RICHARD SKELLY

Details

Skills

MS WORD, EXCEL, POWERPOINT, Writing, Editing, Interviewing, Proofreading, Data Entry
Teaching, Public Speaking / MC'ing, Radio and TV Script Writing

About

Richard Skelly Biography
166 Manalapan Road
Spotswood, New Jersey 08884
Cell: 732-604-6376
E-mail: RJSkelly@verizon.net

Richard Skelly is a central New Jersey-based journalist, popular music historian, radio producer, farm hand and field surveyor who began his writing career at Rutgers College in New Brunswick, N.J. There, he began writing about contemporary music for The Daily Targum, the country’s second oldest college newspaper.
His arenas of competence include popular music, golf, real estate, agriculture, farming, specialty foods, small business, finance, and the environment. Most recently he worked as a bio-aide / field surveyor for a grant funded program with the NJ Dept. of Agriculture’s spotted lanternfly project. There he became competent using Excel, MS Outlook 365, ARC/GIS Collector and Google Maps applications on a state-issued smart phone. Previously, he worked as a medical courier for [late] Chief Pathologist Dr. Robert Moser at St. Francis Medical Center in Trenton, where various specimens were returned to specialized labs at the hospital and critical billing documents delivered to various agencies and doctors’ offices.
He was a blues, jazz, roots-rock and folk music correspondent for the Asbury Park Press from 1994 to 2019. Currently he writes about jazz, blues, rock ‘n’ roll and folk music for U.S. 1 Newspaper, the business / arts weekly of greater Princeton. His stories about musicians, bands, record producers and recording industry trends have appeared in many national and international magazines, including Goldmine, Sing Out!, Pro Sound News, Folk Roots, Roots World, Folkker, Grammy Magazine, NARAS Journal, Guitar World Acoustic, Music Retailing, Offbeat, The Independent Music Producers’ Journal, Y’all, Hittin’ the Note and The Fort Lauderdale Rag, among other publications. He was a major contributor to several 1990’s book / website projects, including the All Music Guide to Blues, the All Music Guide to Jazz and the All Music Guide. He’s reviewed blues and jazz recordings for Offbeat, the magazine of Louisiana and southern music and currently contributes to Blues Music Magazine.
In the 1990’s he wrote stories for the United States Golf Association [USGA] Golf Journal, Garden State Golf, and for a decade he was a major contributor to New Jersey Golf News and Philadelphia Golfer magazines. Currently he writes for Golfer’s Tee Times.
A 1994 story he wrote about golf songs for the USGA’s Golf Journal led to a recording he compiled, annotated and produced, an 18-track anthology of songs about golf, “Golf’s Greatest Hits.” Released on Private Music / BMG Entertainment in June, 1996, the novelty record received glowing praise from late actor-movie producer Jack Lemmon, earned Skelly a front-page story in Billboard magazine in September, 1996, as well as interviews on syndicated golf radio shows in Tokyo, Las Vegas, Miami and San Francisco and an interview on NJ Public TV’s “Sunday Night with Steve Adubato.”
His environmental stories have appeared in WaterWays: New York’s Waterfront News and Waste Dynamics.
He is host and producer of “The Low-Budget Blues Program” on Thursday nights on WRSU, 88.7 FM, the radio station of Rutgers University in New Brunswick. He has hosted this wide-ranging community affairs musical variety show with frequent guest musicians since he was a sophomore at Rutgers.
Through the 1990’s, he served on the all-volunteer board of the Jersey Shore Jazz and Blues Foundation in Red Bank. Also in the 1990’s, he was a judge in the liner notes category, among others, for the annual American Federation of Independent Music [AFIM] “Indie” awards, an annual competition for independent record companies around the U.S. and Canada.
In the mid-1990’s and early 2000’s, he began making field trips each year to Austin, Texas and New Orleans. He has developed a particular expertise, knowledge of, and friendships with musicians from throughout “the Texas triangle.” He has extensively interviewed hundreds of musicians from this particularly fertile musical region.
In 1997, he began working as a regular contributor to U.S. 1 Newspaper in Princeton, the free business / arts weekly paper for central New Jersey, while working as a database editor and proofreader for Dow Jones, South Brunswick. He writes about music, golf, business and farming for U.S. 1 Newspaper, a.k.a. Princetoninfo.com.
In 2007, he began writing “BlueNotes,” a weekly Friday column focusing on area blues, jazz and roots-rock happenings for the Asbury Park Press, after many years there as a contract contributor.
In 2009, he became senior writer for Golfer’s Tee Times, [Colts Neck] an independently published quarterly magazine focused on Garden State golfers and golf events. From 2010-2012, he contributed stories to Golf Course Industry magazine, a magazine for golf course managers, superintendents, designers and owners.
In 2014, he began writing about farmers and farm issues for The New Jersey Farmer newspaper and organic farming operations and businesses for AcresUSA, an international organic farming magazine based in Colorado. He also contributed stories to Country Folks and Country Folks Grower, regional publications based in New York State. Also in 2014, he was appointed to the advisory board for the annual New Jersey Folk Festival, held every April on the Douglass College campus of Rutgers University in New Brunswick, N.J. In 2023 he began contributing to Edible Jersey, a family of magazines devoted to local farms and local food sources, organic and conventional.

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