Speaker 1: Kalaroga Shark Media.
Speaker 2: Hello Chi Meg with your daily comedy news this week.
Speaker 2: The first annual Columbus Comedy Festival takes place the fourteenth
Speaker 2: through the eighteenth, featuring over one hundred performers including national,
Speaker 2: regional and local comedians. Headliners include Jason Banks, Michael Ee,
Speaker 2: and black Tony Rock, Irene Ii fumu Abe, and a
Speaker 2: bunch of others. My guest today is Walker Evans. Walker
Speaker 2: is putting this thing together and as you're about to hear,
Speaker 2: dude knows his stuff. And this is no little comedy festival.
Speaker 2: This is not the as you'll hear me say during
Speaker 2: the interview, the Smallville Comedy Festival where we grab the
Speaker 2: locals from the chuckle Hut and called it comedy festival.
Speaker 2: This is a real deal. So we get into the
Speaker 2: business of it. And as you listen, you'll hear that
Speaker 2: Walker knows his comedy. So it's the Columbus Comedy Festival,
Speaker 2: kicking off on August fourteenth, five days, one hundred and
Speaker 2: fifty plus comics. Here's Walker. So I'm really curious on
Speaker 2: your background. I've definitely attended festivals. I've even put together
Speaker 2: a few events. It is no small task, whatsoever? What's
Speaker 2: your deal? How do you come to put together a
Speaker 2: comedy festival? And as we dive into the details of it,
Speaker 2: this is no small festival. I've looked at the sponsor list,
Speaker 2: the number of events, the level of comedians. This isn't
Speaker 2: you know. Hey, I'm friends with the guy at the club.
Speaker 2: We'll throw a two night event and call it a
Speaker 2: comedy festival. This is a real deal. So what's your story.
Speaker 3: Yeah, My wife and I have run a local news
Speaker 3: publication here in Columbus for the past twenty three years,
Speaker 3: started in two thousand and one called Columbus Underground, and
Speaker 3: about eleven twelve years ago, we decided to pivot into
Speaker 3: event production. Instead of doing like a paywall model that
Speaker 3: a lot of news organizations do, we throw events and
Speaker 3: so we can tell our readers, Hey, if you like journalism,
Speaker 3: if you like what you're doing, buy a ticket, come
Speaker 3: to an event, have a good time, and know that
Speaker 3: helps to fund local journalism here in Columbus. Some of
Speaker 3: our events are on the smaller side to three hundred people,
Speaker 3: but we've run a coffee festival since twenty sixteen that
Speaker 3: has grown. Last year, in the eighth year, it's sold
Speaker 3: out in advance with eighty five hundred people in attendance,
Speaker 3: so that event has grown into a pretty big undertaking
Speaker 3: putting this coffee festival together, So we do have experience
Speaker 3: with like larger scale of end production. We're aiming for
Speaker 3: ten thousand attendees this year in October. But we're also
Speaker 3: big fans of comedy and there isn't a festival in
Speaker 3: Columbus currently, so we're like, why don't we rally the
Speaker 3: troops and try and pull off one of these to
Speaker 3: a large scale?
Speaker 2: All right, so many questions, So let's start with the
Speaker 2: business sides. Presumably you have existing relationships with sponsors, You're
Speaker 2: known in the community, so it was a little easier
Speaker 2: to reach out as opposed to if I just showed
Speaker 2: up in small town, USA and I was like, Hey,
Speaker 2: it's the Smallville Comedy Festival. Who wants to sponsor it?
Speaker 2: Can I have a check? So I assume it was
Speaker 2: a little more straightforward because of your two decades.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, we've built a pretty good reputation on being
Speaker 3: able to pull off the events that we say that
Speaker 3: we're going to produce. So we've got a little bit
Speaker 3: of history and again, twenty years yeah, connecting. Columbus is
Speaker 3: a really interesting city because it's a region of two
Speaker 3: million people, so we're a pretty big city. But it's
Speaker 3: pretty easy to get to know people here. You just
Speaker 3: reach out and say, hey, do you want to get coffee,
Speaker 3: and you can connect with people pretty pretty easily. There's
Speaker 3: not a lot of gatekeepers, so yeah, and I think
Speaker 3: people really like We love festivals. We have a whole
Speaker 3: summer lineup of the Arts Festival, the Asian Festival, the
Speaker 3: Red White and Boom. We have a huge Pride festival,
Speaker 3: so all some are long. People are looking for things
Speaker 3: to do. And because we're not replicating something else that's
Speaker 3: already here. There's six different Taco festivals. We're not like, hey,
Speaker 3: we're going to be Taco fest numbers step because we're
Speaker 3: doing something different. There isn't a comedy fest currently. There
Speaker 3: have been some in the past that have come and gone.
