Family members, friends and supporters join John Turco, second from left, at a ribbon-cutting ceremony for the Comedy Clubhouse at Corinne’s on Newport Avenue in Pawtucket Friday. On hand for the festivities are, from left, Pat Cochrane, regional manager for Bristol County Savings Bank; Comedy Clubhouse owner Turco; his daughter Olivia, 5; his son, Nicholas, 2; his wife, Jennifer Turco; Corrinne’s owner Jarrod Ilkowitz; and Jack Lank, president of the Attleboro Area Chamber of Commerce.  Times photo/Butch Adams

By JON BAKER

PAWTUCKET  —  South Attleboro resident John Turco insists he adores being “just” another husband and father of two youngsters, not to mention a part-time insurance salesman for a Boston firm.

What he does on weekend nights, however, is quite another story.
Turco, a 37-year-old Norwell, Mass. native, considers himself a rather successful comedian, and he claims he’ll prove it to a packed house at Corinne’s — known locally as “the old Bobby’s Rollaway” on Newport Avenue — at the opening of  “The Comedy Clubhouse” at 8 o’clock tonight.
He’ll have more at stake than just making people chortle. Turco decided a few months back, at the insistence of Corinne’s owner Jarrod Ilkowitz, to help him develop a new comic den.
“Jarrod used to own a heavy-metal bar in Attleboro, and I got hired to do a show there one night in 2001,” he said. “The show went great, and Jarrod and I hit it off right away … When he bought this place two years ago, he approached me about doing something here on a regular basis.
“At that point in time, I had no interest in the business side of comedy. My only goal was to be the best comic I could be,” he added. “Jarrod kept insisting, and he had done such a fantastic job with this place, I decided a few months back that the opportunity was just perfect.
“It was a lot of work, getting this thing off the ground; there were a lot of details, like advertising, printing up flyers, cards and tickets, getting the word out and making sure the logistics would work with dinner packages, etc. The whole idea started slowly, but the last three weeks have been a whirlwind.”
If you’re aiming to purchase tickets for tonight’s event, to take place adjacent to the bar area, don’t bother: It sold out Wednesday afternoon, with 55 patrons choosing the dinner/show package and about the same amount interested in sharing hysteria. However, Turco anticipates more mammoth audiences each and every Saturday night down the road.
(By the way, following tonight’s fete, Rock-A-Blues — a favorite local band consisting of three Seekonkians — will entertain until closing time. The public is invited.)
Turco, the headliner, will join old pals Ace Aceto of Cranston and Ira Proctor of Boston on the three-person slate.
“Ace is very clean and creative, while Ira is more explosive,” Turco stated. “Let’s put it this way: In the past, when I drive home from a show, I’ll be thinking about what Ira said, about being lazy but joining a gym, and I’d laugh half the way back.
“My style? I’m very sarcastic and rather clean, but I’ll keep it at that; I don’t want to give too much away,” he continued. “I don’t want this to be a raunchy kind of place. Our plan is to bring in the best quality acts people have ever seen … I want this to be a neighborhood club where residents of Pawtucket and local communities can come and laugh, and then head home being proud. This is all about bringing the top acts right into everyone’s backyard.”

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Actually, from a rather early age, Turco had designs on chasing a career in sports journalism. Before graduating from Norwell High in 1989, he chose to further his education at the University of Georgia, but it didn’t take long to decide becoming a sports writer/columnist wasn’t for him.
“Honestly, (comedy) was always something I wanted to try,” he said while munching on buffalo wings at the Corinne’s bar late Friday afternoon. “When I was about 12, I used to sneak downstairs, turn the TV volume down low and watch George Carlin. I loved him … When he’d go into a joke, I would say in my head, ‘This is how he’s going to end it,’ and I’d come pretty close.
“I was never the most popular guy in (high) school, or the class clown, but my close friends and I used to joke around, and it was the same way in college,” he added. “I guess they thought I was funny. When I was 19, a sophomore in college, I met a guy who performed in an amateur club on campus called the B Street Comics; they would put on regular shows. I finally got the guts to ask, ‘Hey, can I give it a shot?’
“He said ‘No, but come and watch tonight and get a feel for it.’ I remember it was March of ’91, and I had planned on checking it out, but two hours before the show, a couple of comics had canceled because they were sick, so he called me and said, ‘Do you want to be on?’ I jumped at it.”
He immediately grabbed a pen and paper and jotted down jokes, claiming he had no clue as to how the audience would respond.
“When I got on stage, my first joke just tanked — no one laughed — but I regrouped mentally, on the fly,” Turco said. “They roared at the next one, and I was off and running. The crowd went berserk at the end, and that’s when I knew.
“There are a lot of parallels between comedy and sports,” added the former Norwell football and baseball player, who tried out three straight years for the Georgia baseball squad and nearly made it as a senior. “Before a big show, like a big game, you get butterflies, and you have to mentally prepare. Then there’s the competitiveness, not with the other comics but yourself. In baseball, you want a hit every time up, which is impossible, but you also want to hit on every joke, and that’s impossible, too, but you try.”
After graduating with a bachelor’s in journalism in 1993, he took a job as a reporter for the Norwell Mariner.
“I ended up covering council meetings and stuff like that, and I was bored out of my mind,” he said. “I gave it up after about six months, and started putting everything I had into this.”
For those interested in attending future shows, tickets for dinner (at 7 p.m.) and show cost $30, and performance alone $15. For more information, call Turco at (617) 240-8378.