richie in middle school,” said Bushy, who has his own Welcome Back Kotter type of story in that he is now the principal of Lawrence School, where he and Rogers went for 7th and 8th grade. Just another small town kid who landed a dream job.

“He was like a nerdy kid with big glasses and baby fat still,” said Bushy. “And he was very funny and personable.”

“He found his groove in high school,” recalled Bushy. “He was popular for his school spirit. When he wasn’t playing sports, he was cheering on other teams.” 

Rogers was friends with all different types of people in school, said Bushy. “He wanted everybody, no matter who they were, to be part of what was going on.”

 

Ski Resorts, DJ Schwagg and Returning To Falmouth

As he was finishing high school, Rogers said he didn’t think he was ready for college. “I didn’t finish strong by the end of high school. I’m more of a hands-on learner,” he said.

After high school, he moved to New Hampshire in 1998 and worked the ski lifts and in the rental shop at the Attitash Ski Resort for one winter. And then he moved to Colorado and worked at the Breckenridge ski resort. He stayed in Colorado for three years, from 1999 to 2002.

While in Colorado, he started bar-backing for a country western bar, and he deejayed the two nights a week it was not a country western bar. “I would play everything from Phish to Doctor Dre to Johnny Cash,” he said.

His deejay name was DJ Schwagg, and the bar started advertising him in the local newspaper. He became a popular attraction at the bar, and he enjoyed Colorado.

But after a summer time visit back to Falmouth, Rogers decided to move home because he wanted to be around as his father aged. 

He was pretty sure he would eventually leave Falmouth again, but instead he put down his own roots near where he grew up. 

He started working at Steve’s Pizzeria on Main Street in Falmouth, where he worked when he was 18. He still works there now one day a week.

And he began taking a series of other jobs. He owned a burrito restaurant and managed Sweet Tomatoes Restaurant. He worked at the biotech firm Associates of Cape Cod, bleeding crabs. He put in a couple of part-time summers at the Falmouth DPW, and then he was hired full time in the parks department in 2017.

Along the way he got married to his wife, Debbi, whose parents had a summer house in Falmouth. 

After a year in the parks department, he switched jobs in 2018 to work for the DPW water department. “I have nothing but respect for those guys in the water department… I did that for a few years,” he said. “It was dangerous and hard work.”

By this point, he and Debbi had two kids, Mercury and Anson, and a rental house in East Falmouth. He had roots in town but the family was still renting a small house. He and his wife wanted to own something “where the kids could have their own rooms.”

When a job at the Falmouth Housing Authority maintenance department was advertised, he went for it and got it in 2020 even though, he said, “Maintenance wasn’t really my background.”

He took out his DPW retirement to put a down payment on a house near where he grew up. The family moved.

And then one year later, Rogers said, he was told by his boss at the housing authority, “I don’t think this is going to work out.”

Being unemployed was a strange situation, but Rogers and his wife dealt with it. He received unemployment assistance, and his wife had a job working at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in administration. “She started working there making buoys, which is pretty bad ass for a mom,” said Rogers, who described his wife’s current job as “mom-friendly.”

He was home for a bit and had dreams of being a house dad. “I could do this forever,” he thought to himself. “Hang out at home and vacuum. But we knew the money would run out.”

Rogers learned, from his wife, of a job opening at WHOI with the facilities department. “I was able to land on my feet, he said. In 2021, he said, “I got a pretty secure job at WHOI. I was driving trucks. I was driving forklifts. I got to transport the JASON vehicle. How much is that worth, $15 million?”

“I got to handle some pretty cool stuff,” he said. “That job was great and the people I worked with were awesome.”

Meanwhile, there had been another part of his life that had been going on all along: Music promotion.

 

Promoting Music Shows for Two Decades

Ever since his DJ Schwagg days in Colorado, Rogers was interested in the power that music has to bring people together.

