Episode 1315 - Jeff Foxworthy
Marc:Lock the gates!
Marc:What are you doing?
Marc:How are you keeping things away from infecting the rest of your goddamn brain every time you turn on your phone?
Marc:Give me some tools.
Marc:Give me some tools.
Marc:This is the way the economy works.
Marc:How are you?
Marc:What's happening?
Marc:Welcome to the show.
Marc:I'm Mark.
Marc:Have we met?
Marc:Nice to see you.
Marc:No, maybe I did put on a couple pounds, but it was worth it, right?
Marc:Anyway, look, today on the show...
Marc:Jeff Foxworthy, he's got a new special out.
Marc:Jeff Foxworthy, he was popularized in American culture by a tagline, you might be a redneck if.
Marc:But I've known him, I've not known him for years, but I did one of my first paid weeks as a stand-up, either opening or featuring for him in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
Marc:Very nice guy back then.
Marc:And I still hold that thing in my brain.
Marc:I'll talk about it in a second.
Marc:What I did to distract myself from everything is get obsessed with a beanie.
Marc:Some of you listened to my Keith Richards interview, and I just couldn't stop pestering him about that beanie he was wearing.
Marc:Whatever you want to call it.
Marc:I call it a beanie.
Marc:I just wanted to know, man.
Marc:I wanted to know where that beanie came from.
Marc:In the same way that when I first saw Keith when I was at high school, I wanted to get a guitar like his.
Marc:It's just, it is what it is.
Marc:It's a good hat.
Marc:It's a good old guy hat.
Marc:He looked great in it.
Marc:And I just got obsessed with it.
Marc:And I know it.
Marc:And some of it had to do with it being Keith's beanie.
Marc:I get it.
Marc:But I was annoying to the point where his people.
Marc:Yeah, I. Yeah, I really get myopic or selfish or what.
Marc:I mean, the guy was here to promote the goddamn reissue of main offender, which is out the box set.
Marc:But I just want to know where the fucking hack came from.
Marc:And I guess I was a little persistent because I asked the publicist, you know, maybe find out where that hack came from.
Marc:And then somebody who follows me on Instagram works for the Stones.
Marc:And she's like, all right, here.
Marc:This is where he got it.
Marc:Now, just basically shut up about it.
Marc:We've had enough.
Marc:We don't want to give any juice to this company.
Marc:So just, you know, here, do what you will.
Marc:I'm like, Jesus.
Jesus.
Marc:Can't a guy want a hat?
Marc:I mean, I'm not looking to promote the hat.
Marc:But the bottom line was, is after a couple of false leads of my own just poking around buying beanies, you know, I thought I'd spend too much on a couple of beanies.
Marc:But these beanies, the actual beanies, hand-knit cashmere, pricey.
Marc:And of course, I mean, what did I think?
Marc:That he got it at Urban Outfitters?
Marc:I mean, he's fucking Keith Richards.
Marc:He's going to get the most expensive beanie there is.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And don't think I didn't buy two of them.
Marc:Yeah, these beanies better, you know, I don't know.
Marc:When I put them on my head, they better be magic.
Marc:They better make me a fucking magician.
Marc:They better make me a better guitar player.
Marc:They better make me, I don't know, fly.
Marc:I'm not cheap, man.
Marc:And look, and I'm trying to enjoy my life and also trying to keep the darkness away by actively engaging in our economy.
Marc:That's that should be the slogan for America.
Marc:That should be the progress.
Marc:We're America.
Marc:We're trying to keep the darkness away by actively engaging with our economy.
Marc:Welcome.
Marc:Welcome.
Marc:Are you sad?
Marc:Buy something.
Marc:Are you depressed?
Marc:Buy something.
Marc:Are you terrified?
Marc:Guess what?
Marc:You can just get online and buy something.
Marc:Pow!
Marc:I just shit my pants.
Marc:JustCoffee.coop, a classic plug that was unwarranted, unnecessary, and unasked for.
Marc:Okay, so you're like, am I going to give you the name of the place where you can get the beanies?
Marc:If you want to spend like $300 to $400 on a hand-knit cap, I can help you out.
Marc:I can direct you there.
Marc:Go blow up their website.
Marc:Go buy some beanies if you want.
Marc:It's Elder Statesman is the name of the company that made the beanie.
Marc:And I'm not here to promote them on behalf of Keith Richards.
Marc:I want to make that clear.
Marc:They were very sort of like, you know, we don't want to.
Marc:OK, let's probably get me in trouble.
Marc:Let's probably get me in trouble with the Rolling Stones people.
Marc:But look, man, it was a quest.
Marc:It was a journey.
Marc:And my persistence led me to the grail of the beanie.
Marc:And I got it.
Marc:And that's where I got it.
Marc:So be it.
Marc:I went to see Gang of Four last night.
Marc:Look, I've got a couple of Gang of Four albums.
Marc:I always liked the sound.
Marc:I love the guitar sound.
Marc:I wouldn't say that I was like a crazy fan or anything, but I've got Entertainment and the other record.
Marc:I always liked them, but my friend Nicole said, do you want to go?
Marc:And I'm like, all right, I should go out and do something.
Marc:Let me go to a concert.
Marc:All I do is comedy and hang around with comics.
Marc:Maybe we should go see a show.
Marc:So I'm like, okay.
Marc:And even then I was like, you know, we got to get out.
Marc:I can't... I don't want to go... I don't want to, you know, get too many people around me.
Marc:But it's not... I don't know if we're post-COVID, but we're certainly fuck-COVID.
Marc:And I've been out in the world doing shows, obviously, for months and months, as you know.
