This week marks my 12th comedy birthday.  On a Tuesday night in February of 2000 I took the stage, did five minutes, and won $30 in a clap-off in the basement of a pizza shop on High Street in Columbus, Ohio.  I thought I was a natural comedian and extremely funny.  Looking back, I’m ashamed that any of the material I used that night came from my mouth.  In fact, other than one or two jokes, I’m embarrassed about anything I said on stage in the first four or so years of my career.  The reason is, newer comedians don’t know what’s funny yet.

This may sound very pretentious on my part, but you can also ask any other veteran comedian how their material was in the first few years and they’ll tell you the same.  No one writes great material early on.  It’s kind of like looking back at the poems you wrote in middle school.  At the time the teacher may have loved them and I’m sure you were really proud of your work, but is it something that would come out of your pen now?  Of course not, it was lame.  Jokes are the same way.  99.9% of comics (100% of those who read this) have had to (or will have to) learn what’s funny on stage.  The only way to do that is to be in and at as many shows as possible over the course of several years.  You are not an exception to the rule and you cannot speed time up.

Though open mics are a great way to test jokes and learn what’s actually funny, they’re never going to be as effective as working in professional comedy shows (more on that here).  The best way to be a part of a professional show was mentioned last week.  It’s very hard to build a great act out of four to six minute sets in front of open mic crowds.  It’s not that the bar is necessarily set lower at open mic, it’s actually set kinda sideways making it hard to figure out what you should keep or get rid of.  Also, crowds of limited numbers and demographics will throw you off.

Comics who fancy themselves “ready” are making mistakes on and off stage and hurting their chances of ever being taken seriously.  My book, Don’t Wear Shorts on Stage, lists these mistakes and explains the steps comics should take to save time and dignity in those first few years.  It explains the process of going from open mic, to guest set, to MC work including how and when to talk to club managers.

***Special bonus***  This week only–Order from my site and your book may be also signed by Tommy Johnagin.  Tommy is quoted on the back cover, mentioned during a funny story in one of the chapters, and has been on Letterman multiple times (with many more times to come).  He signed a handful of books for me this weekend while he was doing shows in St. Louis.  ORDER IT HERE and you could be one of the lucky winners.

Thank you so much to those who shared last week’s advice.  I’m glad you found it helpful.  Please feel free to share this week’s entry on Facebook and Twitter as well.

As a comic your ultimate goal should be to eventually make money by getting people to laugh (notice the subtitle of this blog).  For the comics reading this, especially in the St. Louis scene, the first way you’re going to be able to earn a legitimate comedy paycheck is by getting an MC booking either for a local one-nighter or at a comedy club.  So how do comedy club managers decide, out of all of the open mic comics, who they’re going to give a chance to?

It has nothing to do with being the funniest.

An MC’s 4th most important job is being funny so if you’ve ever seen someone get ahead of you in the business and thought to yourself or out loud on a Facebook post, “I’m much funnier than the MC!” you could be right.  However, the person who got the gig does the other duties of an MC much better than you.  These jobs are all discussed in depth in my book.

The biggest question comics have argued with me about is why they have to be clean.  Actually only some have argued, many have just ignored the advice.  Think about every joke in your act.  Now picture a fairly conservative woman in her 50’s out at a non-smoking show on a Saturday night with her husband.  She’s about to place her order when she hears your bit about masturbation and gym socks.  She’s not the only one frowning at her menu.

When you host a show you become one of the club’s employees.  You need to be a relatable person and ease the audience into the rest of the comedy.  Does this sacrifice some of your act and artistic capability?  Yes!  Welcome to showbiz, you’re at the bottom of the comedy ladder.  But until you make these changes you’ll never get the chance to climb it.  In other words, write material that relates to something other than “slacker guy in his 20’s.”

So what are club managers really looking for in an MC?

I hosted shows for a good portion of the first six years of my career.  The main thing they want in a host is someone who just comes off normal.  That’s all you have to do…be normal.  Be personable, decently funny, clean, but just normal.  Dress normal.  Talk normal.  This way when you make the club’s important announcements, introduce the other comics, and represent the club, you’re not a liability to the show’s overall respectability and professional feel.  If you’re confused, go to a club and watch a good MC open a show.  (You’ll be able to tell if he/she did it correctly)

So how do you get the chance to MC?