Back in Falmouth, Rogers organized his first show when the local hip hop group, Unda Tha Influence, had a CD release party in 2006 at the old VFW building in Teaticket.

“I sold tickets at the door. I hired the bouncers. It was all ages. It was stressful. I didn’t know what I was doing. But I made 300 bucks.”

It was enough to launch him on a couple decade long quest to put on music shows in Falmouth.

When he was managing Sweet Tomatoes restaurant in East Falmouth in 2007 and 2008, he had a stage built and put on shows every Thursday, Friday and Saturday in the restaurant.

He hosted all-ages shows by acts such as Brendan O’Keefe; the Old Silver Band; and Luke James and the Firewater Band, featuring Luke Vose, now of the band, Crooked Coast. He brought down hip-hop performers from Boston, and even put them up at the Carlton Circle Motel. 

“It was so cool,” recalled Vose. “He made a little scene for hip hop artists to connect to an audience. He created opportunities, especially for the younger people in town.”

He brought national touring acts to Falmouth, and then put a local act on the same bill. The idea was to expose the national acts to the local talent, and to put on a show for the music lovers in town.

He worked with the owner of Grumpy’s Pub and put on shows there, including a favorite of his, Zach Deputy.

And then, said Rogers, when new owners  took over the Coonamessett Inn and were looking to put on shows, they recruited Rogers to help. He put on shows there in 2018 and 2019. “Their budget was a lot bigger than what I was used to,” he said.

He brought big acts to Falmouth, including G Love, the Allman Betts Band, Big Head Todd, and the Samples. 

But, said Rogers, “The town wasn’t happy with us.” Live music, he noted, is in a constant battle with what he calls, “the Fun Police.”

And yet Rogers remains involved and committed. In recent years, he has helped organize the increasingly popular CoastFest, a one-day festival of bands put on by Crooked Coast at the Falmouth Bandshell on Falmouth Harbor.

Vose, of Crooked Coast, said, “Rich has done a lot of thankless work to bring national acts to our town… When we decided we wanted to do our own festival, Rich was one of the first people I reached out to. He was basically like, ‘I want to help as much as or little as you want me to.”

 

Insane Tony and a Real Cape Hippie

Back when Rogers was living in New Hampshire, he was dating a girl who went to the University of Vermont. Her roommate was from Falmouth and she was dating a guy named Damien Palanza, also from Falmouth.

“Damien was my cousin” said Bushy. “When Richie and Damien became very close friends, you just knew this was a match made for heaven, or for raising hell. It was just a force of two really strong personalities. Damien was always up for anything.”

While Rogers and Palanza had grown up in the same town, they were two years apart and didn’t know each other well until they attended the 2002 Bonnaroo Music Festival in Tennessee together with their girlfriends.

When they met, “a light went off,” said Rogers. “We’re going to be hanging out a lot.” Palanza was renting a house from his sister in Falmouth Heights and, Rogers said, “I just started showing up every day. We’d hang out, listen to music and drink beer.” They listened to a lot of jam bands, and hip hop, he said.

Palanza was a musician, said Rogers. “He was a great songwriter,” said Rogers, who booked Palanza to play at Sweet Tomatoes.  

They were friends for several years when one day Rogers saw a funny article come through his social media feed. Something about the tone of the article rang familiar to him. The name of the website was The Real Cape.

A short while later, Rogers was over Palanza’s house when he asked, “Are you The Real Cape?”

Palanza asked, “How did you know?”

Rogers knew. Palanza wrote under the pseudonym Real Cape Hippie. Rogers recognized that guy. And the next thing he knew he was invited to be part of The Real Cape.

He began working for The Real Cape, organizing events and writing about music. As Palanza was Real Cape Hippie, Rogers, also worked under a psuedonym. It was a nickname he was given at a Phish Festival when his wife took on the nickname Loopy Lucy. He was Insane Tony.

“I literally have [Rogers] in my phone as ‘Insane Tony,’ said Finn, who remembered The Real Cape.

