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A Stand-Up Guy
Montclair’s Ty Raney is a techie by day, and a comedian by night
48
MAY 2018 MONTCLAIR MAGAZINE
EVERYONE LIKES TO LAUGH Montclair comic Ty Raney at The Stress Factory in New Brunswick.
“IN SCHOOL, I WAS PROBABLY LABELED THE
CLASS CLOWN. I SPENT A LOT OF TIME IN
SUMMER SCHOOL BECAUSE OF MESSING AROUND,
NOT DOING WHAT I NEEDED TO DO.”
TY RANEY
first-hand experience, too. “In school,
I was probably labeled the class
clown,” he says. “I spent a lot of time
in summer school because of messing
around, not doing what I needed to
do.” He admired Eddie Murphy and
then got into Richard Pryor.
After his 2004 wedding, his wife
Tennille gave him a post-honeymoon
present that moved him a step closer
to being like his idols. “She was
like, ‘Alright, baby, your class starts
next week,’” Raney says. She had
signed him up for a comedy class in
Manhattan. The 1994 Montclair High
School graduate, who credits his wife
as his biggest fan, says the two-month
course at the Manhattan Comedy
School led to his first post-graduation
gig at the famed Caroline’s Comedy
Club in New York.
Since then, he has performed two
or three times a week, including at
private events and as the resident
RANEY;
C
omedians are used to
tough crowds, and
knowing how to win
them over them with
wit and humor.
And then there’s the
time that Montclair native Ty Raney
was going to do his standup with
other comics at Graterford State
Correctional Facility. Located outside
Philadelphia, it is Pennsylvania’s
largest maximum-security prison.
“Graterford Prison had an open
auditorium, like a huge auditorium,”
Raney says. “It looks like an old air-
port hangar. So, when you’re walking
in with the corrections officer, you
have inmates just hanging around
like in a big high school. And they’re
in their regular brown jumpers,
they’re yelling stuff as we’re walk-
ing in. Picture the scene from Rocky
when he’s walking out the tunnel and
you got the crowd. Like I’m Clubber
Lang from Rocky, and nobody likes
Clubber Lang, so they’re all yell-
ing at us as we’re walking through
the crowd making our way down to
the stage. These inmates are giving
us business, like ‘You all better be
funny,’ and ‘You don’t look funny.’”
Raney says that the experience
fueled him to give a great show and
win over the crowd. It also taught
him to never repeat his act, because
on a second visit to Graterford, he
was booed by some of the inmates
for reusing the same material.
Since 2004, the Montclair native,
who still lives in town with his wife
and son, has been pursuing his dream
of being a comedian while working as
a local area network administrator at
a Manhattan firm. Like many in the
business of being funny, Raney came
to his calling by not only looking up
to successful comedians, but through
WRITTEN BY RICARDO KAULESSAR