My book covers the delicate process of getting the attention of a club manager, getting a guest set, and earning money.  Comedy is not like other business when it comes to getting hired.  If you happen to get a chance to be an MC you don’t want to screw it up, so my book answers a lot of other questions such as:

1.  What are the other jobs of an MC other than being funny?

2.  How does an MC’s set vary from a regular set?

3.  What do you do while off stage?

4.  When and how should you start self-promotion (without looking like a jackass in front of your peers)?

5.  What should you do differently if the headliner gets a standing ovation?

6.  What’s the process of getting paid?

7.  What if there’s a bachelorette party in the crowd?  Or birthday announcements?

8.  What if you’re working with a famous headliner?

9.  What are the rules on free drinks?  Food?  Passes for your friends?

10.  What do you do after the show?  More importantly, what should you not do after the show?

11.  How do you get to MC at other clubs?

12.  How do you balance dignity with pleasing a crowd?

13.  How do you get a comedy club manager to like you?

14.  Which shows will be the most challenging?

15.  What should you know about the wait staff?

There has been a big shift in the St. Louis scene allowing for a lot of opportunity in the two major clubs.  I know for a fact that a lot of new people will get a chance in the upcoming months to become MCs in the both venues.  Some will make the necessary adjustments and get mass amounts of stage time in front of great crowds.  Others will continue on with their social awkwardness and/or pride and keep bitching that they’re funnier and the club owners know less about the business than they do.  And it’s not just St. Louis.  Good MCs are hard to find all over the country…ask any touring pro.

Order my book at www.robdurhamcomedy.com to answer all of the above!

Note: I welcome any public or private questions of comments about this post.

RobDurhamComedy@gmail.com

Friday night I performed at the Poor Souls Society of St. Louis which is an arts center located about a mile or so north of downtown St. Louis on the rejuvenated 14th Street.  I looked forward to this particular set, though only ten minutes, because it was a chance to perform in an urban room.  In comedy, an urban room is one where most, if not all of the crowd, is black.  In my book I explain the adjustments that need to be made because urban comedy is different in some ways than what most of us are used to when we perform around the Midwest.  The reason I looked forward to the set so much is because I wanted to see how the material about teaching at an inner-city high school would do with a black crowd.  I had been struggling to get enough laughs with it in a few of my recent shows which were at a club in Chattanooga and smaller bar shows around St. Louis in front of hipsters.  These crowds were predominantly white with a small mixture of other ethnic groups.  The lack of laughs were due to the majority of the crowd feeling uncomfortable on behalf of those they thought I was offending.

On Friday night, like I said, the crowd was 98% black (the bartender was white) and the same material about teaching inner-city did the best it’s ever done.  The point that I write about is that more often, white people get offended on behalf of people that they think you’re offending.  It’s dumb, but that’s how society works.  There are ways to decrease this problem, but sometimes it’s really up to the crowd.  The bottom line is that depending on the situation and audience, some jokes or bits have no definite answer to the title question.  As the comic, you don’t get to tell the crowd, “No no, this joke isn’t offensive or racist.  Black people love it!  I did an urban show last week…”  Just like with every other joke in your set, they ultimately get to decide how they’ll react.  In Don’t Wear Shorts on Stage I include tips to preface this kind of material in different situations that will dramatically increase the success of edgier bits as well as other guidelines to the other types of shock humor.  As far as hipsters go…what can you expect from guys who wear glasses even when they have 20/20 vision and girls who cut their bangs to match the path of a windshield wiper?

Two local St. Louis announcements…I’ll be featuring with Dan Cummings this Wednesday-Saturday at the St. Louis Funnybone and my first local book signing will be this Saturday from 10-noon at 6 North Cafe in Ballwin.  Check www.robdurhamcomedy.com for more details.

As the first few people who ordered my book have finished it up I was able to hear one reviewer tell me that my book was very pessimistic.  I have to agree, in fact, I’m kind of glad to hear that.  One of my book’s goals is to discourage people from investing their life into something with big hopes and dreams only to find out later that it’s a terrible industry.  (Think of all the gas money I just saved you!)

The first negative about comedy is the lack of money, especially in this current economy.  Read the way it used to be versus how it is now in Chris Coen’s latest blog.  He sums up several of the common one-nighter problems.  Along with that there are bad road conditions, insulting paychecks, and tough crowds to deal with.  One week you do a set of jokes that kills, the next week people are offended.  “Crowds are like women, am I right?!” hacky 90s comic says.

So how are comics supposed to stay positive on the road?  By carrying on a relationship where they barely get to see a loved one? (that’s an upcoming topic)  Spending weeks in strange cities?  Being validated and judged on a nightly basis by people who they normally wouldn’t care about the opinions of?  These things wear on you and can be devastating.

The key to staying positive is to find other things in life that you build on top of your comedian lifestyle instead of letting it smother you.  No one is going to “make it” just doing stand-up.  While you’re on the road you may want to team up with the comics you work with (the ones you can stand and respect) to find things to do whether it be producing goofy youtube videos (Jake Iannarino does this), writing material, or just hanging out.  Have a bigger project to work on that relates to your stand-up career (obviously, mine was writing the book).  Get to know the people at the clubs so they eventually feel like family every time you work there.  There are a lot of ways to at least limit the negativity you’ll face.  I cover several more in Don’t Wear Shorts on Stage if you want to get a better feel for what it will be like.