Marc:And I got COVID a few months ago.
Marc:But it's been...
Marc:It was amazing to be out watching a show.
Marc:There's an energy to it.
Marc:This fear that some people have, it's like, I don't even know how to be in an audience anymore.
Marc:You know exactly how to.
Marc:You know exactly how to be around people.
Marc:It's what we're supposed to be.
Marc:We're kind of like people are a species that needs to be around other people.
Marc:It feels good.
Marc:It feels good to become part of a bunch of people.
Marc:Comes right back to you, man.
Marc:I mean, it depends how terrified you are.
Marc:If you're still terrified, don't do it.
Marc:Some people wearing masks, some people weren't.
Marc:It's probably smart to wear them if you're still afraid, if that'll make you, enable you to engage with the group, the group species activity.
Marc:But it was great.
Marc:It was great.
Marc:And at the beginning when, when what's his name came out, when John King comes out, the front man of Gang of Four, I'm like, wow, man, everybody's old now.
Marc:We're all old.
Marc:But that guy leaned into it and fucking kicked ass.
Marc:And I guess the other original member is Hugo Burnham on drums.
Marc:Sarah Lee, I guess, has played bass for them forever.
Marc:She was great.
Marc:And David, how do you say his last name?
Marc:Is it Pajo?
Marc:The guitar player, which is the driving, the rhythm, the music of nothing is more specific, really, than Gang of Four music, than the sound of it, that guitar sound, the drum sound, the bass sound.
Marc:And they just nailed it because they're Gang of Four.
Marc:But I don't know what they were like.
Marc:with the with andy gill before he passed the original guitar player but that guy peho if i'm saying it right david boy man he nailed it it was great it was electrifying and it was fun and i left before the encore which is amazing get out get out they left the stage i left the venue with my friend we walked back down i left my car at the comedy store and i had two slices of pizza
Marc:Did I mention Jeff Foxworthy this year?
Marc:But he's a nice guy, and I haven't seen him in person since I opened for him back in probably 1986 or 87.
Marc:Isn't that crazy?
Marc:He's got a new special on Netflix called The Good Old Days.
Marc:He's a real deal.
Marc:He's a real comic, and this is some real comic talk coming at you right now, me and Jeff Foxworthy.
Marc:Here we go.
Marc:Do you know we've met before?
Marc:You know that?
Marc:Where?
Marc:I mean, this is kind of funny, but one of the first weeks I probably got paid to do comedy.
Marc:I can't remember if it was after I came back from L.A.
Marc:getting all screwed up on drugs or before in between college and when I moved out here in 86.
Marc:But I was emceeing at Laughs Comedy Club in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
Marc:Oh, my goodness.
Marc:So it was probably 85 or 86.
Marc:Yeah, I just started.
Marc:Right.
Marc:And I think it was me and you and Jimmy Woodward, or maybe, but it doesn't matter.
Marc:But I was one of the first paid shows, and you were the comic.
Marc:And you were closing with, I kind of remember, it was like maybe your dad on a boat that was on a trailer.
Guest:He got pulled over by the cops, yeah, for towing a boat.
Guest:And they were like, no, it's not against the law to tow, but...
Marc:law does require you put it on a trailer yeah i can't remember the bit and it was like uh can you ask your friends to get out of the boat please yeah oh my god yeah yeah yeah that's 35 years ago isn't that crazy but i remember it i remember you know because you know you're just starting out and it makes an impression and you know we were talking and hanging out it's probably was that before you were married even
Guest:Probably, yeah.
Guest:Wow.
Guest:I got married in 85, so it was right around that time.
Guest:Yeah, it had to be like it.
Guest:Now, have you ever noticed this?
Guest:We tend to remember other comics, old material, better than we remember our own stuff.
Guest:Sure, until someone sparks it, like even what just happened.
Guest:How did you set it up?
Guest:I reminded Leno of a joke he did.
Guest:Mike Lacey and I used to just guffaw at this.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Leno had a joke about the... Remember the Amazing Colossal Man?
Guest:It was one of those old sci-fi movies where the guy had drank the formula and he grew to be like 90 feet tall.
Guest:And it showed his wife was like at home ironing with the TV on in the corner.
Guest:We interrupt this program.
Guest:There's a 90-foot man pushing over hotels in Las Vegas.
Guest:And Leno goes, his wife stops ironing.
Guest:He goes, you know...
Guest:Bob's 90 feet tall.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:And Lacey and I would just wet our pants laughing at that.
Guest:And Jake's like, I don't remember doing that.
Marc:He's churned through so many jokes.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:He used to do a joke that I used to, I remember about the, about commercials from, they were commercials from the Cling P. Cling P. The Cling P.
Marc:The Queen Peach Advisory Board.
Marc:This must be some job.
Marc:Hello, Queen Peach Advisory Board.
Marc:Yeah, it's okay if I can eat Queen Peaches on my cereal in the morning?
Marc:Yeah, we have no problem with that.
Guest:You remember that one?
Guest:I do.
Guest:That was like, and that again was like the 80s when he was doing clubs.
Guest:Right, right.
Guest:God, he was so good in clubs.
Marc:Yeah, I remember seeing him in the 80s when I was out here at the improv or something.
Marc:Yeah, just kill.
Marc:I got to check a story now.
Marc:I don't know if it's, because I remember you telling me a story.
Marc:I mean, I don't think it was about you, but it was one of these coincidences because, you know, I was a drug guy.
Marc:I remember it, but it was about you on a beach, staying on a beach and all these drugs washed up on the shore.
Guest:No, I lived on, I lived in Sarasota.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:And I had, I had gotten, I was young.