Speaker 3: People seem to be really excited about something new to
Speaker 3: add to the lineup.
Speaker 2: Who's uh, I don't necessarily need a specific name, but
Speaker 2: who's helping you with the booking? Because there are some
Speaker 2: big time comedians on this list. Again, this isn't the
Speaker 2: Smallville Comedy Festival. We'll just get the regulars from the
Speaker 2: Chuck ohad do you play there every Tuesday? You're bringing
Speaker 2: real names in, knowing something about the business. Again, no
Speaker 2: small feat and discussions and logistics going to that. So
Speaker 2: how are you tackling the bringing in the Mike Leean
Speaker 2: Blacks of the world.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so I guess to rewind to last year, like
Speaker 3: last October, when we were sort of noodling on this idea.
Speaker 3: We brought together all of the local venue operators, promoters,
Speaker 3: different groups in town to say, hey, what if Columbus
Speaker 3: Underground runs the festival as a whole, But then each
Speaker 3: of the different venue partners can program their own events,
Speaker 3: do their things their own best way, and it's all
Speaker 3: under the umbrella the festival. So that allowed others to
Speaker 3: do their own things. And so, for example, the Attic,
Speaker 3: which is a local club, they're bringing in Jim Florentine.
Speaker 3: They have a pre existing relationship with him, so they're
Speaker 3: able to tap into him pretty easily. The Funny Bone,
Speaker 3: which is the big dog in town, got Tony Rock,
Speaker 3: so that's obviously a big name and they had their
Speaker 3: relationship there. But the events that we're programming, we just
Speaker 3: started reaching out to people to see who we could get,
Speaker 3: who's available, whose price range and budget we can work with.
Speaker 3: And there's been a couple of folks that you reach
Speaker 3: out to one agent or management or group and you
Speaker 3: get one person, They're like, oh, what about this person?
Speaker 3: This person they're on tour. Anyway, adding a Columbus date
Speaker 3: might be pretty easy. So some of it, like Mike
Speaker 3: William Black just came through talking with Curtis Flag in Chicago.
Speaker 3: I think I reached out to him originally about Kristen
Speaker 3: Toomey and He's like, here's the rest of the list
Speaker 3: that I represent, right, who can we plug it? And
Speaker 3: I'm like, yeah, I love my people Black, I love
Speaker 3: the States. I'm old enough to remember the state from
Speaker 3: the nineties on MTV, and so yeah, it ended up
Speaker 3: being just throw a.
Speaker 1: Lot with the wall and see what sticks. Approach.
Speaker 2: Let's talk about these specific lineups and catch a listeners
Speaker 2: up on it, and I will be doing raps about
Speaker 2: it on the particular individual days, but in multiple venues,
Speaker 2: multiple artists every night, can you just give us an
Speaker 2: overview of who's coming in what a typical breakdown is
Speaker 2: both headliners and I always advise the audience if you
Speaker 2: go to festivals, especially the really bigger name ones, I
Speaker 2: always say, don't go see Chris Rock. You can see
Speaker 2: Chris Rock on Netflix. Go see somebody who maybe you've
Speaker 2: never heard of, who's in up in comer. So just
Speaker 2: if you can give us an overview of what the
Speaker 2: next few days look.
Speaker 3: Like, Yeah, sure, I mean I would say, even like
Speaker 3: the bigger shows in the bigger rooms, the bigger headliners
Speaker 3: are still like emerging.
Speaker 1: Upcomer might not be.