Next week won’t be much happier.  I’l discuss how to handle criticism in a deeper way than, “Don’t take it personally!”

This is a topic I cover in my book but I wanted to add a few other points.  Consider this entry as much for the comedy fan as for the comic.  I love that my friends come to my shows.  So many of them were there for my first time (and cheered me on in a clap-off) and throughout the years.  I’ve been lucky to have their support in a lot of shows.  It’s not the close friends who I want to address in this entry, but rather the acquaintances or non-BFFs if you want to get technical in a sixth-grade sense, who you need to be ready for.  Maybe you’re doing a show in the town they live in which happens to be in the middle of Kansas and you haven’t seen each other since high school.  You occasionally exchange comments on Facebook and have a few fun memories to share from high school, but because you’re not that close, they know nothing about stand-up.

First, realize they’re going to insult you in some way, hopefully it’s at least unintentional.  The first thing they’ll do is hint around and wonder how much money you’re making.  Granted, they usually think it’s more than it is, but it’s none of their business.  Comics make way less than anyone thinks.  Next, they’ll ask for some of your merch for free.  I’ve been selling shirts for four years and sometimes my acquaintances think they should get some kind of discount just because we suffered through Algebra II together in 1994.  Honestly, the early success of any kind of merchandise release, whether it be t-shirts or my book, is heavily reliant on the friends who pay full price to get me back to that break even point.  As comics, we wouldn’t come to your cubicle on a payday after you’ve worked really hard at your job, look at your pay stub and say, “Hey, saw you got a paycheck today…how about giving me five or ten bucks of that?”

*A Clear Fork classmate’s wife never paid me for four shirts back in 2007 after many emails and requests.  Curious?  (I use her real name in my book).  How’s that for passive aggressive?

I think the next insult is rooted in the jealousy of the balls you have for going for your dream.  I worked with a headliner last year who had a classmate come up to him and say, “Wow, you were a lot funnier this year.”  That’s not a compliment to someone who’s been doing stand-up for almost twenty years.  The amount of improvement from year fifteen to year sixteen of a career is minimal for most, so to say something like that is very insulting.  If we’re established, don’t tell us we’ve improved like we’re a seven year old at a piano recital.  Most of the time the show’s success has to do with how big the crowd was.  We do the same thing every night to various amounts of laughter based on the venue.

Most of my friends have the method of going to a show down pat, but within three hours of showtime expect a dozen calls, texts, and emails from your pals who suddenly forget there’s an internet and have no idea about showtime, location, tickets, directions, other performers, the club’s name, cover charge, if there’s food served, if it’s 21 and up, and what time they really need to be there.  I’ve found that the true friends figure it out themselves.  Also be weary of any friends who can’t hold their liquor or don’t tip.  Don’t invite them.

Another frustrating thing is when they continuously ask, “When are you doing shows around here?”  We have webpages for that.  Most of us post it on Facebook at least a few times.  Then, once we get that week of shows in their random town, they don’t bother to make it.  “Well, when are you going to be performing here again.”  I know, our comedy shows aren’t as big of a deal to you as your own lives, but don’t expect us to perform five minutes from your home ten times a year.  The worst is when you comp someone some passes and they still don’t show up.

I think the comment that bugs me the most is when they talk about the “sacrifices” they made to be at your show.  “We had to drive 45 minutes and pay for a sitter to be here.”  Well you shouldn’t have.  I’m sorry you had to go through all this trouble for a night of being entertained!  I had to drive eight hours, leave my family at home for four days, give up the chance of ever building a retirement fund, sleep in a nasty hotel, and eat fast food for a week to perform in front of people who after seeing me work my ass off on stage still think I want to hear one of their jokes which usually starts, “I ain’t racist or nothin’ but did you hear the one about the three black guys?  You can use it if you want!”

Final advice…

Comics:  Invite only the friends you can trust to represent you well and let them do the rest.

Friends/Fans:  Take the same initiative you would take and behave as if you were going to a movie theater.  We love your support, but don’t undermine the fact that it’s more than just a hobby or job for us.  Your negative feedback isn’t necessary, we know when we suck.

(Feel free to share this with your friends as well.)

I’m going to make a prediction. I predict this entry gets more hits than any other previous entry even though less than 5% of most open mic nights are populated by women. Although most of the advice in this entry is for women, there are still a few tips for the guys as well, so read on.

In my book I consulted my friend Maria Shehata for some pointers (and warnings) for female comics. Maria has frequented the stages of New York and L.A. and has even appeared on Comedy Central so she knows what she’s talking about. For the specifics in this entry I consulted some other female comics who wish to remain anonymous because they probably already have enough stalkers.