Guest:I had gotten divorced.
Guest:And so I had this.
Guest:So you married once before?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Like I got married at the age of 20.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And was married for like six months.
Guest:It was just stupid.
Guest:But I had this place and I needed the money, so I rented it out to two German foreign exchange students.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And they would get up in the morning and they would go walk up and down the beach.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And I'm working at IBM and I get up one morning and the two of them are in my dining room and they've got a bale of marijuana.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And like big butcher knives and they're chopping it.
Guest:And I'm like, what?
Guest:They're like, we are so lucky it's washed up on the beach.
Guest:And I'm like, dude, I'm going to work.
Guest:This cannot be here when I come home.
Guest:And when I came back from work, I think they had 16 grocery bags full of pot.
Yeah.
Guest:Wild.
Guest:I remembered the seed of the story.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Marc:Isn't that trippy?
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:I'm like, but you could smell it from the parking lot.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:It was there.
Guest:I think it paid for them to stay in America for another six months.
Guest:They're still here.
Guest:Yeah, right.
Marc:They're big marijuana dealers there for years.
Guest:And they would cook liver and onions every night.
Guest:That was it.
Guest:You remember?
Marc:I just remember that.
Marc:A bale of pot and liver and onions.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:So wait, so where did you grow up?
Marc:I grew up in Atlanta.
Marc:I'm going to go there soon.
Marc:Are you?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Where are you playing?
Marc:Buckhead?
Marc:Buckhead.
Marc:Yeah, Buckhead?
Marc:It's like a little theater.
Marc:I guess it's like a five or six.
Marc:I don't know.
Marc:You know the theater?
Marc:Buckhead Theater?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah, that's where I'm going to play.
Guest:I'll come see you.
Guest:You're like 10 minutes from my house.
Marc:Really?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Okay.
Marc:Well, I don't think it's entirely family-friendly, but you can say that.
Marc:Dude, I got 38 years in this business.
Guest:You toured with Ron White?
Guest:You can handle it?
Guest:I can handle it, yeah.
Marc:Well, I think it's interesting because I watched the new special last night.
Marc:Did you?
Marc:I did, yeah.
Marc:That just makes me cringe.
Marc:Really?
Guest:Yeah, for another comic to watch it, yeah.
Guest:That still makes you cringe?
Guest:What do you think?
Guest:What are you worried about?
Guest:Honestly?
Yeah.
Guest:From the very beginning, I used to tell my wife, tell me when I'm not funny anymore.
Guest:I don't want to be the comic that's not funny anymore.
Guest:Do you know what I'm talking about?
Guest:Like everybody sees the old guy get up and you're like, oh, dude, don't get up.
Marc:She's not going to tell you.
Marc:She's not going to tell you.
She's not.
Guest:You know what she told me?
Guest:She said, you just listen closely.
Guest:You'll know.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:No, I thought it was great.
Marc:But what is the name of it again?
Marc:The Good Old Days.
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Marc:At the title, I'm like, oh, it's going to get nostalgic.
Marc:But it's not quite, you know what I mean?
Marc:Because there are some shitty things about The Good Old Days.
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Marc:There's a lot of shitty things about The Good Old Days.
Marc:So, like, it was kind of a good mix.
Marc:And you still got it.
Marc:But it is very... Like, I'm always sort of amazed...
Marc:Like, you know, I don't have to be dirty, but I'm not like, I'm not blue, but I, you know, language wise and I, you know, I'll push the envelope a little bit, but I don't mind it.
Marc:But I've worked with guys like Bargetsy used to open for me, you know, before, you know, he became a huge star and I love it.
Marc:But like, for some reason I always say like, well, you know, I'm going to warn you, like if you come to the show, don't bring your grandkids or anything.
Marc:Well, he's won.
Marc:So, you know, he wouldn't.
Marc:Oh, good, good, good.
Marc:But but that's the only reason I say that.
Marc:But no, I thought I thought how long has it been since you ditched that redneck business on stage?
Marc:20 years.
Marc:You haven't done it in 20 years.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Isn't that wild?
Guest:And it's funny that that's the thing everybody knows me for.
Marc:How's it not going to be there?
Guest:At the height of it, I probably did it five minutes at the end of a show.
Guest:Five minutes out of a two-hour show at its peak.
Guest:Right, but there's a bunch of books.
Guest:Yeah, there's a ton of books, and I started doing a page-a-day calendar on it in 1990, and I still do it.
Guest:It's a big hook.
Guest:How are they not going to... Yeah, and so I'm... It's not like I'm ashamed of it, or I want to get... But it's like, if anybody follows me as a comic, I think of myself more as a storyteller.
Guest:Sure, of course.
Guest:And they're one-liners.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:And I think that's why they were popular.
Guest:They were easy to remember.
Guest:They were easy to retell.
Guest:You could remember a line and you could get a laugh in the break room.
Marc:People could make them up themselves.
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Marc:And they do.
Marc:Well, I remember, didn't you, those books, I mean, wasn't Vic Henley helping you out with that stuff?
Guest:Vic and I were buddies doing that.
Guest:He passed away, right?
Guest:Yeah, he did.
Guest:He died about six months into COVID.
Guest:Really?
Marc:It was that soon, huh?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:From COVID?
Yeah.
Guest:They don't know for sure he was living in New York.
Marc:Yeah, I mean, I knew him pretty well.
Marc:I mean, at the Comedy Cellar for years.
Marc:He was a funny guy.
Guest:He was.
Guest:Yeah, good guy.
Guest:Nice guy.
