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The Shark Deck something a little different today. I reached out to Dan Booblitz. He hosts the Art of Bombing podcast. He is a working comedian and I’ve gotten to know Dan and through the show and we sometimes email on the side, And the other day I was like, hey, man, I’m just in the mood to talk about comedy, no agenda. I’ll probably ask you about Chappelle and Chris Rock and then we could just talk about the industry.
And that’s what we did. We went for just about an hour. There is no actual comedy news today. It’s just two fans of the genre talking about comedy and comedians. Dan talks about what goes into putting on a festival, electronic press, kids, life on the road as a comic.
We talked about some famous comedians, some non famous comedians. So it’s just a real casual chat in that podcast kind of style. So here’s my casual conversation with Dan Booblitz.
All right, let’s start with Chris Rock Special.
What’d you think? I haven’t watched it? No way, all right, wait, talk to me fun. I didn’t watch it because I had a gig for one so I was not home. I was doing comedy myself.
It’s hard to be available on the weekends to watch comedy, especially live comedy, when you’re out doing live comedy. That makes sense. But I haven’t had a chance to watch it yet. That’s just I just haven’t sat down and watched it yet. I’ve seen a lot of stuff on the internet, obviously, both good and bad.
I just listened to a recent episode of the Daily Comedy News podcast and the edited version that they put out, or that they’re gonna put out, So now I’m curious what I missed. Yeah, he just flubbed a joke and he’s rolling. The punchline should have been tied back to the movie Concussion, and he misspoken. He said Emancipation, so he’s rolls whatever set up punch and instead of a starring in Emancipation, he gave me a concussion. I flubbed the joke, so they just took that out because he vamped for a few minutes and then circled back and did the punchline properly, so they may have even resequenced it.
I’m never going to watch it again. But it wasn’t like a major catastrophe. He just had a good joke and blew the rhythm of it. That’ll and that happens. That’s live comedy for you.
Yeah, it’s funny. I was watching Kreisher last night and I could tell what do I know? But I suspect it was two performances tied together. It just seemed like he physically was in a very different part of the stage at different points, jumping through time. Again, no harm, it’s a comedy special.
No one is claiming this thing is live. If it’s live, it might have a flub. And if it’s your polished work, it’s the same as a comedy album. Oh absolutely, And that’s that’s why they record a lot of times. When we do specials, they record more than one.
I’ve been to recordings of other comedians and I’ve had a special record in myself the same thing. My special was too. They did two tapings. I think they used most of the footage from one rather than other. But it’s good to have that extra footage just in case something happen.
I can’t string it together. I don’t even put out this podcast raw. I love a story and I go back and I clean it up. I can’t just put this out. Yeah exactly, all right, So as a working comic.
You’re not home at Saturday night at ten o’clock watching Chris Rock. That makes a lot of sense to me. Are you in the other comics talking about it? You don’t care? You got your own stuff going on for me.
Sometimes these specials like will come up and people will talk about especially within comedy. Most of the stuff I see is comics talking about it, not so much as in person, and that’s they probably are talking about it at like open mics and things like that. But like a lot of the gigs that they do, you’re only working with one or two other comics. It’s not like going to a showcase in New York where all the people are they like, all the comics are there. I’m doing gigs on the road where and especially if it’s like a corporate gig, then I’m probably by myself.
How many corporate gigs do you do? And explain everybody what a corporate gig is? Please? So it varies throughout the year, I’m trying to do more and more of corporate gigs. The corporate gigs are gigs that I guess.
Sometimes they are open to the public, depending on what it is, But a lot of times you’re performing for an organization of some sort. The company might be a holiday party. That’s the biggest form of corporate comedy, usually happens around the holidays. They want entertainment for their Christmas parties, things like that. One of the most recent gigs that I did, I performed for the smaller towns Chamber of Commerce their annual meeting and awards show or awards ceremony.
So they do a big annual meeting where they take care of some business, but it’s mostly just a dinner and giving away awards, and then they have entertainment, and so I was the entertainment. So I go in there and perform mostly clean comedy. That’s the other thing with corporate comedy, it’s you’re usually working very clean and then I just go in and do an hour of entertainment. And a lot of times with corporate gigs, the main difference is that you’re the only comedians, So there’s not like there’s no progression of warming up an audience. You’re just going up cold after whatever.
If they’ve been sitting through. Now, is this a scenario where we’re all sitting there, I need to see a comedian or is it the horror show of I’m also eating lunch. It varies. Some corporate gigs, that’s the case where they you know, that’s very well what it could be. In this last case, no, they knew there was going to be entertainment.
They advertised it to all the people that were going to be there. They did marketing, so people knew that was coming and that was part of the event. It wasn’t just a surprise, Oh hey, now we’re going to do some comedy. Keep eating your lunch because you got to get back to work or something like that. And did they set these up properly?
Is there a stage or a riser, or is it like you’re giving a best man toast. It depends on how that really, I think relies on the comedian booking the corporate gigs and how many questions you ask and what you require. This last gig we had, there was a stage, there was a microphone. I brought a light kit just in case, which we ended up using too, because they knew it was going to be essentially in a convention center, which in a hotel. But it’s really just depends on how many questions you ask and are prepared for, especially with corporate comedy.
You need to do that because a lot of the people that book comedy for these kind of events their event planners, but they’re not entertainment bookers or they’ve never put on our comedy producers, they’re not they’ve never put on a show, so they don’t know what to do. So it’s our job to ask those questions and make sure that we help them set us up for success. And one thing that with corporate comedy for me that’s been helping a lot is that I have in the last year, I started working with a corporate booking manager who is helping me find these gigs, but then also going through the contracts and making sure we’re set up to have a good show. Do you set up gigs? Where I’m going here is I’m a big Bob Hope fan and I’ve study a lot of his career and when Hope would do USA tours, they would feed him local stuff that General Johnson thinks he’s really good at tennis, so Hope would come out and do the right at TA tat, like, hey, yeah, I saw General Johnson over at the tennis court today and get a laugh just out of that.
Having no idea what the joke even meant but he knew what to do. Yeah, I don’t do that. I’m sure there are comedians that will try to do that. It really depends and what they want to because in a scenario like that’s where they really want you to. They want to have more participation with whatever company it is and the people and the inside humor, if you will.
But that’s not really my thing. I’m not really improv or right at the right jokes for a particular event, that kind of thing, unless something comes to mind, like I’d make some jokes of this particular event that I was at because this town. I’ve been stranded in this town before, and it’s a very small town. I got stranded because I got caught in a blizzard on my way back home from a gig. So I made jokes about that and how I was glad that I got to come on my own free will, that kind of thing.
All right, let’s switch gears and talk Chappelle. I recently caught a lot of flak on YouTube. I took a clip from the podcast and I made a YouTube short out of it, and I titled at something like, Dear Dave Chappelle, why do you want your legacy to be the trans guy. And what I mean with that is Dave is probably the best and up comic right now. He has something to say with capital letters there, and yet if he were to suddenly pass away, the second paragraph of his own bit is going to be about the trans community.
