Joe Matarese's Road Back to Philly

Joe's got tour dates lined up (Medford, Stone Harbor, Hammonton) and Dan's new camera setup is causing mic problems. From there it turns into a real one: Dan lays out his hard "no weddings" rule, the two break down why clients who micromanage after handing over "creative control" are the worst, and Joe compares it to comedians getting told to "just kill it" be...

What South Jersey and Philly used to have — and lost. Comedian Joe Matarese and co-host Dan run down the diners, drive-ins, dance clubs, and hangouts that defined growing up in Cherry Hill and the Philadelphia area, and ask why so much of it disappeared. In this episode: 24-hour diners (Sage, Golden Dawn) traded for car washes and McDonald's, the Cherry Hill and Echelon roller skating rinks, t...

Joe's parents are floating around the Atlantic on a cruise out of Philly and he's more anxious about it than they probably are (no Wi-Fi, no texts back, just one cryptic message about free food in heaven). Before that, Joe runs down his summer tour dates across the Philly/South Jersey corridor, including a new stop at the Eagle Theatre in Hamilton, NJ. Then Joe and Dan tackle the real question of...

Joe just sold out his first intimate venue show in Medford, NJ — and it went sideways in the best possible way. Super fans who knew his social media better than his setlist, a high school ex who showed up for the first time in 40 years with something surprisingly meaningful to say, a legendary Philly broadcaster who doesn't own a cell phone, and a cassette tape Joe handed to a DJ in 1990 that...

Joe Matarese sits down with longtime Philadelphia Inquirer sports columnist and author Mike Sielski — who's written books on Kobe Bryant and the history of the dunk — to talk about his new book Going the Distance , out this November, about the making and the myth of Rocky . They get into why Rocky hit Philadelphia the way it did in the mid-'70s, the Steadicam-prototype magic behind the art...

On this episode, Joe digs into the big summer question: where do you take a beach vacation when you're rolling 13 people deep? The trip is three families under one roof, his wife and her two sisters, their husbands, two kids each, plus his mother-in-law, with kids ranging from nine years old up to his oldest who just wrapped his first year at the University of Tampa. We get into why these trip...

Joe's back for Episode 2 of Road Back to Philly, and this one goes deep into the two characters that defined growing up in Cherry Hill, NJ — the bully and the Damone. If you don't know what a Damone is, producer Dan didn't either, which tells you everything you need to know about the generational divide between South Jersey in the 80s and Utah in 2026.Joe shares three personal bully st...

Joe Matarese spent over 30 years chasing comedy from Queens to LA to Hoboken to Westchester. Now at 58, with his son in college and his daughter four years from finishing high school, he's done the math — and the answer keeps coming up Philadelphia. But it's not that simple. His wife's family is all in Westchester. Their house has nearly doubled in value. And the fans? They've got...