Guest:Yeah, nice guy.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:But- But did you have people churning that stuff out with you?
Guest:I wrote a lot of them myself in the early days, and then people just started sending them to me.
Guest:Sure, yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Like I said, it wasn't until I'd been doing them for 15 years.
Guest:One day, Rich Scheidner said to me, hey, you know you're doing the punchline first, then the setup.
Guest:And I said, what?
Guest:He goes, well, if you did it right, you should say, you might be a redneck if...
Guest:You have a complete set of salad bowls and they all say cool whip on the side.
Guest:He said, you're doing the other way.
Guest:If you have a complete set of salad bowls, you might be a rich.
Guest:I said, oh, crap, Rich.
Guest:I never thought about that.
Guest:So it worked, you know.
Marc:Oh, Rich Shiner, the technician.
Marc:Give you a little craft shop talk.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:All right.
Marc:So Atlanta, you grew up there with how many big family?
Marc:No, one brother, one sister.
Marc:And when did you start knowing you were going to do the stand-up?
Guest:I was one of those people that didn't know what I was going to do in life.
Guest:You know, it was kind of like a family.
Guest:Are you the middle?
Guest:I'm the oldest.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:And looking back, I probably should have gone to like an art school or something.
Guest:I'd always drawn and painted and stuff.
Guest:Oh, yeah?
Guest:But like when I was in high school, I didn't have any money to buy my girlfriend a birthday present.
Guest:So I entered a speech contest where the first prize was 50 bucks and I won it.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Do you remember that bit?
Guest:No, it was a serious speech.
Guest:It was something about America.
Guest:But I kind of knew early that I could write.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:And I knew I could make people laugh.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I didn't know what I wanted to do, and I flunked out of college.
Guest:My dad was working at IBM.
Guest:Doing what?
Guest:He was like a manager for them or something.
Guest:My folks had been divorced.
Guest:They got divorced when I was really young.
Guest:But I think my dad called some of his buddies, and he's like, hey, my son's kicked out of college.
Guest:He's working in a grocery store.
Guest:Can somebody give him a job?
Guest:And one of his buddies go, come down to IBM, fill out a thing.
Guest:How did you get kicked out of college?
Guest:Well, cause I had no money.
Guest:I was living at home and, and I was working full time at a grocery store.
Guest:So I would work from three to 11.
Marc:Oh, so you just couldn't focus.
Guest:And then I'd get up in the morning and take eight o'clock.
Guest:It was just too hard.
Guest:Georgia Tech was hard anyway.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:What were you doing there?
Marc:What were you going to go for?
Guest:Industrial management, which didn't do anything.
Guest:It was the easiest course that they had.
Guest:Industrial management.
Guest:But it was the closest college to my house.
Guest:Right.
Guest:But it was an engineering college.
Guest:Right.
Guest:You know, looking back, I should have gone and taken journalism or art or something.
Guest:But you don't know.
Guest:You're a kid.
Guest:Do you have regrets about that?
Guest:Well, I'd say it worked out all right.
Marc:Yeah, it worked out all right.
Marc:I know.
Marc:But is there something in your mind?
Marc:You're like, I really would have rather have.
Guest:Not really.
Guest:You know, I mean, it happened the way it happened.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:But like I learned real early in life, like I would save my allowance and I would buy comedy records.
Guest:I bought Flip Wilson and Bob Newhart.
Guest:And then as you got older, you bought Carlin and Pryor.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And so I learned very early in life I could make people laugh.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But I just never envisioned that it was a way to make it.
Guest:I didn't think you could do it.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I thought you had to get a job.
Guest:And and so I was working at IBM carrying a tool bag.
Guest:It sounds more glamorous than it was.
Guest:I was fixing machines.
Guest:Like what kind of like.
Guest:Some, you know, big computers.
Guest:I mean, some of them is big in this room.
Guest:Yeah, right.
Guest:The big old computers.
Guest:Screwdrivers and, you know, take the power supply out and stuff.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And but I was the guy that was at work doing impersonations of the boss in the break room.
Guest:Every office has that guy.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:The troublemaker.
Guest:The troublemaker.
Guest:I wasn't on the fast track to the top.
Yeah.
Guest:A bunch of guys I worked with would go to the Punchline, the local comedy club in Atlanta.
Guest:To Pettis Place?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And they came back and they were like, dude, you're funnier than a lot of people down there.
Guest:You should go try this.
Guest:And so they entered me in a contest called the Great Southeastern Laugh-Off.
Guest:It wasn't like an amateur night.
Guest:It was working comics and they did like eight weeks.
Guest:Then you had the semifinals and then the finals.
Guest:It was like, what, 84?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:84.
Guest:And so I'm like, crap, you entered me?
Guest:And so I went home and wrote five minutes about my family and went down there on that Tuesday night and I won the contest the first night I did it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I was scared to death.
Guest:I couldn't look at anybody, but I knew a minute and a half in, I'm like...
Guest:crap this is it this is what i this is what i want to do yeah it's like a blessing and a curse blessing and a curse but it's because you're like so i quit i mean i went up amateur night for four or five months and i actually met my wife the same night she was there she was acting the night of the contest yeah she was acting she had just done a tv thing with a guy that's a comedian and he was in the contest so her and a bunch of people which robert peacock
Guest:And I'm still friends with them.
Guest:So they went down there to root for Robert and I won.
Guest:But I met her when I came off stage.
Guest:So I met my wife and my career for four minutes apart, which is crazy.
Guest:Yeah, that was a Tuesday.
Guest:We went out on a Saturday.
Guest:I moved in with her on a Monday and that was 38 years ago.