(Note: The following is based on the many email communications I had with female open mic comics, so if you disagree, blame my anonymous sources…or just go punch yourself in the face.)

First the disadvantages that ladies at open mic will have to overcome. Other than the awkwardly aggressive male comics trying to get phone numbers, women are often stereotyped as not funny. At some open mics, most of the comics aren’t funny so if there are women who perform that risks making the stereotype worse. If there are two women on the show and they both suck they’ll be remembered more than the dozen guys out of fifteen who also weren’t funny. Whether you’re male or female, your’s still a beginner. Men also cringe at the thought of what women are going to talk about on stage. Periods! Abortions! More periods! If I were to advise a female beginner I would say stay away from these things, but for a different reason. The same reason I would advise a male beginner to avoid the typical beginner topics of masturbation and other dick jokes. This is all explained (here it comes) in my book.

Another disadvantage brought up is the lack of female mentoring in the comedy community. There are PLENTY of male comics who will try to mentor (court) the “cute little ladies” and eventually take one on the road with them whether they’re ready or not (they’re not), but how many local scenes have women who are good enough to mentor but aren’t always on the road?

There aren’t as many famous female headliners out there so a lot of times a newer female comic will get accused of trying to be one of the few who are successful. She’s trying to be Kathy Griffin. Just because she talks fast? As mentioned in a previous post, comics will often try to emulate a pro before they find their voice, especially early on.

I do have one quote from Amy Milton (a St. Louis open mic comic who has the most well-written jokes I’ve ever heard for someone who’s only been performing for only six months). “One of the rudest things a male comic can do to a woman at an open mic is to apologize for saying something rude.” In other words guys, don’t get all politically correct just because there’s a woman around. They’re comics, they get jokes too. If they didn’t then they wouldn’t be there.

Let’s be honest, in a male dominated business appearance counts. Other than pharmaceutical sales, what business that should be gender-balanced as far as opportunity, is so advantageous for women when they’re attractive? I don’t blame the women who have taken advantage of this, I blame the men doing it (Especially whoever renewed Whitney for a 2nd season). Whatever they do will garner attention. If they can overcome the male crowd member thought process of “There’s no way she can be attractive and funny,” with a solid few minutes up front, the stereotype will go away for that show. (Won’t it?) Yes, there are going to be some idiotic members in the crowd who don’t like you, but dumb crowd members affect us all at some point.

So to sum up the advice…Guys, don’t hit on (there’s a difference between talking to and hitting on) or apologize to female open mic comics. And ladies, it might be a steeper climb to the initial success, but once you get to a certain point that momentum is in your favor.

Order your copy of “Don’t Wear Shorts on Stage” today!  Available at www.robdurhamcomedy.com!

Regular advice posts will continue as always on Mondays.  Next week’s entry involves the ladies of open mic.

My last two sets at open mic haven’t gone as well as I would had liked.  A new joke I’ve been doing that worked well the first time fell flat the last two weeks.  In my book I have a section on “Why jokes no longer work” that explains the multiple reasons why a once successful joke dies, but in my current case, it’s a completely different reason that can be fixed.  I didn’t take my own advice from two weeks ago.  This joke is a longer bit and by opening my last two open mic sets with it, I wasn’t able to establish whether I was funny or not to the crowd right away.

The key lesson is to open your set with a quick joke or two that gets right to the punchlines.  Recently I had a fellow comic ask me if he should change his opening joke at open mic because he had been using it to start his set every week for awhile.  I told him to keep opening with it because it was quick, funny, and established who he was on stage right away.  These are all very important.  Yes, open mic is a place we test new bits and we only get four minutes to do so, but to give other jokes a fair chance sometimes we have to establish that we’re funny to the crowd first.  No one hates having to use the same opening joke or two week after week more than me, but it looks like it’s the most effective way to give the rest of the set a fair chance.  So this Tuesday, if you’re one of the St. Louis comics, we’ll see if it makes a difference in how my new bit (about starting line-ups) does.

It took me nine years to find an opening joke that worked well enough to keep.  Openers are actually harder to find than closers because of the length restraints.  By the time you get to your closer the audience is on board with you and knows who you are as a character.  The role of the opening joke must establish that, be funny, and do it in a much shorter amount of time.

You don’t have to reinvent the wheel with your opener.  There are some common ways to do it which again are mentioned in my book.  What’s with all this heavy marketing and plugging, Rob?  Is the book finally completed?  Why yes, yes it is!  I’m waiting for the final proof to be sent to my apartment (Tuesday the 20th) and then I’ll be taking orders (since you have the Internet, you’ll know).  In the meantime work on writing that opening joke that quickly establishes you’re funny and gives the audience a sense of who you are.  For further example (St. Louis friends), watch how Patrick Brandmeyer does is it correctly.  It’s been the key to one of St. Louis’s most improved comics.