And I don’t understand why Dave keeps going there? Where With Dave these days, I feel like he’s going there because he can. I feel like it’s more of an egotistic thing. It’s that he the more somebody tells him he can’t do something, the more he’s going to lean into it because he’s where he is and knows that he can get away with it. That’s what I think on that, because he is a great comedian, and why that’s what you want to lean in on, I just don’t get it.
It’s like, you’re right, he has an amazing legacy, an amazing body of work, and why tarnish that with that? And Jervais kind of takes the same approach of if you tell me I’m not going to say it, I’ll double down on it. But Jervais does it for twenty seconds. Yeah, Yeah, he doesn’t do it like with every performance, or maybe he does, but it is it’s wild to think about that, how you do have this body of work and then that’s what you want to go in on. And I just don’t.
I just don’t get because at that level, he isn’t at the very top of the comedy food chain. He is at the top of this pyramid, and he could say a million different things to change the world, and instead of using his platform for something like that, he’s choosing to You can’t tell me not to say that. I’m gonna say it anyway, Well said there. I keep thinking if he puts out another Netflix special, there’s only two paths. Now.
It’ll either be, well, what did Dave say about the trans community? Or the story will be that he didn’t address the subject, which will become its own story, which gets back to my premise of this is you’ve turned into being the trans jokes guy and I don’t get it. Yeah, I don’t understand it either. Again, he’s at the top of the chain, one of the best in the business, and for this to be what you want to be remembered for is wild. So you’re out there on the road, who’s aside from yourself, We’ll talk about you, but who’s out there that we need to get to know, who’s good out there that’s under the radar, or even if it’s a name, who are you digging these days?
Oh, there’s a lot of comics that are under the radars, especially in the Midwest, because there are so many great comedy scenes throughout the country. I currently lived just outside of Denver, which has a tremendous comedy scene. Let’s put comics out like Sam Talent, Adam Caton halland and the Grolics, and they’ve all went on to do great things and they still kind of live in the area too, I think. But I lived in Minneapolis. A lot of great comics up there as well.
Some of my favorites doesn’t live in any of those markets, lives in a smaller market. Nathan Holtz is a fantastic comedian that nobody’s probably heard of. He based out of suit Falls, South Dakota, and he’s hilarious and charming and does all the all. He’s just so great on stage, but nobody probably way knows who he is because he’s just working it out. He does a lot of road gigs, one night ers and then the corporate comedy that kind of thing.
It’s interesting how it’s changed now too. It’s no longer the eighteen year overnight success like a Dane Cook, or the plus and minuses of people hating on Dane. Hey, he figured out my Space before you did, too bad, But he had also been a working comic. It wasn’t like he graduated high school and put out a my Space page and became super famous. But you know, on the other hand, we’ve got TikTok comedians now and the short cuts there when you factor in some of the platforms Instagram particular, how you look might factor in a little bit more now this is show biz.
How you look always has factored in. Let’s about that again. Not to dump on Dane, but nice looking guy. It doesn’t hurt, right, not at all. So how is it these days as a touring comic?
Is it I’ll do my eighteen years and then I’ll get to play theaters or it’s the window now three years? Where is it now? I don’t know that there is a window necessarily, like as far as like a timeline, I think it’s really up to the comic and how they choose it to be. I mean, with especially with social media. One thing that I’ve seen.
I know a lot of comedians, a lot of friends that have done really well on TikTok have been able to gain followers from that, and then that has propelled them to open for bigger comedians and get bigger gigs and things like that. And it’s because they took the initiative to sit down and not just sit down, but think out of content to put out, whether it was stand up clips or just doing funny reactions or whatever it might have been, and taking the time and dedication to make these videos and then consistently putting them out there, because that’s one thing with social it’s not so much what you’re putting out, and obviously you want to put out good quality because if you’re putting out bad jokes all the time and bad comedy, that’s gonna leave a distaste and people’s mouths and they’re not going to want to work with you unless they think you’re doing a bit. You know, so the media, it will work in your favor. But a lot of what I’ve noticed is it’s consistency and having that motivation to do it. And I as a comedian, I don’t put out nearly enough content.
And when I see another comedian blow up, and I know that they’re putting in the work. I’m just like respect, you’re doing what I’m just too lazy to do. I can’t be mad at you for sitting down and doing this because you’re creating your own path. And that’s what’s great about the Internet and social media now is in entertainment is that our careers are our own hands. Used to be a scenario where you had to go maybe do an audition or get discovered by some kind of industry folk, and then they had to give you the past to put you on TV or whatever it might have been, and then you would start blowing up.
Now you can just be a creator, put stuff out on your own and blow up and play the game by yourself. I have another great friend, Zoltan, another great comedian who he did a dry bar comedy special. It went really well, and he puts out a lot of content. He has his own fan base pretty much, and he goes and does a lot of his own shows and sells out because he’s doing his own thing. The dry bar stuff is a really interesting and they’re putting out clean comedy which doesn’t always get the media attention.
That’s the opposite dirty comedy. Blue comedy, I guess would be the tot. Blue comedy would be the term. But yeah, they’re doing interesting things. Talking about internet videos, I’ve seen an increasing amount of newbies putting out quote unquote stand up that is clearly shot in their living room where maybe they hung a curtain behind them so there’s no crowd.
It’s not it’s the weirdest thing. It’s just like telling two jokes. I know lately on the podcast, I’ve been busting into my very halfass Mitch Hedberg, but I’m doing it for fifteen seconds and clearly not taking it seriously. If I start putting out videos of me and my basement here as fake Mitch Hedberg, come kill me. Yeah, I think that is funny when comics, and to me, that’s probably somebody who wants to try stand up but isn’t brave enough to actually go try stand up, so they’re doing it like in their comfort zone.
But and then to put it on on the Internet. I don’t know. That’s wild. Yeah, it’s weird. On the incubation scene, I do feel like Austin is happening, and the Rogan verse Joe, I feel like he’s dragged that city uphill by himself and created this reputation that it’s a comedy hotbed, and you do seek like clearly if you go on Joe Rogan’s podcast, it’ll help your career.
But that has spilled over into things like kill Tony moving down there, and there’s just this whole ecosystem that’s very fascinating to watch it a very cool way. I love it. You get to know a lot of comedians out of there. But I feel like Austin is happening. Oh yeah, I think so too.
And you see it especially like you said, not just because you know that it formed like a whole migration during the pandemic, A lot of comics that were doing stuff in La moved out there. You brought up kill Tony Well, that used to be a Comedy Store podcast to say they did it. That’s where they did it. Every week was at the Comedy Store unless they were on tour. Right now, it’s moved to Austin, and the whole production team.
Brian Redbrand, who was one of the producers and one of the hosts on that podcast, he moved to Austin. I have other friends that are people that I started with in comedy. Brian Simpson is a good example. He’s been blowing up. He’s been on a couple different podcasts down there, and I think he now moved down to Austin as well, and he works with Rogan is open for Brogan does his own stuff.