Guest:So like you moved in with her like within a week.
Guest:No, within two days.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It was a good first date.
Guest:I would say.
Guest:And we're still together four decades later.
Guest:Well, that's the good part of the story.
Guest:Because you wouldn't have put money on that.
Guest:No, nobody would have put money on that.
Guest:But I knew, I just like, man, this is it.
Guest:But, you know, when you're from a working family family,
Guest:Did your mom work?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But they were in separate houses and you were kind of back and forth?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Mostly with my mom because my dad lived out of state.
Guest:But it seemed so flippant to not have a job job.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And they get nervous for you.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:That's my mom's first question when I quit IBM.
Guest:I remember sitting in her kitchen and she said, are you on the dope?
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:Whatever the dope.
Guest:The dope.
Marc:A variety.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:The broad ranging word for dope in general.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Are you on the dope?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I said, no.
Guest:I said, Mom, I think I can do this.
Guest:I said, I think I can.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Five and a half years later, I'm on Carson and the same mother's going.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You wasted all those years at IBM.
Guest:And I'm like, okay.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Marc:Then it was like, why did you get into this earlier?
Marc:Well, it's better than the ones that are like, well, do you make money on Carson?
Guest:Does that mean you're making money?
Guest:Well, my mother still this past Christmas, because I flunked out.
Guest:I made it through three years before I flunked out of college.
Guest:Last Christmas, my mother's like, you really ought to go get that last year.
Guest:I'm like, the comedy thing's going all right, Mom.
Guest:Just for closure, you know, just so you can have that degree.
Guest:Yeah, you've got that something to fall back on just in case.
Marc:Well, I mean, that's the thing.
Marc:It's like most people, I think most parents that I have found when I talk to people, it's not that they're not supportive, they're just nervous.
Marc:And probably rightfully so.
Marc:Of course, if they can talk you out of it.
Marc:But what does security really mean?
Marc:I mean, what kind of life you want to have?
Marc:I don't know.
Marc:We're just unique people.
Marc:There's some part of us that just doesn't give a shit, and we're going to go do this.
Marc:You're right.
Guest:You're right, because even if we hadn't gotten paid, we'd have been doing this.
Marc:Yeah, it's a weird thing that people don't really understand.
Marc:Because people who are sort of like, well, what if it doesn't work out?
Marc:Yeah, comics don't really even think about that.
No.
Guest:So does it ever cross your mind because you're like me and you've gotten away with this forever?
Guest:Do you ever just sit back and go, holy hell, I never had to get like a real job.
Marc:No, I did it the other night in a hotel room in Laconia, New Hampshire.
Marc:It could have gone either way.
Marc:I could have been grateful or I could have been like, what did I do?
Guest:What the hell did I do?
Guest:But Mark, I think that.
Guest:I'm like, wow, I kind of conned the world.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:It's like when people talk about jobs and you start to really realize like the last one I had was at a restaurant in college.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And that was it.
Marc:And the other ones have been in show business somehow.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah, it's crazy.
Guest:Well, and there's something within us.
Guest:It's like my wife's sister, her husband was in the military and they like knowing this is what we're going to be doing for the next 25 years.
Guest:Yeah, I can't.
Guest:Well, at any point in my career, if you had said to my wife and I, what are y'all going to be doing in a year?
Guest:We'd have looked at each other and giggled and go, I don't know.
Guest:Hell, I don't know.
Guest:Exactly.
Marc:I have a hard time now with tomorrow.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Like, I don't know.
Marc:I got to look at the calendar.
Marc:I don't know if that's an age in my brain or what, but I can't think about it.
Guest:No.
Guest:Especially, what are you going to be doing in two years?
Guest:Hell, I don't know.
Marc:Are you kidding me, man?
Marc:This almost all went south for me.
Marc:It all seemed like you were on a pretty good trajectory, most of it.
Marc:I was in my 40s, and I'm like, I'm in trouble.
Guest:That's the first time you went, ah, wait a minute.
Marc:Well, it was like, you know, if I don't turn this around, there's no turning around.
Marc:And I didn't even know what to do.
Marc:That's when I started the podcast and things turned around.
Guest:Yeah, it seems to be going okay.
Marc:Yeah, everything worked out.
Marc:But, I mean, dude, I was in my 40s.
Marc:Like, I got shots.
Marc:I was in the loop in the game, but I didn't go anywhere.
Marc:I had big management.
Marc:No one's going to be like, they're not your parents.
Marc:Right.
Guest:Yeah, they're not going to take care of you.
Marc:Yeah, so like...
Marc:So once you win the contest, I mean, what was, because that was what year?
Marc:84.
Marc:84.
Marc:So the club boom's still kind of happening.
Marc:So how do you pay your dues?
Marc:What do you start doing?
Marc:You got five minutes.
Guest:I mean, like everybody else, I started, I quit the last day at IBM was New Year's Eve.
Guest:And I drove from IBM to Birmingham and I opened for Sinbad for their New Year's show.
Guest:In Alabama?
Guest:Uh-huh.
Guest:How was that?
Guest:Well, I used to get so nervous I couldn't eat the day of the show.
Guest:And as I'm introducing Sinbad, he's cramming an egg roll in his mouth.
Guest:And I thought, oh, my God, that's my goal in life.
Marc:I want to be able to cram an egg roll.
Marc:That guy can just do it.
Guest:Oh, he murdered.
Marc:Murdered.
Marc:He could perform eating.
Guest:Murdered.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:But I, you know, I worked weekend.
Guest:But was that like a black crowd?
No.
Guest:No, it was a mix, half and half, but it didn't matter.