Speaker 3: The best term for them, But people like Chloe Radcliffe
Speaker 3: who's been doing it for a while, building an audience,
Speaker 3: but still very much not an arena level comic, but
Speaker 3: headed on that trajectory. I would say her, Sumi Abe
Speaker 3: who's coming in on Friday, Sam Jay, who was recently
Speaker 3: on the roads to Tom Brady. Some of these folks,
Speaker 3: I think being able to come and see them in
Speaker 3: a little bit more of an intimate environment in a
Speaker 3: room that seats two hundred to four hundred people is
Speaker 3: going to be something special because those folks when they
Speaker 3: come back to town and play like the big arena
Speaker 3: in a couple of years, that's when the tickets are
Speaker 3: going to be a lot more expensive, and that sort
Speaker 3: of thing. But we have a lot of great regional comics,
Speaker 3: not just from Chicago, but Cleveland and Cincinnati. Ramon Revas
Speaker 3: is a big name in Cleveland that's coming down. Ran
Speaker 3: Barnaclough and Blake Hammond from Cincinnati are coming up.
Speaker 1: But a lot of great locals though too.
Speaker 3: Jason Banks is one of our big kind of hometown heroes,
Speaker 3: Simon Fraser, who's semi local. Yeah, there's gonna be a
Speaker 3: lot to choose from, and a lot no matter what
Speaker 3: your style of comedy is. We try to go for
Speaker 3: diversity and style of comedy as well.
Speaker 2: What comedy are you into? No, I hate comedy. I'm
Speaker 2: just doing this festival some question.
Speaker 3: Yeah, No, I like a variety of things. I would
Speaker 3: say I love a good weirdo. Okay, me too, yes, yes,
Speaker 3: so on. One person I'm very excited to see is
Speaker 3: Comrade Tripp.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure if you're familiar with them. He's based
Speaker 1: in Minneapolis.
Speaker 3: Definitely like an emerging talent, but he's very monotone and dry.
Speaker 3: His humor is very nihilistic, it's self deprecating. It's really
Speaker 3: funny if you like that style of comedy, a little
Speaker 3: emo phillips ish I would say a little Mitch hedbergish
Speaker 3: in terms of like tone. So folks like that I
Speaker 3: really enjoy quite a bit. But I'm really excited to
Speaker 3: see Pat Burscher. He's a Canadian comedian based in New York.
Speaker 3: He's had some really great viral clips that I've watched
Speaker 3: and fell in love with on the social media, so
Speaker 3: we'll be going to see a full set from him too.
Speaker 2: I think we're speaking the same language. There are different
Speaker 2: styles of comedy and there's the straightforward approach, and it
Speaker 2: was recently a notable Netflix special where the comic and
Speaker 2: question went straight down the middle, and that's fine, but
Speaker 2: I prefer personally to play on the edges as well.
Speaker 2: As I was prepping for this and clicking on Walker
Speaker 2: Evans and seeing what comes up, you got to see
Speaker 2: Mitch Hedberg. Now he's not someone I saw. Just to
Speaker 2: catch you up and the listeners, I started running Serious
Speaker 2: XM comedy. I think it was two thousand and four,
Speaker 2: so Mitch was around and hot. I've told the listeners
Speaker 2: a story before. We were doing a broadcast at the
Speaker 2: Javit Center at the New York Car Show. Jim Brewer
Speaker 2: was our afternoon drive host, and it's been twenty years.
Speaker 2: Jim was a little pissy that day because the night before,
Speaker 2: Mitch didn't show up for a show. We later found
Speaker 2: out the reason Mitch didn't show up for the show
Speaker 2: is because he had passed away. But he was booked
Speaker 2: on the show that day, so I never got to
Speaker 2: see him. I never got to meet him. I know
Speaker 2: his wife reasonably. Well. What was it like seeing Mitch
Speaker 2: Hedberg in concert?
Speaker 1: It was great. We were big fans.
Speaker 3: This was it the what was then the Cleveland Improv.