Incredible comedian, but moved out there. I know some other people that I used to work with in southern California that have all moved out there, and now it’s like really booming. And I just saw that his new comedy club just opened up, which that’s gonna even further it, I’m sure. Yeah, especially early here. I was listening to Rogan’s pod earlier today where he had Kreischer on and Kreischer played the club, and Ron White’s been hanging out there.
So it seems like that could be a place where on a Tuesday Wednesday night you might see some heavy hitters. It might be a place where you hit town. He’d played Joe’s Club, you do Joe’s podcast, and maybe you’d do a theater show on the weekend. You could really one stop shop and hit a lot of avenues there. It’s really cool.
Oh absolutely, And they already they already had a pretty good scene, and they’ve had some They had some really good comedy festivals in Austin prior to all this, and that’s just kind of like you said, that’s just incubating it and making it even a better scene. Yeah, the Moontower Festival, even when they were on their own before they teamed up with Just for Laughs, was huge, and that lineup is starting to approach Montreal. It can’t underestimate the Netflix. What’s that. Netflix is a joke?
Thank you. Netflix is a joke in lac That’s why I can’t put these things out raw and they’re not doing that this year. But Moontower is right up there and a different part of the country. Like for me, it’s super easy to go to Montreal, hop in the car straight up by eighty seven, a couple hours drive, not bad. You have something else in Austin.
Those are two major ones, and then you throw Netflix in there. We’ll love three really great comedy festivals. Oh yeah, absolutely absolutely. And it’s just like and the same thing happened over in Nashville too, because the pandemic really did push people out of California for as far as entertainers, and they went. Nashville is another example of kind of a place that kind of got incubated because there’s some pretty big names that live in and around Nashville.
I think that’s where Theo Vaughan ended up going. Steve Byrne moved to Nashville. Nate Bargaski was already out in that area. Same with Dusty Slay. So you like already have some of these comics that are already great that we’re there, and then more moving in there.
Dusty is so awesome. I want to see Dusty Pop. He’s out there. He’s had a few videos go viral. He’s got a great bit about it’s five o’clock somewhere.
If you haven’t seen it, stop listening to this podcast and go do that right now. But I really want to see Dusty Pop. He’s fantastic. He is fantastic, and he’s really nice guy. I’ve met him a couple of times.
He did my podcast during the pandemic actually, and we’ve emailed back and forth and stuff, and just a really nice guy. And that’s one thing that I love about the comedy is when you see these people who are blowing up that they’re still humble and they’re just nice people. In addition, to being very talented. They have that. I’m also a nice person, because you know, there’s a lot of crummy people in the world, and he’s working clean and Nate’s working clean.
We’re seeing more and more of that. I’ve told this story on the pod before. When I first met Foxworthy, he explained to me that he was a normal speaking comic dropping in curse words as we say, swear words every now and then, and he decided not to do it. And he remember, he held out his hands and he said, and then I picked up the kids and the grandmas, and his audience just got bigger. So it’s interesting to me to see more and more clean comics out there.
And then conversely, I don’t mind swearing in comedy. I do appreciate somebody who can crush wall clean. But I teach a college class and I have often illustrated and I will do it here. I’m going to use a word that is a synonym for cat and I’m going to bleep it out. But Dan is going to hear what I actually say.
But I’ll say to the kids, I could just do the joke. So I punched her in the bleep and it gets a laugh out of the college kids. I didn’t even set anything up. I just said something vile. Yeah, that’s exactly it too.
That’s why I don’t have a preference if people use profanity, and a well placed profanity can really highlight and really sell the joke, it can make it that much better. But one thing in comedy is often the profanity becomes the punchline, and that’s a sign of weak writing. It becomes either a crutch or the punchline. And if your profanity these the punchline, then your comedy is not that great to begin with, and you’re not a strong writer.
And now when you see comics like day Borgatsky, you’re Dusty Slay, who are do…
They’re not just funny and talented performers, but they you can tell that they’re a good writer because they’re not relying on a profanity for the punchline. And you might watch an entire hour of Nate and not even realize that he’s working clean. He’s good writing, like you said, Yeah, And that’s one thing for me that I and I’ve had people come up to me. Working in the Midwest, you end up working in a lot of bars, and there’s a lot of bar shows and things like that, and I’ve worked in any of them, and I primarily I worked clean. I don’t label myself as a clean comedian.
I just say I’m a comedian. But I’ve evolved into working as a clean comedian. It wasn’t necessarily I decided that I’m going to be a clean comedian. I just evolved that way because of great mentoring that I had early on, and so that’s just how I started writing. And so sometimes as a clean comedian, working in bars can be very difficult because they want more the low brow, blue humor.
But one thing that I’ve encountered, and in more on more than one occasion, people will come up to me after the show and they’ll say, Hey, I really appreciate that you were You were clean, You didn’t use any profanity, You didn’t you weren’t dirty. You you did your jokes. They were really funny. I could have brought my whole family to this show, even though it’s in a bar. I could have brought my whole family.
I could have brought my grandma to this show and it would have been fine. And anytime somebody comes up to me after a bar show and says that to me, I’m just like, I’m doing it right then, because that’s amazing to me. So that’s really interesting to me. I never thought about the concept of a bar show. So I would imagine like a comedian like Jimmy Carr, who can just bang really quick zings at rapid fire, would do really well.
But somebody doing some more storytelling or taking longer to go or clever wordplay probably doesn’t work in that setting, right, Yeah, it depends on how it all boils down to the marketing of how the show’s being marketed. Is it being marketed as a stand up comedy show? When people come through the door, do they know they’re going to a comedy show? And if they do, that gives them the mindset to be ready for comedy, whether it’s quick one liners or storytelling. They’re in the mindset for comedy, so they’re gonna it’s gonna you’re gonna have a little more leeway with a crowd.
Now, if it’s what I call hijack comedy, where there’s just people in a bar and then suddenly a comedy show is starting, and they had no idea that there was going to be a comedy, and they just came to watch the local sports team and drink some beers at their favorite watering hole. It goes a total opposite direction. That sounds like a nightmare. That is a nightmare, all right. One of my pet peeves is podcasts that in the middle of a conversation just drop at a commercial without taking a proper break.
So this, my friend, is a proper break. Dan. I brought a prop. The listeners think I make this up. Tell everybody, what’s what I’m holding here?
If you’re holding the famous iced coffee, that’s right, big iced coffee. It is a large iced coffee. I went to the National Donuts chain and I bought a large iced coffee with milk and caramel. I don’t lie, no, not at all. I’m witnessing it.
I saw with my own two eyes. Well, I made Coffee dot COM’s last Daily Comedy News talk to me about the back of the room, and from my time programming Serious XM, I think I caught the same disease as a lot of comics, where I will listen to comedy and I don’t laugh. And I know that makes me sound like a psychopath, but you may understand where I’m talking about you. I might be in the back of the room watching you and go, oh man, Dan is crushing it tonight. That was hilarious.
