This past weekend I was booked to perform down in O’Fallon, MO at a place called “Back Door Comedy Club”. The venue has only recently opened and it was nice to be able to be one of the first few down there to help break in the room. Oddly enough, with as close as Missouri is to Illinois, I’ve never actually played there before. I know that seems odd, I’ve played all over this country, but for some reason, Missouri always escaped me. Well, not this year!

I was on my way to the show on Friday, thinking I was going to get to the club about an hour in advance, grab some food, and get ready for my show. For some reason, I decided to check my itinerary one more time while I was still about an hour out. Much to my surprise, my show actually was supposed to start at 7pm, not 8pm as I originally thought. This doesn’t happen very often to me, but once in a great while I’ll get fucked by a timezone or an oddity. In this case, it was the fact that it was Friday that threw me off. Friday shows are notorious for starting between 8pm-9pm (depending on if there is one show or two) as the general public works during the day on Friday. They need time to get off work, get cleaned up, get something for dinner, and then make it to a show. This is also the same reason that a lot of late shows on Friday suck ass. The audience is simply too tired from working all week, or drunk from going out right after work and the room can go from “fun” to “fight” in a minute. I ended up getting to the club about 6:54pm and walked in to see about 12-people sitting in the room. There was some weather down in Missouri and that wasn’t helping our attendance. I watched from the back of the room as the feature, a very funny comedian out of Chicago named Nate Armbruster took the stage. Nate and I met last summer in Pentwater, MI where we both had amazing sets and just lit the room up for a sold-out, standing-room only show. Now, here we were about to get after it with 12-people. The one thing I’ve learned in my experience over the years is, always bring the show to the audience. Don’t let them dictate your energy, you need to dictate theirs. Now, that is also WAY easier said than done when you’re pouring your back into the show and the audience is acting like you’re their own personal Ambien. Regardless, I have a bunch of newer material that I needed to work through, and I couldn’t afford to be “playing the hits” up there or simply going through the motions where the crowd controls me like one of Jeff Dunham’s puppets. I hit the stage, gave it everything I had, and after some quick banter with the crowd, they bought into my persona and I was off & running for the next hour. 12-people are never going to sound like 100-people, even when they all laugh at the same time. However, there is something incredibly cathartic and rewarding when you can hear the individual laughs of those 12-people after giving them everything you’ve got. Friday night was fun, and then a few minutes later, the late show got cancelled for the night. We’d be back on Saturday for two more shows. I left with the super nice club owner saying “tomorrow night, we already have double this crowd on the books!”. I’ve never been so excited about 24-people in my life.

Saturday came and went. I don’t know what happens to the days when I’m on the road, but I wake up thinking “I’ve got all day”, and the next thing you know I’m racing around worried about being late for my show. I got to the show about 6:45pm, but on purpose this time. I don’t like being at clubs super early. I’m not “nervous” before shows, but I do get “anxious” before shows. I just want to be up onstage, oddly enough, that’s where I’m the most comfortable. Well, when I walked in, the room was jam-packed and the buzz in the crowd was electrifying. I knew right away that it was going to be a fun show. Nate went up first and just slayed the room - he had such a good set. He has a hilarious joke about Amazon that just had me cracking up all weekend. He doesn’t want it online yet, so that’s why I’m not sharing it here. After Nate, I went up on stage and opened with the first two tracks of my album “No Complaints”. I did this for several reasons. The first being, this is always a killer opener for me and since I had never been to MO, much less O’Fallon, I knew that they had never heard it. Secondly, I have a few new pieces of material that relate to the topic of the roads and I wanted to try them wedged in between material that already works, so I can see if there was any hope for it. The new material went over really well and got an applause break, but I didn’t overly read into that, as almost everything got an applause break during this show. It was practically a “do-no-wrong” kind of show. After my traffic rant, I went into a batch of stuff about my kids that I did on my Vincectomy album, and then I pitched my CD’s to the crowd to buy after the show. Once the sales pitch was done (something I despise myself for having to do), I decided to use 10 of the final 20-minutes on the newer stuff I had been working out on the road, and then knew that I would end on my gay marriage rant that closed out my last album. The new material I am working on is a piece that I’ve tentatively called “The Government Giveth, and the Government Taketh Away”. The title makes it sound much more political than it is, but it doesn’t overly matter because the crowds don’t know the titles of my bits as I’m doing them, and I’m not shouting them out like a band does in concert with song titles. This is just a working title for me to remember what the fuck the bit is and what it’s about. I’m still in the rambling process of this bit. I have probably 5-7 solid jokes throughout that 10-minutes, which isn’t enough. However, this is a context bit where I do need to provide some set-up and explanation. It’s very resemblant to my comedic style “take a while to set them up, and then knock them down at warp speed”. After that, I had just enough time to fit in my entire gay marriage rant before I had to exit the stage. I had so many large applause breaks during this bit that I considered ending the bit early on this night just to ensure I went out on top. However, I finished the bit, got a great response, and then walked out to the lobby to awkwardly try to whore my CD’s.