Speaker 3: I think it's rebranded to the Cleveland Funny Bone. But like,
Speaker 3: his level of fame and popularity had gotten to the
Speaker 3: point where he's on stage and he's trying to tell
Speaker 3: jokes and there are people in the crowd finishing the
Speaker 3: punchline because they had listened to his material, like they
Speaker 3: bought an album, and so you could see that like
Speaker 3: wearing on him and frustrating him. And at one point
Speaker 3: halfway did the show, he said something along the lines
Speaker 3: and I'm paraphrasing, but he's you know what, screw it,
Speaker 3: I'm going to do all new material. It's not as good,
Speaker 3: but at least you people won't be able to finish
Speaker 3: my punchlines because you've never heard it, and everything we
Speaker 3: cheered that, we'll like, yeah, let's hear some new stuff.
Speaker 3: So he was rolling with it, but you could tell
Speaker 3: like maybe the fame was getting to him. He wasn't
Speaker 3: able to cope with it in a way that other
Speaker 3: people do, so it was really of his past.
Speaker 2: It's really interesting to me to hear you tell that
Speaker 2: story unless you've listened to fifteen hundred episodes of Daily
Speaker 2: Comedy News and you were familiar with the story I'm
Speaker 2: about to tell. So when Mitch passed away, I'm not
Speaker 2: a vulture. I wanted to do something for Mitch on
Speaker 2: the radio station, but I'm not like, Hey, your husband
Speaker 2: passed away three hours ago, let's do a tribute show.
Speaker 2: So I like waited whatever amount of time, and I
Speaker 2: reached out to Lynn and I'm like, hey, we really
Speaker 2: want to do something. And she came in and shared
Speaker 2: with me that this is going somewhere that she had
Speaker 2: shared me that she hadn't really heard from anybody was
Speaker 2: excited about it. So she came in and I was
Speaker 2: sitting in one of the little edit boots with her,
Speaker 2: and she had some tapes of Mitch late in life sets,
Speaker 2: perhaps a show you were at, and she's playing them
Speaker 2: and they're really well recorded, and I'm like, you've got
Speaker 2: an album here, and I don't make comedy albums. Just
Speaker 2: as a fan, I want to hear it. And we
Speaker 2: connected her with Comedy Central and a guy named Jack
Speaker 2: Vaughn and that became the posthumous Mitch Hedberg album. But
Speaker 2: she had shared with me exactly what you said, that
Speaker 2: he was frustrated that his timing was getting off because
Speaker 2: he had to speed up and tell the punch before
Speaker 2: somebody in the audience got to the punchline, and he
Speaker 2: was really struggling with his cadence there. So it's fascinating
Speaker 2: to me as a fan to hear you tell that
Speaker 2: story that you experienced that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Yeah, that was a really Despite the issues that
Speaker 3: he was dealing with on stage, it was a really
Speaker 3: fun show. He put on a great show and we
Speaker 3: couldn't have been more pleased to have the opportunity to
Speaker 3: see him. I will say too, we had a local
Speaker 3: comedian here at Columbus Pass relatively recently within the past
Speaker 3: month named John Summerville, who I didn't really know very well.
Speaker 3: He ran a lot of open mics like ten to
Speaker 3: fifteen years ago. So a lot of the folks who
Speaker 3: are coming up now really wanted to pay tribute to
Speaker 3: him because of what he helped build in the local
Speaker 3: scene here. And we noodled with the idea of doing
Speaker 3: something like in remembrance or making some sort of award
Speaker 3: in his name, maybe for comedian during the festival, but
Speaker 3: it feels a little too soon because it was so fresh,
Speaker 3: and so it's one of those things that we need
Speaker 3: to talk with his family and maybe see if there's
Speaker 3: something like next year, like some sort of legacy award
Speaker 3: or something, just to kind of keep his name in
Speaker 3: the spotlight.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think your sensibility is in the right spot.
Speaker 2: There's always that careful walk of your heart wants to
Speaker 2: do to the right thing, but sometimes things are just
Speaker 2: better off if you take a beat, and I think
Speaker 2: legacy things like that are great. I was recently speaking
Speaker 2: to Jerniy Gunderson, who runs the National Comedy Center, about
Speaker 2: how comedians get forgotten. We were specifically talking about people
Speaker 2: like Richard Jenny or Robert Shimmel who were huge twenty
Speaker 2: five years ago and you don't hear their names now,
Speaker 2: and there's their material doesn't really surface. I guess Netflix
Speaker 2: really isn't going to put up a twenty five year
Speaker 2: old special, and the YouTube algorithm is more friendly towards
Speaker 2: newer things, so it's a shame. So anyway you can
Speaker 2: keep someone's name out there, I think that's really important.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we're doing something else now that you mentioned that,
Speaker 3: and I guess this will in the past at the
Speaker 3: time this is released. But this Friday we are screening
Speaker 3: the Aristocrats film from Henerie, I should say, from two
Speaker 3: thousand and five, which I'm like, man, it'd be great
Speaker 3: if it was the twentieth anniversary, but that would be
Speaker 3: next year. And you go back and watch the trailer
Speaker 3: and look at the list and how many people have
Speaker 3: passed that.