Oh what a great callback. Those hilarious Oh man, this is so funny. But I’m thinking it in that tone instead of laughing my ass off like a normal person would talk to me about that. In that scenario, you’re watching comedy as as a person in the industry, and we all do that. It’s the same as a comedian.
I do that as well. In fact, sometimes I can take it a step further where I can see somebody do a joke and I’m you know, I see the whole audience laugh at the joke, and to me, I don’t think the joke was that great or it didn’t hit me in the same way it hit the audience. But I can look at it and understand why it did well, Like I get why the audience laughed at that joke and why they thought that was a great joke, and then at the same time be like I didn’t like it. Yes, it’s that technical analysis of Oh, I see what that tag did there and got everybody back into circle on it. I’m trying to remember.
It was years ago. I was at the Chicago just for Left Chicago, and I’m trying to remember who it was. And it might have been Pussane, it might have been Pattent, I can’t remember, but I remember sitting there with my host Mark and we had seen like fifteen shows in thirty six hours, something like that, and I felt like I could see the matrix how we used to do in grammar school map out a sentence, and I’m like, oh, I can see all right, premise based in truth, exaggerated version of the thing that was originally true callback And I’m like, I’m watching it. I’m like, I see where you’re gonna go. I know what the next beat is.
I know what the next beat is. And it totally took me out of the show because I felt the famous meme where you know Charlie from It’s Always Sunny, He’s like graphing things out like I could see that in my head. I could totally see the act scripted out, even though I didn’t know what the words were. It’s terrible, it is. I do that all the time.
I produce a comedy festival. I’m one of the producers for a comedy festival, and a lot of times I’m working at the doing stuff with the festival, so I can’t watch a lot of the shows, but when I do, it’ll be the same thing. I go into that analytical mut mode, or even any comedy show, and people after the show be like, well, what’d you like about that show? Who is your favorite? And I’m just like, I don’t even remember any jokes, you know, if they’ll say, what was your favorite joke of the nine I was too busy analyzing it from a technical standpoint that I don’t even remember.
Yeah, I know a lot of people don’t understand when you work events, you’re actually working events and not hanging out attending shows. I used to do Comic Con radio, and everybody wanted to get on my team and go out to San Diego for Comic Con. I’m like, you don’t understand. These are fifteen hour days. We’re not sitting there buying merch We’re working.
Everybody was still a fun event, though, Oh it was great. It’s one of my favorites. I’ve got a picture of the entire cast of The Walking Dead right as that show was going to become super popular. In a season three and the Governor’s there and everybody’s there. It’s one of my favorites.
That’s awesome. Yeah, do you remember what year that was? It was the season that the governor was the villain. Okay, I’ll have to look back because I probably lived in San Diego, and there’s a chance I was there too, because I was an early on on that. I had fun moments.
We were in We had a room in the back and Andrew Lincoln needed to go to the bathroom. He’s like, where’s the bathroom? The one right here’s broken and he’s like, there’s an ext one. I’m like, you’ll have to go out on the floor. I’m not sure you wanted.
Let’s go. So I accompanied mister Lincoln to the men’s room in the middle of the floor and we made it there safely for lack of a better term, And on the way out, everybody noticed, Hey, it’s Rick Grimes and we’re at comic cons. So he starts getting swarm and I had to turn into some sort of half aass security slash public says, Hey, Andrew would love to hang out with you right now, but he’s gotta go. Come on, Andrew, we gotta get back to the thing, and just kind interference for it. But he was like cool as anything.
Oh yeah, that’s awesome. Yeah. I couldn’t imagine trying to be our being a celebrity in an event like that. Just from being at those events, I’ve seen like Kevin Smith walking through the halls and people just go crazy and start like running towards them. And I’ve seen other celebrities and I’m just like, I don’t want to be that person.
Now I want to be that person, but I’m going to be restraints somebody who produces events you don’t have to name names, but I find the big stars are usually super cool and super chill, and it’s the newbies or people that have had five minutes of fame or just getting their first taste of showbiz they tend to be the major pain in the ass. In my experience, I haven’t had that experience yet, so everybody that I’ve worked with has been pretty good. I haven’t really had to work with anybody super difficult, which has been amazing because you’re always worried that’s gonna happen. You know that you’re gonna you’re gonna start working with this one comic that is going to be way more difficult than they need to be. But fortunately for us and the events that I’ve been involved with, I haven’t found that yet.
I have found that, I guess, not so much with the celebrity headliners, but once in a while one of the comics that aren’t at that level can be a little difficult, or they’re on a showcase and they think they’re way bigger than they are a thing. But and even then it was pretty mild compared to what it could have been. You’re lucky. Yeah, it’s usually that middle kind of person that once all the brown m and m’s removed, and then the biggest stars in the world to come and to be like, yeah, hey, no cool, I’m chill here. Oh yeah, absolutely, And that’s really what it is.
We had. Dennis Reagan was one of our headliners, not this last year, but the year before had our comedy festival. He was only doing one show, he was closing out the festival. He came for the whole festival and just hung out. Like he went.
He went to dinner with other comics that were there on the other showcases. He came to the other shows. He ended up participating in a game show that we were doing because somebody couldn’t do it, and he filled in and just was super chill and just hung out the whole weekend. It was amazing. I was very surprised because I just assumed you’re gonna come fly in, do your show, fly out.
Nope, he wanted to come for the whole festival, which was amazing. That’s awesome. When do you start working on a festival, probably ten minutes after the festival ends, you start working the next one. We usually give ourselves a little bit of a breather, but even so, we already as soon as one festival is over, before it’s even over, we’re already talking about what’s happening next year. You know, we’re getting an idea of Okay, what’s working this year, what’s not, what do we need to change for next year?
Because we’re always trying to improve our festival as well. We really believe in continuous improvement and wanting to strive to be better and better, so we think about those things early on. But yeah, almost as soon as we’re done, we start planning the next one. We might take a week month, but even within that week and month, we’re still having some casual conversations about the next year. It’s not a complete break.
How do you go about identifying talent? I’m sure budget factors. In my experience in radio audio podcasting has always been played the hits, which is why I mentioned Joe Rogan in the episode titles three four times a week. I’m open about that, but it does get the downloads. I’m sure if you would like to have a festival, sure, Dave Chappelle and Joe Rogan and Bill Burrow are headliners, but maybe they don’t fit in budget wise, So what’s the matrix they’re figuring out?
Who’s the right comic to top this thing? So for us, because we’re a very small festival and we’re in a smaller market too, and everything is on budgeting, we’re also a nonprofit. We’re a five O one three seed nonprofit and our money that we get in and we get sponsorships and we try to get some grants and things like that, but the net proceeds that we make from this festival after our expenses, we donate to local charities. So we’re a charity working for other charities, and that’s always been our business model, and because of that, we do have a tremendously smaller budget than most festivals. We don’t have all the money that we can just throw at headliners.