After the first show on Saturday is where the night got a little crazier. I was standing behind a counter selling my CD’s and shaking hands. Nate was in front of the counter off to the right of me shaking hands as well. The crowd coming out was very gracious and complimentary to us. Then, this guy walked up to Nate and told him how funny he was. He then proceeded to say (not realizing I was standing right fucking next to him) “that other guy was funny at first, then he became a libtard for the rest of the show”. Now, I have a rule; if you listen to me on stage for an hour, I’ll listen to you after the show for a few minutes. This isn’t the first time in my career somebody didn’t like what I said and it certainly won’t be the last. The problem came in that this guy just didn’t stop. Some snippets of what he said were “he was a piece of shit”, “you don’t play like that down here in O’Fallon”, “he was a liberal pile of shit”, “we walked out”, “he sucked”, etc… You get the point, this guy didn’t like me… The only thing I could think of that he wouldn’t have liked was my Gay Marriage rant. I spent the last two years closing with that on the road and inevitably, every other show or so, somebody would walk out of my show during that bit. For reference, in that bit, I am defending the rights of Gays. However, nobody ever comes up to me after the show and admits WHY they walked out, because I believe they don’t want to say out-loud that they’re homophobic. So instead, they mask that anger behind “he’s a liberal piece of shit”. This guy went off about me for so long, that I just started smiling and laughing. He genuinely had no clue who I was and just kept bitching about me while often turning his head towards me to ensure I was included in their conversation. I eventually grabbed my phone and pulled up my voice recording app and grabbed the last few minutes of this guy’s bullshit. Listen to the clip above to hear the final exchange. I was willing to let it all slide until he told Nate to “tell me” what he was saying. At that point, I had enough and called him out and said “you can tell me right now”. His jaw about hit the floor when he realized who I was. Then he tried to be a tough guy for a second, only to start trying to “explain” himself, and then resulting into him asking if he could shake my hand, to which I said no. I don’t know if you’ve ever had somebody you disrespect put their hand out to shake, but if it ever happens again, don’t shake it. I promise you that your respect for yourself will immediately go through the roof and you will feel for the first time in a long-time that you value yourself above trying to “please everybody” or “make nice to avoid an awkward situation”. Don’t like me, don’t like my comedy, it’s all good - but when you get caught shit-talking, don’t be a fucking weasel. Apologize like a man. You insult somebody in public, you apologize in public. This was such a fun crowd in such a fun town. The town has over 80,000 people in it and he’s trying to act like it’s fucking Footloose and I’m suggesting dancing. “That shit doesn’t play here in O’Fallon” - O’Fuck yourself, yes it does…it just did.

Oh, and then there was a late show that night and it was fun!

Nothing Says “Respect” Like an Unshook Hand!

Slip, Slidin’, Away…

At Least Fake It For Me!