Marc:He would have killed anyone.
Marc:No, I was talking a thing about you, I'm sure.
Marc:I have complete confidence in Sinbad at that point.
Guest:I'm not one bit scared of a black crowd.
Marc:No, no, I'm just wondering how it went.
Marc:I'm not saying, there's no fear.
Guest:It went all right, you know, but like you said, I had...
Guest:Hell, I had probably seven or eight minutes when I started.
Guest:That's all you had to do.
Guest:And I, you know, I used to keep those.
Guest:Remember those little calendar books?
Guest:And I would have.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:I'd work Tuesday through Sunday.
Guest:I'd drive back home to Atlanta, wash my clothes on Monday and go back out.
Marc:But was there like a one nighter thing, too?
Marc:Because I have all my old calendars and I go through them and I try to remember those rooms because I was in New England.
Marc:There were just dozens of one nighters.
Guest:Same thing in Florida, North Carolina.
Guest:There was just one nighters.
Marc:Right.
Marc:So you did that thing.
Guest:I found two person show usually like opener and a headliner.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I found the book from the first year I was on the road.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I did 406 shows.
Guest:Now that counts like two on a Friday night.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:406 shows.
Guest:First year.
Guest:First year.
Guest:$8,300.
Guest:Hey, you're getting your education, man.
Guest:Well, that's how you learn to be.
Guest:And, you know, I say that.
Guest:It's like if you want to be an actor, you go to acting school.
Guest:You want to be a musician, you go to music school.
Guest:You want to be a comic, you hang out with comics.
Marc:Yeah, you want to be a comic, you go to this shitty place that has a comedy night.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:And it's you and some sad, bitter headliner.
Marc:So you're doing those one nighters.
Marc:Like, who are the guys?
Marc:Who are you open for?
Marc:Killer B's?
Guest:the bees was opening for me but i i'm trying to think like there was a guy named billy elmer there was billy elmer right he used to and then he ended up in radio right didn't he billy i think billy uh i was there was frankie pace you remember sure frankie with the little hat the bald guy did the miming yeah piano yeah sure i knew frankie uh
Guest:A bunch of guys from New York.
Guest:John Heyman.
Guest:John Heyman.
Guest:Wow.
Guest:John Heyman.
Guest:I remember that guy.
Guest:He was funny.
Guest:John Heyman made me laugh.
Guest:He's funny, man.
Guest:Just to hang out with for the night.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:He was like a pre-Ital-Ital kind of.
Guest:Yes.
Marc:Yes, he was.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I remember Heyman.
Guest:And I would make myself... I think I was smart enough even then in the beginning to realize that this boom wasn't going to last forever.
Guest:And so I made myself get out of my comfort zone.
Guest:I didn't just stay in the South.
Guest:So I'd go to New York and do the crap gigs in New Jersey and all that.
Guest:The Roger Paul and Tony Camacho gigs.
Guest:Tony Camacho with the biggest tongue on the planet.
Guest:Or go hang out at Catch or whatever.
Guest:But I wanted...
Guest:I knew at some point the bottom was going to fall out, and I didn't want to be one of a thousand guys calling saying, hey, you don't know me, but.
Marc:Right.
Marc:So you wanted to get in in New York and stuff?
Guest:And I don't know if you ever felt this way, but it's like in your own hood, like Atlanta.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:I could look at the pictures on the wall, and I knew where I fell in that list.
Guest:I'm like, all right, I may not be at the top, but I'm above these people.
Guest:Who was the top guy when you were coming up in Atlanta?
Guest:Atlanta?
Guest:James Gregory, probably.
Marc:Really?
Marc:I don't even know that guy.
Marc:He's still doing it, still killing it.
Marc:Regional?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah, he never... Well, that's the thing about these.
Marc:I came up in Boston.
Marc:There are regional acts that kill... Kenny Rogerson.
Marc:Kenny's great.
Marc:He was a Boston guy first.
Marc:Kenny...
Guest:Kenny was... Is he down there now?
Guest:No.
Guest:I don't know where Kenny is, but he was funny as hell.
Guest:So funny, dude.
Guest:Kevin Meaney, Big Pants.
Guest:So funny.
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Marc:Don Gavin.
Marc:There were so many funny people from Boston.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Marc:And Mike McDonald.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And some of them are still doing it there.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I came up with Joe Yannetti.
Marc:You know Joe Yannetti?
Marc:Yeah, I do know Joe.
Marc:Very funny.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Well, I mean, I used to do open mics after college, and it was me and Joe Yannetti and who else?
Marc:So you were working around some really good comics back then.
Marc:Well, yeah, because I started doing it.
Marc:The first time I ever really started was 84, the summer of 84.
Guest:Now, was Poundstone from Boston too?
Marc:I saw her do a show at the Paradise where someone sent her like a million, like a hundred boxes of those Ding Dongs or whatever.
Marc:She used to love those.
Marc:It was some sort of pastry.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But like when I started, I only did it for that summer and then I didn't do it until I graduated.
Marc:Then in 86, I moved out here and became a doorman at the comedy store.
Marc:So why was that?
Marc:It was too hard.
Marc:I'd gotten into comedy with another guy and we did a team thing in college.
Marc:And then like when I started doing it myself, just the hammering of the open mic at that time.
Marc:And I was drinking and I was a kid.
Marc:I was 21.
Marc:But I was just like waiting around to go on.
Marc:Like Kenny...
Marc:Like, I remember one night specifically, Kenny was hosting an open mic.
Marc:He got shit-faced, and he just kept bumping me.
Marc:And then all of a sudden, there's no audience left.