So when we’re looking at headliners for our festival, we try to see who’s within our budget. And really a lot of it too is do we have a personal connect can we go around their management? Because one thing that I found and I get why they do it, they’re looking out for their client. They’re all looking up for them because how they get paid based on what their clients getting paid. They so they want to make sure their clients getting the most amount of money they can.
It’s a business. Think totally understand it. But for a small indie comedy festival without big budgets, sometimes that’s hard to I can’t drop fifty grand for one night for a comic, it’s not feasible. We’ll never make our money back on That doesn’t matter how big of a comedian they are, because now we’ll even try to make that we need to find a facility that would hold enough people in the area.
And then to get that facility, you’re probably looking at another ten fifteen…
So there’s all those things that end up. So we look at that if we can get like a personal connect or if people have recommendations and things like that. One thing that we’ve also encountered which has been great is sometimes headliners contact us they’re okay, I would love to be involved in your festival. And I’ve been in comedy for almost thirteen years, and I’ve been producing shows and festivals almost as long. I think the first festival that I produced was maybe four or five years after I started comedy, So I’ve been producing festivals for quite a while, and so I’ve made a lot of connections throughout the years.
And I’ve seen a lot of comedians who’ve done these other festivals, who were just coming up, who are now a lot bigger comedians, and so I have these personal relationships too with them too. So it’s a little easier for me to reach out and say, Hey, I know you’re at this level and you deserve a lot of a lot more money, but would you give us a deal and if so, what do you have to come to our festival. That kind of a little bit of negotiation power there. But there’s a lot of different things that we have to factor in to it. This last year we had Jackucation headline, and I knew she was doing a lot of festivals.
She was gracious enough to do my podcast, shameless Plug, the Art of Bombing podcast. She was, now, Yeah, tell everybody what it is, because it’s really cool. Yeah, So yeah, yeah, that’s it is. It’s called The Art of Bombing. It is a comedy podcast where I talk to other comedians about their worst times on stage.
I get them to share their most horrible times on stage and they share all kinds of bombing stories and then we talk about what they learn from it. So if you’re a comedian and you’re aspiring to get better, there’s that angle where there’s a lot of insight that’s coming from comedians of all levels. It’s not just people who’ve been doing it for twenty thirty years. It’s comedians it might only been doing it for six months, and all the way to comedians who have been doing it for thirty years. Because I think everybody brings something different to the table, and we all have different perspectives and there’s something to be learned from everybody else.
So there’s that angle. But then there’s also the stories because They’re very entertaining to listen to a comedian talk about a time they did really bad and try to relive that memory. Sometimes it’s like therapy. They’re like, I don’t want to redo this, but here we are. So yeah.
So it’s a great podcast. It’s called The Art of Bombing Podcast. Jackie was on it. I was able to have Louie Anderson on it before he passed away. Rip to a legend.
But anyway, going back to the story with Jackie, she did my podcast and then we happened to be at the same festival. She was headlining a festival that I got into down in Texas, the Plane Comedy Festival, and she did her podcast live there and I went to it. And I had met her at a show here in Colorado. She headlined a club around here and I went to the show and so kind of had a little bit of a FaceTime with her, talk just a little bit. Then she did the podcast.
Then we’re at this festival, and so I just asked her. I just said, Hey, who do I contact about potentially having you do this festival? I told her I had this festival, and I said, who do I need to talk to? And so you can talk to me right now. She gave me.
She said, here’s my email, reach out to me and we’ll hash it out. And so I did.
And then after and it was amazing because after we hashed out, the negotiated…
I’m not anti representation. Everybody should be paid what they’re worth. But if you want to do a project, if you and I agree, like, hey, would it be cool if we worked on this thing together. We’re really excited about it. And you and I have agreed to ten thousand dollars and your manager comes back and ask for a million, there’s no middle there.
I can’t meet you at five hundred grand. If you come back with twenty, there’s a number we can meet. And it might not be fifteen, it might be closer to the twenty but when you come back with these crazy ass it just totally kills deals.
And also on the corporate side, it can kill the opportunity for the future be…
Again, people should be fairly paid, but sometimes as artists they just want to do things. Yeah. Yeah, And if they can do things and still make a little bit of mone doing them, that’s even to them. They’re even more excited about that, because, especially in comedy, there’s a lot of things in your career as you come up that you have to do for zero, very little to zero moneies. Yeah, that’s the other thing.
I used to get back to the office and be all cranky, and I’d be like, you know, meanwhile, so and so is gonna be up and down on the four train all night hitting spots for eight bucks if that? Yes, exactly, exactly. So as part of your festival, you were doing a thing yourself. You were explains to it. You were doing this ep K thing electronic press kit, and I thought it was really interesting, And that was one of the things when I poked at you a couple of months back to have you on, So what were you doing?
Explain to everybody what the ePK is, Why do you have it? What was your panel? EPK, like you said, stands for an electronic press kit, and it can be used in a variety of different ways. What I’ve found over the years is that a lot and even when I was early on, I didn’t know what it was. And that’s part of why I started learning about it is a lot of comedians don’t know what an ePK stands for, let alone what it is.
They don’t and then when you tell them it’s an electronic press kit, what’s that? That’s what my workshops as I teach comedians and know other people that want to take the class, other types of artists, what an ePK is, what they should put in it, how it should be used, because it can be used for a variety of different things, and it can come in a variety of different forms. Technically, a website could be considered an electronic press kit because it should have the same things that are in a press kit. But typically for a comedy, you use an electronic press kit to help with booking and has all your promotional materials. So it’s a way to sell yourself to, whether you’re selling yourself to a client for a corporate gig or a comedy booker, a comedy club, or a producer.
And then if they decide to work with you, it has all the materials that they need to promote you on that show. So it’ll have your head shots, it’ll head bio, should have some video, and then there’s a whole variety of other things that can be included that are an optional that I go more in depth on the workshop, But yeah, I just found that a lot of comedians didn’t know what that was. And so we’ve talked previously and I said that I’m all about getting better together and trying to help people grow and as comedians. So I seen that there was this missing piece and I wanted to help other comedians. So I started teaching a workshop on it.
And I try to keep the prices when I do it very affordable. I charged twenty five or thirty dollars for two to three hour workshop. It’s something like that, So I try to keep it pretty reasonable. But after people take the class, they can go build their own ePK. They don’t need to pay somebody else to do it.
They can do it themselves and then manage it themselves. So that’s what that’s all about. I think that stuff is so important. When I was a big, fancy radio executive, I would explain to people, I’m a nice enough person and I want to check out your stuff, But I would get pitched all day, every day. Every now and then there would be a Friday afternoon where maybe I had completed the task for a week and I would finally get to what I lovingly called the pile, and I would back in the day play your CD or listen to your demo tape or whatever.
And if you didn’t have your stuff together, if it didn’t just look good, even though I work in an audio industry, if you sent me a CD with you had written Dan Boublitz and Sharpie on it, as opposed to getting it professionally labeled, it mattered a nice picture of you, a nice press kit. What am I looking at? What do you want?