Rogers and Palanza put out a funny sarcastic website that attracted hundreds of thousands of hits. Most of it was written by Palanza, including a still famous short essay about the start of summer that included their tag line urging everyone thinking about tourist behavior to remember, “Summer people,  some are not.”

One of their pet peeves was what they called, “The Fun Police,” which was essentially any Cape person who didn’t understand what it was like to be young and want to have a bit of fun on the Cape, so they complain about everything.

For instance, they noted, the Fun Police were often opposed to live outdoor music because of the noise. “Once you add music to something, people hate it,” observed Rogers

And yet, one day in early 2014 it occurred to Palanza and Rogers to put on a music festival, and so they did. Twice.

The first year of Real Cape Music Festival, 2014, at the Cape Cod Fairgrounds featured acts like Zach Deputy, and it poured. “It was very depressing but people still showed up,” said Rogers.

The next year, they hired bigger bands for more money, and, as Rogers said, “We made it too big too fast. It was a little bit of an uh-oh moment.” 

Soon after, The Real Cape was out of business.

“It was almost time anyway,” said Rogers. “It had run its course.”

The two friends continued in their careers while remaining in touch in this small town.

Palanza, said Rogers, was a carpenter. “He called himself a jackass of all trades.” And Rogers was on his own path.

One thing they always did together was go camping with a group of friends on Washburn Island every Fourth of July.

There were several groups of people all over the island, said Rogers. “We’d see the same people every year. We wouldn’t try to book their campsites and they wouldn’t book ours. We had cooking contests between the groups… It was so much fun. No worries. Kids everywhere. Dogs running around.”

In 2016, Rogers was on call working for the water department when the annual trip came around. He went to Washburn for the day, even though he was on call, he said. “At the end of the night, I got a boat ride back to mainland. But I wasn’t going to miss the Fourth of July on Washburn.”

As he was leaving, “me and Damien were looking at each other and we gave each other a head nod. I got in the boat and left,” recalled Rogers.

“The next morning, my brother who was a fireman at the time called me. He told me Damien died last night on Washburn. Everyone was hanging out by the fire and when everyone went to bed, he said he was going to stay up and have one more beer by the fire.” He was found in the morning, said Rogers

Palanza’s loss was felt by many in the community. “People waited in line for two hours at the funeral. A tent was put up in the back parking lot of Chapman, Cole and Gleason [Funeral Home], and there was pizza and beer inside it. And then my brother arranged for him to have a police escort to the cemetery.”

Rogers paused. “He would have been amazed to have a police escort and not be in the back seat,” he said with a laugh.

 

“WMVY is hiring.”

“I don’t know why I looked but one day I just looked on the WMVY website and it said they were looking to hire a deejay/producer. I called my wife and said, “WMVY is hiring a deejay.” She encouraged him to go for it.

“I’d been putting together the concerts and music festivals for years. I got experience, but I made no money on it,” So when he finally did put them on a resume, he thought it might help but he admitted, “I thought my odds were very slim.”

When Finn called him to request an interview, Rogers was working at WHOI. He took the call on zoom on his lunch break. A little while later, Rogers was invited to come to the station on Martha’s Vineyard for another interview.

Rogers called in sick to his job at WHOI and then had to walk near WHOI to get to the ferry to Martha’s Vineyard. And he wasn’t exactly stealthy. His normal attire is very casual, but on that day he was in a shirt and tie. 

After the interview process ended with the two-minute story about his brother on stage with Michael Franti, Rogers was hired. “I didn’t have any doubt he was going to be a hard worker and a good, easy guy to work with,” said Finn. “That turned out to be 100 percent true.”

“He’s just unflappable,” said Finn. “You absolutely never see him lose his cool.”

He is the overnight deejay, commuting five days a week on the ferry out of Woods Hole to record his show at the station in West Tisbury.

