Vic Bengle (lead guitar, vocals, keyboard, harmonica) and Jim Fitzpatrick (rhythm guitar, vocals) grew up on the same street in Westfield, NJ and started playing guitars together while in elementary school.  Actually, our first guitars were badminton racquets with cutout cardboard in the shape of a guitar taped over them, with twine serving as guitar strings.  Hey if it looks like a guitar, it’s a guitar!  They worked great for lip synching and pretending to play with recorded music in the background.  Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise, we WERE the original Millie Vanilli.  Jim met Dennis Fitzgerald (bass guitar, vocals) while the two attended junior high together.  This is when Jim suckered Dennis into playing bass instead of lead guitar by telling him bass guitarists get all the chicks.  Little did Dennis know that Jim was talking about young hens and not girls.  Jim and Dennis were in a band called The Troupe in high school and college, while Vic was in numerous bands including The Monarchs, The Fire Proof Erector Set, Old Walt Bock, Willow Street, Calico, etc…  What?  You don’t remember The Fireproof Erector Set?

After years of forgetting whom each other was, Jim talked Vic into getting together to potentially form a group of some sort.  There wasn’t any promise of girls (or even chicks), since now it was only the music that mattered.  And after all the years that had passed, who would have believed that stuff anyway (except maybe Dennis)?  In 2004 Jim and Vic began developing a list of songs that they could perform out at local venues (like their kid’s birthday parties, Jim’s house, Vic’s house, Vic’s parents’ house, local establishments with lots of drunks, Madison Square Garden, etc.)   After much reluctance (since all those chicks never materialized), Dennis joined the group in March of 2005. The first gig took place in April, 2005 at a benefit dance for an old friend, Joe Cullinan, who was ill with cancer.  We were more than happy to do it and the response to the band was more than favorable.  Our big break came at The Waterfront Café in Sea Bright, NJ on Memorial Day weekend of that same year.  The reaction was astounding!  People dancing on tables, ripping off bits of clothing, jumping off the pier into the river, and frantically yelling “FREE BIRD!”  Well, the “Free Bird” part is true…….

EXIT 135 can now be seen at a variety of Ocean, Monmouth, and Union County venues performing a wide range of the artists’ songs they enjoy playing and the audience really enjoys hearing (sorry, you’ll have to look at our artists list under “Performing Music” on the web site to find out who the artists are).  Come out and hear it for yourself.  We’re not just an exit ramp off the Garden State Parkway (nobody would come to see us if that were the case, especially in traffic)!  We’re about great songs with great harmonies, great rhythms, great feelings, good times, and good clean fun (well the fun part is true)…. You get the point.  We’re having fun, and so will you! 

You too can book EXIT 135! 

All you have to do is call 732-303-7891

OPERATORS ARE STANDING BY! 

WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR?  DO IT TODAY!