Speaker 1: Were in that.
Speaker 3: George Carlin was in that when that was recorded, but
Speaker 3: Bob Saggett has passed, Gilbert Godfrey has passed, Richard Lewis
Speaker 3: has passed. So I think it's going to be fun
Speaker 3: to watch this, especially with some comedians in town who
Speaker 3: are like in their twenties, so they've never even heard
Speaker 3: of this documentary, let alone seen it.
Speaker 1: But my wife and I saw it in the theater and.
Speaker 3: The one theater in town that would play it because
Speaker 3: AMC wouldn't play it back in two thousand and five.
Speaker 1: So I think that's gonna be really fun just to
Speaker 1: watch some of these comedy legends like really go off
Speaker 1: the rails. Have you seen that Cash?
Speaker 3: Well?
Speaker 2: Absolutely, You've got my brain thinking now that it has
Speaker 2: been a minute since it came out and there's this
Speaker 2: whole generation. I wonder what a Shane Gillis or a
Speaker 2: Sam Morrell or somebody like that would do with the aristocrats.
Speaker 2: I'd love to see an dated version of something like that.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So we're partnering with the local theater here at
Speaker 3: the Gateway Film Center. They're going to do a screening
Speaker 3: and we have a couple of local comedians who do
Speaker 3: like some sketch kind of stuff, like some short films.
Speaker 3: We'll tie in some local little bits before that as well.
Speaker 3: So it should be a lot of fun a way
Speaker 3: to kick off the festival.
Speaker 2: That's awesome, all right, more with Walker Evans in a second.
Speaker 2: It's the Columbus Comedy Festival kicking off August fourteenth. How
Speaker 2: are you staffing? Having ran a very small event, I
Speaker 2: know it's hard when you're not in the room and
Speaker 2: worrying about what's happening in the other room and the
Speaker 2: three things that are going to go wrong, and your
Speaker 2: phone's going to light up because somebody's cranky about something.
Speaker 2: What do I do here? How are you staffed up
Speaker 2: for this one?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 3: So we have a full time events director, Daniel Hagworth,
Speaker 3: who works for us with Columbus hunder Grounds, so she'll
Speaker 3: be in charge of a lot of that stuff. We'll
Speaker 3: have people at each of the venues that we're operating
Speaker 3: to make sure that volunteers are checking people in, directing
Speaker 3: people to where they need to sit, pointing out where
Speaker 3: the bar is, that sort of stuff.
Speaker 1: We've got a pretty good group I think about thirty five.
Speaker 3: Volunteers that'll help reset the rooms, clean up trash, do
Speaker 3: the legwork of that sort of stuff. But then with
Speaker 3: each of the shows, we'll have a show runner assigned
Speaker 3: to make sure that the comedians are checking in when
Speaker 3: they need to, the lights go down, when the lights
Speaker 3: need to go down, the audio comes on, and that
Speaker 3: sort of stuff. And then a lot of just background
Speaker 3: logistics type of stuff. We have someone in charge of
Speaker 3: like ground transportation to make sure that the headliners have
Speaker 3: a ride to and from the airport, hotel, venues and
Speaker 3: stuff like that. So it's a pretty big undertaking, and
Speaker 3: there is stress knowing that I'm not going to be
Speaker 3: in every place all at once, and I want to
Speaker 3: make sure everything goes as best as it can. We're
Speaker 3: good at delegating and trusting and people to make sure
Speaker 3: that everyone has a good time.
Speaker 2: Are you feeling good going in?
Speaker 3: Look?
Speaker 2: I'm looking at the sponsors White Castle. How did you
Speaker 2: pull White Castle?