Rogers is also in charge of the station’s summer concert series, said Finn. In July and August, he said, WMVY puts on one show a week on Martha’s Vineyard and also one a week in Mashpee. 

“He’s carrying a lot of details in his head,” Finn said. “He doesn’t get down. He always has the attitude that he’ll figure it out.”

“One of the things that is great about him compared to many of the people I work with is that they are all talented but not necessarily outgoing. They are shy in certain situations. Rich doesn’t have any of those barriers,” said Finn.

“Two years ago at Beach Road Weekend, MVY had a tent space,” he said. Rogers was looking around when he looked at my wife and said, “Hey Tabitha, isn’t your favorite actor Bill Murray?”

Rogers suggested that Tabitha follow along as they went into the backstage area. “Rich will always say, ‘Act like you belong there,’” said Finn.

“And he walked up to Bill Murray and introduced Tabitha to him,” said Finn. Rogers had never met Murray before, said Finn. But he gave a formal introduction to a longtime fan. It was a highlight moment for her, said Finn.

And while working for the radio station is an everyday highlight for Rogers, he did get to have his childhood dream come true and broadcast a Cape League game. Actually, three Cape League games. “It was a blast,” he said.

 

“He always brings a pizza.”

“His job description for Coastfest is vendor coordinator,” said Vose. “Whenever we’re meeting, me and Rich and Matt Machester (who also helps with Coastfest) and when Rich is coming off a ship, he always brings a pizza. He always wants to bring something to the table.”

Manchester, who coordinates logistics for Coastfest, said he met Rogers 15 years ago when Manchester was 15 years old and working for The Burrito Place. 

“He was a great guy to work for… and he really opened me up to music. He got me into all the jam bands,” said Manchester. 

“The radio job is perfect fit for him,” he said.

Manchester, a third grade teacher at the East Falmouth Elementary School, is also the Adaptive Athlete/Wheelchair Manager for the Falmouth Road Race.

He attributes some of his involvement in organizing events to when he first met Rogers and Palanza, and then helped with the Real Cape Festival. 

“He was taking me under his wing, taking me to shows, and volunteering and helping out with events. It lit a spark for me,” said Manchester.

Rogers has always been helping out people, said Manchester. “I think he is an example of a townie who knows everyone and cares about everyone and is invested in the community.”

And Bushy said, “He embodies what’s best about Falmouth, the welcoming and compassionate and uniquely innovative and cool parts of Falmouth.”

“He’s always been a very nice guy,” said Vose, who met Rogers in high school. “He was a rare sweet good natured person, even back in high school when it was less of a time to be nice and good natured.”

“Rich has so many connections and he is so personable,” said Manchester. He uses those connections and his talent organizing shows to bring the community together, often for a good cause because Rogers cares deeply, he said.

Rogers himself deflects most praise and instead credits his wife Debbi for supporting all of his crazy ideas and events that he puts on. And she does all this, he said, while having a full-time job and operating her own business, Cape Cod Booty.

Back in December, a friend of Roger’s wife died. In March, Rogers organized a music fundraiser for his friend and his friend’s two kids at the Coonamessett Inn, and more than 100 people were there. “He used all his connections to raise money for the family,” said Manchester.

“When he did that event for his friend in the spring, when I think about Rich that is what I think about,” said Manchester.

As Bushy said, “Richie shows up.”

See also, WOMR at 40, An Outermost Tale of Audacity and Tenacity

– Please like Cape Cod Wave on Facebook.

---

** Please support independent local journalism. Thank you! 

See the DONATION BUTTON AT THE TOP OF THE PAGE **

---

Read other Profiles on Cape Cod Wave

All Cape Cod Wave Falmouth stories

For more stories like this, see Longform stories.

---

 

Please see, From Cape Cod Wave Magazine…..

One summer in a beach town on Cape Cod… A Novel From Cape Cod Wave – “You Can’t Sell Right Field”