Marc:He's like, ah, I forgot, after I'd been there three hours.
Marc:And it was just, it was kind of brutal.
Marc:But as soon as college ended, I'm like, all right, well, I'm in.
Marc:And then I came out here, you know?
Guest:But it's always brutal when you're, like, I remember one night being at Catch.
Guest:The worst.
Guest:I wouldn't go there because of it, dude.
Guest:And finally, Lewis is like...
Guest:Okay, you're going to go.
Guest:All right, Foxworthy, Foxworthy.
Guest:But he said, hey, but listen, George Wallace wants to do five minutes in front of you.
Guest:George has never done five minutes in his life.
Guest:George gets up there and does 50, and then it's like, I'm sorry.
Guest:Well, to me, that 20 bucks was the difference between eating and not eating that night.
Marc:Right, and also there's the idea that you did catch.
Marc:Like you were some star because you did a set at Cash.
Marc:I couldn't deal with that place.
Marc:And just that guy having any power over my life, I couldn't handle it.
Marc:So I just did the downtown rooms.
Marc:I'd go do Silver's old improv.
Marc:Would you do the strip?
Marc:Yeah, sometimes.
Marc:But Lucian was like, I've already got an angry white guy.
Marc:And I'm like, what do you want from me?
Marc:So I was sort of down at the Boston Comedy Club.
Marc:And Silver, when she had the improv in its dying days on 44th, I'd do that place.
Guest:Right in the middle of Hell's Kitchen.
Marc:Yeah, but that was all right.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah, it was like missing letters.
Guest:It was a funky little club.
Marc:Oh, yeah, it was great.
Marc:And it was over by the time I got there.
Marc:It was just me and Uncle Dirty and Bob Shaw.
Guest:I remember I was so... So the first time I went up there to work, it was a Jersey gig, and they said, we'll pick you up in front of the improv.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:the emperor in New York.
Guest:And I get down there, and of course it's in Hell's Kitchen, and as I'm waiting for my ride, I watch a guy get stabbed on the corner.
Guest:Come on.
Guest:Two guys jump the guy, boom, boom.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Take his wallet, here comes the police, the ambulance, and now I'm this southern kid, so they pick me up, I go do the gig, I'm telling them, the dude, they jumped, they stabbed him, and
Marc:I thought the bit would be now that it's like, well, I guess you're going to have to do his time because that was the opener.
Guest:No, so we get back, and they drop me off in front of the improv, and it's like 2 in the morning, and my wife and I are staying at a horror... This is before they cleaned up Times Square.
Guest:So we're staying at the consulate over there on 49th, and I've got to get from the improv over there, and I have no money.
Guest:So I hid my money in my shoe, messed my hair up, and I walked...
Guest:And I walked picking up cigarette butts, talking to myself, because I thought if they thought I was crazy, nobody would mess with me.
Marc:It's so funny, the perception of New York.
Marc:But you did see someone get stabbed, so it makes it a little different.
Guest:Well, that's to scare the shit out of me.
Guest:So I'm like picking up... Oh, that's a beauty right there.
Guest:Talking to yourself.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Until I got the last 50 yards from the hotel, then I just ran.
Marc:How the hell did your wife stay with you through all this broke-ass stuff?
Guest:You know, she...
Guest:She always felt, she said, I never wanted a boring life.
Guest:I always figured I would have a bohemian life.
Guest:She never cared about money or whatever.
Guest:She just didn't want to live in a box.
Guest:Well, did she come from that?
Marc:What's her background?
Guest:She's from New Orleans.
Guest:She was acting.
Marc:Yeah, so she lived in the real bohemian world.
Marc:Yeah, she lived in the bohemian world.
Marc:You know what she knew, though, about you?
Marc:Is that no matter how dire straits got, you're a good guy, right?
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:you know what she said and i'll never forget so so we so we meet so she's there she sees me the first night on stage and we start going out and doing this yeah and and we'd been going out for a couple of months and she said to me one night she goes you have all this creative stuff yeah just crammed inside of you and if you don't find a way
Guest:to let it out you're going to have a real crappy life yeah and so she was the only one that was saying you could do this you could quit ibm and you could and and and mark i felt like i mean it sounds okay i felt like somebody was actually seeing me for who i was for the first time in my life yeah and i'm like really you think i could make a life being creative you know yeah because nobody's ever said that to me right before yeah
Guest:And so she's like, yeah, hell, let's do it.
Guest:And we didn't, I mean, hell, those first few years, we got married in New York for a hundred bucks.
Guest:We went down to the city hall.
Guest:Why in New York?
Guest:Because I'd won the contest and I got to go...
Guest:So this whole marriage and relationship thing was spontaneous.
Guest:Totally spontaneous.
Guest:So so so we're in New York and we're like, oh, hell, let's get married.
Guest:So we go down to City Hall and we get a marriage license and we're standing in line for the justice of the peace.
Guest:And this girl in front of us, her water broke.
Guest:Right there.
Guest:And I got so grossed out.
Guest:I'm like, I can't do it in here.
Guest:I can't do it in here.
Guest:So we went out to the street and I found a phone book and I was looking for like justice of the peace and I couldn't find one.
Guest:So I'm going to churches and I called this church and I said, hey, do you marry people?
Guest:And the guy's like, yeah, I'll marry you.
Guest:He goes, I said, how much?
Guest:He said, 300 bucks.
Guest:I said, hell, we don't have 300 bucks.
Guest:I said, why is it so much?
Guest:He said, well, it's $200 for the chapel, $100 for me.
Guest:I said, we don't need the chapel.
Guest:We'll do it in the hall.