And then, in the unlikely event I hit play, you had seriously four seconds to…
And it was just so you get these at bats, and you’ve got to nail them. So your stuff has to be on point. Oh yeah, absolutely, and that’s something with you. You mentioned press kits, because that’s what it used to be. You used to have to physically put these together and then send them through snail mail to bookers and producers and radio people and all that stuff.
And that’s where the electronic comes in. Now it’s something you know, hopefully can just send a link to or email or whatever. And technology has definitely helped with sending out the press. Kids. There was insanity back of the day, the Fox Network.
Their promotion budget must have been insane. So again, I was at Serious and anytime they had a new show, they would mail everybody at Serious a DVD screener, but also some swag. It’d be a T shirt for the new show. I remember for the Simpsons Halloween special, they would send out a bowl of candy to everybody, but we’d all have it and I’d be like, Okay, let’s talk about this. So you’re in La, put together this press kit, you get the candy together, it goes on a FedEx truck, it goes on a plane.
The plane flies to New York to JFK. Somebody loves it, goes to a truck. The truck comes to forty nine Street and Broadway. Somebody brings it upstairs to the mail room and finally hits my desk, and I eat the snickers and I probably don’t even watch the screener. And I was like, oh my god, the amount of money and time and energy.
And then when that quickly changed too, here’s your agin if you’d like to watch the screener. No more candy, no more T shirts. I had so much swag there for five ten years. We also used to get when DVDs were a thing, people would send out review copies of box sets, and I had so much stuff that, like, I couldn’t even keep it anymore. It’d be like, I’m never going to watch the complete series of six feet Under, Hey, Dandy, you want it?
No, I got a copy of it too. It was just insane. Wow. Yeah, I suppose in a situation like that, when you finally get rid of it, it’s I guess we’re taking a trip to Goodwill or something like that. Yeah, I hopefully nobody’s listening.
Probably no one is listening. But I donated them to the active soldiers because you’re in the middle of the desert and you have nothing to watch. So the complete series of six feet Under is a welcome gift. My mother was involved with a charity there, so I would run everything through Mom and I’d be like, here, donate this, don’t ask questions.
And then the general wanted to send a thank you letter.
I’m like, no thank you letter, because if the thank you letter comes in, then people are gonna ask questions and there’s going to be no more DVDs. So we just did that on the slide because it was that or the garbage can. I’d rather yeah, and a soldier watched the way better alternative than the garbage can. So, as an ePK expert, let me ask you this because this has bothered me, probably since I was a young child. Why does every comedian headshot have to have a dopey face?
Why can’t you just have a normal smiley face. First, I’m want to say I’m no expert. I just know a lot of things and I share what I know. Am I to end all be all? No?
So let’s put that out there. But I appreciate, appreciate the compliment, and that is a very good question that I was answered too. I think it’s because the photographer insists they want you to be silly, because that’s the thing. When you’re a comedian. Everybody thinks you’re silly and you should be doing silly things.
So if you’re getting your head shots, be silly getting your head shots. If you’re going out to lunch, be silly getting your lunch. Like, people don’t understand that as a comedian, I’m a comedian when I walk on stage and have the microphone and tell my jokes, and then when I walk off, I stop. I’m not I don’t stop being a comedianist profession, but I stop being funny in that moment, Like I want to have a good time and joke around with people, but it doesn’t mean we’re always on. And I think that’s the perception of people when they say, oh, you’re a comedian, you must always be joking around one percent of the time.
That is not the case. No, the stage persona versus real life. And I’m not saying people are being faked. But if you met Gilbert Godfreed, Hey Gilbert, how you doing, Oh hey, we’re nice to meet you. Good and then the second the light went on, then he’s doing the Gilbert persona, Doug Stanhope, same thing.
I’ve been fortunate enough to spend a lot of time with Larry the Cable Guy, and sometimes when the MIC’s not on, I’m clearly talking to Dan Whitney, and sometimes I’m talking to Larry the Cable Guy. Yeah. I worked with him one time in Lincoln, Nebraska, because he popped in on a show I was working with Nick Hough. I was featuring for Nick Hough, who is a comedian who typically opens for a Larry the Cable Guy, and Nick hoff was headlining this comedy club close to where later the Cable Guy lives. So Larry came in and did some time on the show, which was great, and the same thing in the green room.
He was not Larry the Gable Guy. He was Dan. Yeah, and both Dan and Larry the Cable Guy are the nicest guy you’ll ever meet. The I don’t understand the haters. I guess it comes out of jealousy or they don’t get the blue collar thing.
Larry slash Dan. He’s just chucking jokes. That’s it. Yeah, I think that you nailed it. It’s a lot of it’s just jealousy people and I think it’s people get jealous because they didn’t think of something.
They look at it and it’s, oh, that’s just just being a character. He’s not being real. Yeah, he tried a character and it took off, and then it made him millions of dollars, and so he decided to be at a smart business person and keep up with it and keep making millions of dollars. And it comes back to this is a total tangent. So recording us.
On Wednesday last night, Disney Channel showed a hockey game. Did you see this? It was a hockey game overlaid with some Disney Network cartoon. So if you put on the Disney Channel, you were watching a cartoon hockey game, the actual Rangers, Capitol’s game, Green City something, It doesn’t matter anyway. It was an animated hockey game live, and my cousin and I were hockey fans, were watching it, and they had instead of the actual NHL goalie, they overlaid it with somebody from the show.
So it was the equivalent of Homer Simpson is in net. And it was just fun. And we’re watching this and I’m like, this is just fun. So why that tangent? Larry the Cable Guy.
The act is just fun. It’s a guy with no sleeves, get or done. He knows what you want, he knows how to tea it up. He runs the playbook. You have a good time, and you go home.
I don’t think he’s claiming that it’s peak George Carlin. In terms of writing. It’s just Larry the Cable Guy. And my favorite is you know, and I bet he’s not even a cable guy. You think, oh, that’s amazing, amazing, because we know that’s true.
There are people that are literally, well, Bett, he’s not a cable guy. What’s on your calendar? These my calendar I’ve got. I’ve been concentrating on stuff here in the Colorado area. I’m mostly doing local, more local shows, and then I’m going to be up in South Dakota, Minnesota in May.
I’m gonna I don’t know if I can announce that yet, but I’m gonna be in a festival coming up at the beginning of May in southern Colorado. So yeah, you can keep an eye on that. I don’t want. We have Google. We can probably figure out May comedy festival.
We can probably put this to Colorado. You can exactly you can do the things that way. I’m not getting ahead of myself. Insiders tell me exactly, So there’s that. But yeah, Otherwise, all my dates are at my on my website Dan Booblitz dot com.
I’ve been I really focus on the podcast. If you really want to get to know me as a comedian and what I’m about and to listen to other comedians, that’s how you do it. Go check out My podcasts are a bombing podcast because that’s where I really open up. I try to be While I don’t aim to be an expert at comedy, because I have a lot to learn, but I’ve had a lot of experiences throughout my career that I don’t think a lot of people. We all have our different paths, and I don’t think people have been on my path.