Speaker 3: They're based here in Columbus, so I've known the VP
Speaker 3: of marketing there for a good long time. It's a
Speaker 3: great I think it's easy to make fun of sometimes
Speaker 3: it's like the drunken late night food. But it's still
Speaker 3: a family owned business after one hundred years of operations.
Speaker 3: So it's a really good, like fourth generation local company,
Speaker 3: and they really care about the local community a whole lot. Yeah,
Speaker 3: just tapping it into those resources and leveraging them. But overall,
Speaker 3: I mean feel good. You know, there's always like the
Speaker 3: nervousness speak out from an event. I feel a little
Speaker 3: better knowing that it's completely indoors, so whether it's too
Speaker 3: hot or rainy or anything won't really affect it. With
Speaker 3: our coffee festival. It's an outdoor event, so we always
Speaker 3: start checking the weather, hitting refresh onweather dot com and
Speaker 3: praying that it doesn't rain. But no, I think we
Speaker 3: feel pretty good. People seem to be really excited. We've
Speaker 3: got some local media coverage on it, and the buzz
Speaker 3: has been pretty positive.
Speaker 2: Good. Nervous energy is always a good thing. I've been
Speaker 2: doing this in some form since ninety two, and I
Speaker 2: still get that nervous energy before a live show, before
Speaker 2: a big show. I think it's a good thing. I'm
Speaker 2: thinking now what my brain two went to is what
Speaker 2: it was at Serius XM. We did comic Con radio
Speaker 2: a few times, so that's part of my insight into
Speaker 2: knowing what goes on behind the scenes. So we would
Speaker 2: show up there and have to put together an entire
Speaker 2: radio station from scratch when the door's open, so we
Speaker 2: would do if Comic San Diego Comic Con was Thursday
Speaker 2: to Sunday, we'd land and not have anything and have
Speaker 2: to be on the air by six pm Eastern, which
Speaker 2: was three pacifics So the doors didn't open un till
Speaker 2: noon Pacific. So somebody go record a panel, and somebody
Speaker 2: go talk to some fans and get some audio, and
Speaker 2: I'd send it back to New York and till my
Speaker 2: number two, who would stay back in New York to
Speaker 2: run the show. Okay, I've got six minutes of us
Speaker 2: talking to fans, and we'll have a panel in eight minutes.
Speaker 2: But I don't have it yet, but be ready, here
Speaker 2: comes a file, upload it and he would just handle
Speaker 2: everything back and then I guess this is your role
Speaker 2: for next week. I would try and stay calm in
Speaker 2: the middle and never let him see a sweat and
Speaker 2: I'd have a million questions in my mind, but just
Speaker 2: stay calm.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I think we've learned with the iterations of
Speaker 3: the coffee festival, the minutia, the detail that can get
Speaker 3: under your skin and make you freak out in the moment.
Speaker 1: You're the only one paying attention to that.
Speaker 3: Everyone else is having a good time, and you're just like,
Speaker 3: you're so focused on some of the little tiny things
Speaker 3: that like you have to learn to like let some
Speaker 3: of that go and just look at the thing as
Speaker 3: a whole.
Speaker 2: So yeah, I was at my daughter's musical last weekend
Speaker 2: and she was saying, I don't know, somebody missed a
Speaker 2: line or somebody had to add lib something to cover something,
Speaker 2: and I said, I'm in the audience. I didn't notice.
Speaker 2: I don't know right going there. What other comedians are
Speaker 2: you into these days who aren't at the festival? What
Speaker 2: are you watching? What are you digging?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I would say some of the ones that I
Speaker 3: wanted to have, and they either weren't available or some
Speaker 3: other sort of scheduling conflicts. I've really been enjoying Jeffrey
Speaker 3: Asthmas a whole lot. I've seen him live at times.
Speaker 1: He is a killer. His crowd work is probably some
Speaker 1: of the best. I know.
Speaker 3: Crowdborks an overdone thing, but he's hilarious. Sam Talent is
Speaker 3: another one who The special he released earlier this year
Speaker 3: is really good, the Toad's morale, his videos he's been
Speaker 3: posting on YouTube. His travel videos have been really great.