So I try to be kind of a mentor I guess if you will. And I want everybody to get better at comedy. I want people to get better together, and so that’s a whole focus. So that’s what you can find if you’re on my podcast. I do feel like that’s the vibe these days.
I’m not sure that was true twenty years ago. I feel like comedians are for the most part, all in it together. Now, it’s not for you to win. I have to lose. I just feel like everybody’s into building the scene.
Yeah, and there’s enough for everybody. Yeah. And if you have a good scene, you’re going to have good comedians coming out of that. That’s it’s important to have that.
Let’s talk about the realities of your travel.
All right, So you’ve got a gig, it’s not in town. What’s it actually like when are you leaving? Are you on the Concord in first class and you’re staying at the Four Seasons and you’re eating the finest foods. Talk to me about a real trip. Okay, Well, a real trip for me is not like that.
The description you just gave is for somebody like Bill Burr who was at that level. For regular old comics like us, who are relatively unknown, we are out of town gigs are a little different, and as of late, this is why I’m doing more local stuff. I’m getting tired of the pay in comedy. It hasn’t really went up since the eighties, and inflation has went up a bazillion times since then.
And then a lot of gigs these days don’t want to include the lodgings, you hav…
So I’m very selective onmin gigs. But when I do go on on the road and do a gig, it just depends on how far the gig is. For example, this corporate that I did, but the town was five hours away, so I had to be there for a sound check between four and four thirty, and so I left. I was on the road by nine am my time, and I had to account for a loss of time because of the time I changed from Mountain time to Central time, so I had to make sure that was equated into having enough time to get there. So I left at nine my time, got there about three, was able to check into my hotel, get relaxed a little bit, go do my sound check, then go get ready for the show, go back to the show, do the show, and then the next morning, because I had a gig in my area, then I had to get up be on the road about the same time as I left to get home, so that way I could quick change, relax a little bit, and then head to another gig that was a couple of hours away, which was a great It was a fun show up in winter Puck, which is like a ski town in the mountains here in Colorado, and that gig because it was it’s close to my house.
You know, if a gig is within two two and a half hours from my house, I’m not gonna worry about lodging. I want to go home and sleep in my own bed. So that was a gig where I didn’t need lodging. It’s great. I just go out to the mountains, do a show, and after the show come home.
Unfortunately I got stuck out there. I think the travel and expenses part would probably surprise most people who don’t study this. I would imagine there’s a perception of oh, you know, not if you’re playing a bar, but if you’re playing anything that we could call a theater or a venue. I think most people would assume like, oh, all right, you’re gonna go there and you’re gonna make at least several hundred dollars and they’re bringing you in and they’re giving you meals and they got you there. But it’s not that at all.
No, not usually, And when you do get those gigs, it’s amazing. You’re like, yes, these are the greatest gigs. But yeah, that’s typically not what it’s like. And even a lot of comedians when they start comedy, they don’t think about it. I have a background in business and marketing.
I went to school for that, and I’ve always been and I’ve owned businesses in the past, so I’ve always had a business mind, and I came into comedy with that approach that this is a business. And that’s one thing that I see with comedy. It’s like comedians see, oh, I’m getting X amount of dollars to go do this gig, but then they don’t think about all the stuff that it takes to get to the gig and to get home from the gig. And like you said, people who don’t study comedy won’t know this either, that when you’re going to a gig, you’re gonna have gas money that you have, so that’s an expense. Technically, whatever clothes you wear, that’s an expense because it’s your uniform.
You’re gonna have to have food because a lot of gigs don’t don’t pay for meals. There are some that do. The good venues will give you a bar tab or food tab or whatever, and then a lot of times lodging isn’t included, so you have to pay your own lodging and figure out your own place to stay, and that’s another expense. And if say a gig is paying you two hundred and fifty dollars, before you know it, you might be breaking even on that gig unless you’re selling merch. And that’s why so many road comics sell merch, because they have to depend on that to actually make money.
It’s crazy and it hasn’t changed in a lot of years. It said, the merch thing. It was always so sad. You’d see somebody go up and crush and you’d be hanging out of the lobby with your friends, but hey, where’s your going next? You want to grab a couple of drinks and you see the same guy that was the king of the world five minutes ago sitting at a card table selling CDs, And it was always just, oh, I feel for you, yo.
I wonder how many comedians you probably know as you talk to people are smart about taxes or maybe running their business out of an LLC where you can write off the clothes you wear because it’s part of your business, or travel expenses or logic. These are all legitimate expenses. Disclaimer, Johnny Mac is not an accountant. This is not legal advice. This is some idiot in abasement popping off.
This is not proper advice. But I imagine there are all sorts of things, possibly perhaps maybe consulted local experts, that you could write off and minimize or expenses they are. I mean, that’s just it. You’re all the things that you said are potential expenses that can be written off if you’re running it as a business. But that also means you have to keep track of the income versus your expenses.
Like you can’t just spend all this stuff and then claim you make zero money. There has to be a paper trial that you had some money come in, even if after you pay your expensive you lost money. But otherwise, if you’re just not bringing any money in and you’re just losing it on these expenses, you’re going to get audited. Yeah, that’s begging for it, right exactly. But I don’t feel like there’s enough comedians.
I think about that a lot of comedians, specially newer comedians, And this is why I’m always trying to preach about this and try to get it through people’s heads that they need to think about this. You know, I’ve experienced it, Other comics have experienced it, but they don’t think about that. They just think, oh, this is an opportunity for me to get some stage time to get better at the craft. Yes, you do need to get better at your craft, but you can also do that through your local scene. You don’t necessarily need to go do a road gig that’s gonna potentially cost you to be homeless.
You don’t need to do that to get better at comedy that and if anybody tells you you do, they’re gaslighting you. That’s how I feel about that, because you have to think about it as a business, and to be successful in any business, you have to make money in how you make money is watching your expenses versus watch what you’re making or what you’re bringing in for the gross sales. What’s the geography of that though, because not every place has a scene. There are big parts of the country where you’re two hundred miles from Nowhere’s Ville. And I don’t know that as a pejorative, but just I live in northern New Jersey.
I’m not a comic don’t want to be a comic. I’ve never reformed stand up comedy. But if I wanted to, there’s probably a lot of open mics not all that far, and at worst there’s this place called New York City that’s an hour away, so I could hit that. But what if fum in the middle of nowhere? Do I just gotta move right?
You get? You either moved to the to a closer to a scene, or you create your own scene. I started in Watertown, South Dakota. The town is the about maybe twenty thousand population, and I didn’t even technically I didn’t even start in Watertown. I was just living there.
I lived in one of those places where there was not a comedy scene. They didn’t even have at one time. I think they had like a comic club and some comedy through there, but there was no scene. And to start comedy, I had to go to a town that was an hour and a half Suo Falls, because they had some clubs and open mics and things like that. And I couldn’t be traveling all the time to these back and forth because I had a regular day job.
It just didn’t seem smart. So what I did was created my own scene. I started my own open I found a venue that was willing to do an open mic. I got talked to other people into trying comedy, and then I started bringing in other comics from other towns. So I basically started producing my own show right away, where I would bring in a regional headliner, give them some money, put them up in a hotel.
We’d sell tickets to the show, and then we also had an open mic as part of the show, and just created my own thing. And even now, and I’m not haven’t been in Watertown for a long time, but there are other comics that live in Watertown now who are still doing the same things that I would do that I’ve did. There there’s an active small scene in Watertown and years ago that wasn’t the case. That makes a lot of sense to me, not that it’s the same thing, but I hang out at this trivia night and it’s at seven o’clock on Wednesdays, and a year ago I used to walk in at six fifty and sit down and play trivia.
And then I started leaving the house at six twenty and my family thought I wa…
I’d be like, I got to get a table and the last few weeks. I’m getting there at six twenty and the place is already packed, and it’s I can see how something can get word of mouth. And if you put the work in and grind that, Yeah, that makes sense to me that you could build your own scene. That’s great. Yeah, absolutely absolutely, And that’s what I would encourage people to do if you don’t have the resources to move or to go to these other scenes.
And I would also say, don’t feel like you have you can’t work a regular job and be a comedian. That’s another thing in comedy that I see a lot is people are embarrassed. You know, when somebody says what are you doing and you’re like, I’m a stand up comedian. It’s like, oh, what else do you do? They’re embarrassed that they have to have another job.
I don’t see why don’t be embarrassed that you haven’t the job that says that you’re a well stable minded person because you want to make sure your bills get paid and you’re not homeless, and you’re still wanting to practice an art in a craft that makes you sensible person. In my book, the whole what you do for a living thing is fascinating I think my oldest kid, I think understands what I do. The other two what are you doing? While are you down the basement? Why are you talking yourself?
What do you your podcast? Amity? Listen to this? And when I had the corporate job was a lot easier to explain what I do.
And now it’s like that I’m just doing my own things for fun and I make a coup…
It’s what are you doing dad? What does dad do for a living? They have no idea, so I can’t even imagine I’m a comedian. Oh or you John Mulaney, No, I created my own seat on Wednesday nights after the trivia guys that would people would be like what yeah, no, exactly, And it does happen a lot all the time, even after doing comedy for a long time. I’m sure my part there’s people that are associated with my partner who still are like, is he really a comedian?
Does he really make money doing this? It’s no sense to me. You’re a comedian? Do you know Bill Bird? Do you know him?
Yeah? Yeah, yeah. That happens a lot. And surprisingly sometimes they’ll the question that I think I get the lotus. Who’s the most famous person you’ve worked with as opposed to do you know so?
And so I get that more when somebody finds out where I’m from, They’re like, oh, you’re from South Dakota and they lived in this town across the state from you. Who is the most famous person you’ve worked with? Dana Carvey probably you can see and you can see my picture his picture right behind me. That was from a show that I produced in San Diego, me and my business partner at the time, Brandon Young. We had this series called the Legends of Comedy that we were doing and we were trying to bring legendary comedians down to San Diego.
So we had Jimmy Brogan was one of the comedians. Jan Carram did the show and then she was the one that put us in touch with Dana Carvey because she was working with him a lot.
And then he came down and did our show.
We did a couple shows with him, sold out. It was amazing, and he was one of those people and they say don’t meet your heroes. He was one where he is such a just a down to earth and sweet person like he just he was great. He had his kids opening for him, his nephew was one of the openers his hole. He brought his whole family down.
They hung out in San Diego to do and do the shows, and they were all fantastic.
And then him and his wife went home and his kids stayed in San Diego and did …
It was amazing. Yeah, the old don’t meet your heroes. I met back in the nineties William Shatner and it didn’t ruin it for me. I still love Captain Kirk, but I’m not sure William’s other projects I’m has turned onto as I might have other I’m trying to think the most famous people I’ve worked with, and I have a joke among friends DEFINE worked with. So I was quietly lurking recording an interview with President Obama.
Did we work it together? I don’t know. On the comedy side, Hi, mister Seinfeld, come with me. Hey, there’s Jim Brewer who’s going to interview. Did I work with Jerry Seinfeld?
I don’t know. So I might have to go with Stephen van zand I definitely worked with Stephen van zandt on a project called The Wise Guys Show. I’m not a musician, either, well, that’s awesome. That’s I really loved his series on Netflix. The Oh what is that called?
We’re both blanking on? Man, Now, everybody’s yelling at their thrones right now, they are. I couldn’t google it, just tell us. But let’s just let everybody yell at their phones. Yeah, let them be mad at us for not remembering the name of that series.
That was way short lived. It should have been They should have had way another couple of seasons because it was so great. Yeah, that was early. Netflix was a little too early. Dan, thank you for your time.
I’m sure my listeners when they downloaded today’s episode and saw that it wasn’t twelve minutes longer? What the heck is this? But let’s say this every now and then. Man, this is a lot of fun. I appreciate you coming on.
I hit Dan up by yesterday. I was like, I’m just in the mood to talk comedy, no agenda, and you very You’re you’re an easy booking my friend. Oh yeah, but I’m just like, hey, yeah, well, I’m a fan of the podcast. I’m one of the regular listeners. I listened to it every day pretty much as soon as I get up That is the first thing I do.
I download all my podcasts. First podcast that I listened to of the day while I’m getting ready for the day, Daily Comedy News. Thank you for the plugging part of this. Your kindness aside. That is what it is designed for, just to be easy into the morning.
Here’s what’s going on if you’re into the scene. Yeah, I’m not a yeller and a screamer, and it’s something you can do. I listen back to myself just to make sure I didn’t screw up an edit when I go to the Donuts Shane every morning, so it’s also part of my morning routine. I also listen to NPR up first and pod News Daily to keep hip on the scene. Those are my three on my little round trip drive there.
That’s great, that’s all right, plug your pot again. The two my podcast, The Art of Bombing, that comes out on Thursdays is the normal episode, and we just started putting out bonus episodes on Mondays. We have a new show called Queen Bombs. The episode callback and what we’re doing is we’re talking about takeaways that from the previous episodes. For example, the most recent episodes that came out we had Adam Mamah Walla on the podcast, who also a fantastic comedian.
If you love comedy, he’s a New York guy. Go find Adam mama Walla. I just worked with him three shows last week. Great comedian, very funny, supernice guy, but also did the podcast, and so Thursday his episode came out, and then on Monday we released an episode where me and my co host Josh Shirley are talking about some of the things that you could have learned from that episode. So we take it and we’d go we’d drill a little deeper into kind of the themes and topics that come up in the conversations with the guests.
So that comes out on Mondays, So go check that out wherever you find all your podcasts. Super awesome And you’re reminding me that, but it’s not like I know you from serious We met through the pot of verse in different ways, and we’ve communicated on and off throughout the last two three years, but we’ve never what I feel like we’re friends. Oh I do, absolutely, yeah, absolutely, It’s just such a great space. But thank you for your time today. Thank you