Speaker 3: Trips to Tokyo and Paris just like tag along with
Speaker 3: Sam Talent and friends, those have been fun. Jordan Jensen
Speaker 3: is another one who I love to see. She's coming
Speaker 3: to the Funny Bone and September, and they're one of
Speaker 3: our venue partners, so it didn't really make sense to
Speaker 3: have her in town August and then September would cannibalize,
Speaker 3: so maybe we'll try and get her next year. And
Speaker 3: then one of the specials that really blew me away.
Speaker 3: I mostly listened to it on a bike ride and
Speaker 3: then I stopped. I stopped my bike ride and got
Speaker 3: off to like finish watching it on my phone was
Speaker 3: mo welch Sure new special Dad jokes. Yeah, that was
Speaker 3: so well done because one part documentary, one part stand up.
Speaker 1: Special and it just it blew me away. I got
Speaker 1: those are a few, I guess.
Speaker 2: So another thing that's coming across here in kudos to
Speaker 2: you is you're not a business dude who went and
Speaker 2: we could probably make some bucks if we dore a
Speaker 2: comedy festival. You're clearly a fan. You clearly know the space.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I try.
Speaker 3: I'm sure I have my blind spots. I'm sure there's
Speaker 3: comedians out there who are great that I've never even
Speaker 3: heard of. But yeah, I mean, at the end of
Speaker 3: the day, we are trying to make money because we're
Speaker 3: trying to fund journalism and keep that alive in some
Speaker 3: way shape. We're paying every performer, even if they're just
Speaker 3: on stage for five minutes, they're getting a little bit
Speaker 3: of something. Because I went, not just to the headliners,
Speaker 3: but the locals to feel like this is a career
Speaker 3: path for me and something I can develop, And so
Speaker 3: I want the venues to make money. I want the
Speaker 3: bartenders to make money. If everybody comes away from this
Speaker 3: like having a good time, feeling good, and a little
Speaker 3: bit more money in their pocket at the end of
Speaker 3: the day, then we all win and hopefully that could
Speaker 3: be something sustainable too. If I were a quick cash
Speaker 3: grab sort of a thing, like we could just try
Speaker 3: and do as much, but then people wouldn't want to
Speaker 3: come back next year.
Speaker 1: If they're like, well, I performed, but.
Speaker 3: I didn't see any sort of profit or benefit, then
Speaker 3: it makes asking the comeback second time a tough question.
Speaker 2: Yeah, sometimes people will get weird about when you're just
Speaker 2: being real about money. For example, I'm enjoying talking to you.
Speaker 2: I'm excited for the festival. I like comedy. Also, I'm
Speaker 2: going to run a three minute commercial break in the
Speaker 2: middle of our interview. This is a fun hobby, but
Speaker 2: it also pays the bills at some point and the
Speaker 2: commercial so there. I hope your festival makes a lot
Speaker 2: of money, so you can do the festival for twenty
Speaker 2: five years or however long you enjoy it and then
Speaker 2: pass it to the next person. Right, there's a business here,
Speaker 2: thank you Castle.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I mean it's it's how the world works, right,
Speaker 3: we're just living at it.
Speaker 2: I'm not good at geography. How far away is Yellow Springs?
Speaker 2: Because I know there's some comedians over there, and he chanced.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yellow Springs is super close. It's maybe an hour drive,
Speaker 3: like fifty miles. It's a little bit closer to Dayton
Speaker 3: than it is Columbus. But it's like a fun road
Speaker 3: trip because Yellow Springs is.
Speaker 1: Very like there's some great hiking.
Speaker 3: It's very hilly and scenic over there. But I've not
Speaker 3: been to the new club that Chappelle opened, the firehouse
Speaker 3: that he renovated. I know it's delayed because of the pandemic,
Speaker 3: but it soft opened, I want to say, like at
Speaker 3: the beginning of the year. But the local club I
Speaker 3: mentioned earlier, the Attic, built a relationship to his son
Speaker 3: and had Dave come to the Attic here in colamb
Speaker 3: It's nice. Yeah, he did three This was last summer.
Speaker 3: He did three like unannounced shows, so like tickets went
Speaker 3: on sale at noon for the show that night at
Speaker 3: eight pm, and they sold out in fifteen seconds because
Speaker 3: the venue only seeds like eighty, so it was like
Speaker 3: a living room show with Dave Chappelle and my wife
Speaker 3: and I went to the first one because we know
Speaker 3: the owner and he's like, the tickets are going on
Speaker 3: sailor two seconds but such a and Dave, you know,
Speaker 3: love him or hate him, it was an interesting show
Speaker 3: that we wanted to be there and be a part of,
Speaker 3: and so it was very electric, like the club was
Speaker 3: really like alive that night, which is a lot of
Speaker 3: fun and hopefully they can do more of that sort
Speaker 3: of stuff. They did something similar earlier this year with
Speaker 3: Mark Normand who was in town doing like a bigger
Speaker 3: show in one of the downtown theaters, and he did
Speaker 3: like a sort of unannounced walk on twenty minutes of
Speaker 3: the attic and it was one of those things like
Speaker 3: if you knew he was going to be there, you
Speaker 3: bought the tickets, but it wasn't really advertised.
Speaker 1: So fun stuff like that.
Speaker 2: That's fantastic. You mentioned crowd work and good crowd work
Speaker 2: and bad crowd work. I'm a fan of good crowd work.
Speaker 2: For example, if Dave Attel walks into a club, I'd
Speaker 2: rather Dave just free form for an hour. I've seen
Speaker 2: Chappelle a few times due where he's not doing his act,
Speaker 2: where he just takes the stage and just talks for
Speaker 2: and it can be anything from fifteen minutes to two hours.
Speaker 2: I love that just free forms stuff. So that's awesome
Speaker 2: that you got to see him do a pop up show,
Speaker 2: and he does a lot of those. I usually prep
Speaker 2: this show in the morning, recorded around midday, and then
Speaker 2: it goes out at three a m. The next day.
Speaker 2: The amount of times I've told the listeners Dave Chappelle
Speaker 2: and has to pop up show, but it's already he's
Speaker 2: held out. I would have told you about it, but
Speaker 2: I didn't know. But that happens a lot.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Yeah, it's really cool and we I should shout
Speaker 3: out the other venue partners as well that Don't Tell
Speaker 3: crew that space here in Columbus. Over the past two
Speaker 3: years that they've been running Don't Tell shows, they've turned
Speaker 3: it into the number one ticket selling market in the
Speaker 3: country here in Columbus. And so Simon Brazier shout out
Speaker 3: to him who books all that Don't Tell shows.
Speaker 1: He's operating out of.
Speaker 3: Chicago now and helping to book Don't Tell in Chicago.
Speaker 3: They do a great job and bring in something and
Speaker 3: that's where I've seen Jeffrey Aspas twice in the past
Speaker 3: two years. Is it don't tell shows here in Columbus,
Speaker 3: but they bring in some talent to those shows that
Speaker 3: we're also working with Hashtag Comedy, a newer club started
Speaker 3: as an improv troop and they do a lot of
Speaker 3: variety shows and sketch shows and improv shows and they
Speaker 3: We're also working with next theater that was founded by
Speaker 3: some old school Chicago improv trainees that have been doing
Speaker 3: it for twenty years called The Nest Theater and Tara
Speaker 3: and Rants are amazing at improv and they they sell
Speaker 3: their shows out.
Speaker 1: They do a great job with all their improv work.
Speaker 3: But I feel like comedy we decided to go the
Speaker 3: route of instead of doing like big expensive festival passes.
Speaker 1: It's fully alic heart and the median ticket price.
Speaker 3: Is twenty bucks, so people can feel like they can
Speaker 3: go see two or three or four different shows without
Speaker 3: feeling like they're breaking the bank and investing in a
Speaker 3: three hundred dollars festival pass. So I would just recommend
Speaker 3: people pick a random show, pick someone you've never heard of,
Speaker 3: you're gonna have a good time no matter what, and
Speaker 3: it's only twenty bucks.
Speaker 2: He's Walker Evans, I'm Johnny Mack and it's the Columbus
Speaker 2: Comedy Festival, kicking off Thursday, five days, one hundred and
Speaker 2: fifty plus comics in. That is your comedy news for today.
Speaker 2: See you tomorrow with a normal episode.