Guest:And he started laughing.
Guest:He said, you know what?
Guest:He said, I'm right across from the garden at Central Park.
Guest:I'll meet you all there.
Guest:And so our wedding photos are two Polaroids of me and my wife and Andre the park sweeper with his broom who's got one arm around my wife.
Guest:He was the witness?
Guest:Yeah, and he's got the broom in the other hand.
Guest:For $100, we didn't even have enough money.
Guest:We split an entree at Tavern on the Green.
Marc:That's a sweet story, though.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:It's all sweeter because you're still together.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:These stories would not be great if it didn't work out.
Guest:But it's like, you know, my daughter got married like three years ago, and it probably cost $75 billion.
Guest:And I said...
Guest:You know how much your mom and I, you know, I swear to God, Mark, I don't because because because like when my wife's name is Greg, she has a weird name.
Guest:But so Greg and my daughter are sitting there going and look at this tent.
Guest:Isn't it pretty?
Guest:And they've got that.
Guest:And I go, how much is it?
Guest:And my wife would look at me and go, you're taking all the fun out of this.
Guest:And they would leave and I go, well, I still don't know how much it is.
Guest:And so the morning of the wedding, we got up and we're sitting there drinking coffee and I looked at her.
Guest:I said, you know, I don't know if this is costing a dollar or a hundred million.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And she goes, think a hundred million and you're going to be really happy.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So to this day, I have no idea.
Guest:It was a lot.
Guest:I know that.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Well, it's different.
Marc:It's nice to be able to give your kid that, right?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:It was a great day.
Marc:How old are you, though, man?
Marc:I mean, I'm watching you on this thing.
Marc:We can't be that far apart.
Marc:I'm 63.
Marc:All right.
Marc:I'm 58.
Marc:So you had kids...
Guest:Pretty, I mean, you've got grandkids.
Guest:My first one, he's a one-year-old.
Guest:We had kids kind of late.
Guest:We were like 33 when we had our first one.
Marc:Oh, okay.
Marc:And they had, so your daughter had kids pretty soon.
Guest:Yeah, she's like 27.
Guest:Oh, really?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I guess I don't really realize, I don't have kids, so I don't see myself aging.
Marc:So, like, I can't, you know, I don't see their progress and go like, oh, my God.
Guest:Well, it's kind of weird, because in your mind, I can...
Guest:When I look at my grandson, who's one, I can still see my kids at that age.
Guest:You know, aging is...
Guest:I don't know if it's that way to you.
Guest:In my mind, I'm still the new guy in comedy.
Marc:Yeah, there's something that doesn't change inside of us.
Marc:I do notice that.
Marc:For me, it's some sort of fundamental weird insecurity.
Marc:No matter how successful or what happens, there's still some part of me like, how'd that guy get that?
Guest:But don't you very clearly kind of remember being the new kid?
Guest:And now you're like, crap, I'm not the new kid.
Guest:I'm the old guy.
Marc:We're definitely the old guy.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But I see it more because I'm doing the comedy store every night, and there's all these kids running around.
Marc:I'm like, I really don't know who's doing this anymore.
Marc:And we used to know.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:And now you don't know.
Guest:And it's like when they ask me for advice, and I go, well, I made most of my money on comedy records and DVDs, which nobody buys records or DVDs anymore, so I don't know what to tell you.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I think there's a lot more...
Guest:ways to get seen now but the pie is split so much smaller you know it was back 35 years ago yeah if you got on carson and had a good set right it was like the mafia you were a made made comic did you do carson yeah you did it with carson yeah no shit so wait okay so
Marc:You go to New York after you win the contest.
Marc:You get married in the park.
Marc:You see a guy get stabbed and a water break.
Marc:And get married.
Marc:Big deal, yeah.
Marc:Beginning of life, death, marriage.
Marc:And then you go back to Atlanta.
Marc:And what, you just start working out the punchline?
Guest:No, I'm a road dog.
Guest:I'm all over.
Guest:Who's running you out there?
Guest:Is DePetta your manager?
Guest:DePetta's managing me at that point.
Guest:And I am on the road every week.
Guest:Because my whole goal was to do Carson.
Guest:With Johnny.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And I know he's not.
Guest:You knew there was a window.
Guest:I know he's not going to stay that long.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:And everybody was saying, well, it takes you 10 years to be good enough.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I'm like, I ain't got 10 years.
Guest:He ain't staying 10.
Guest:So that was what was driving you.
Marc:Because you saw your heroes on there.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And you knew that was it.
Guest:Well, I remember being a kid.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And my mom would watch The Tonight Show.
Guest:And you know how a door's not closed all the way?
Guest:Sure.
Guest:And I can remember, I didn't care about the...
Guest:actors or the right but when i heard a comic i'd get out of bed and i'd go watch it through that crack in the door george gobel and you know all those yeah and rickles yeah and so rodney that was my goal and so i said everybody said well it'll take you 10 years and i thought to myself i said i'll do it in half that i'll do it in five and it took me five years and two months but i but so you started out as a feature
Guest:But I didn't open long.
Guest:I opened for like four months, and then I was featured.
Guest:But maybe it was IBM, but I had a work ethic about it.
Guest:Like, I'd go back to the condo.
Guest:I'd go over my set, and I'm writing.
Guest:You know, it was way before you were recording your stuff.
Guest:But I'm writing every night.
Guest:So you're the guy writing while the headliner's drunk or having sex in the other room?
Marc:Oh, yeah, yeah.
Guest:Everybody else is.
Guest:Someone's sitting at the table doing blow, and you're like, no, thank you.
Marc:No, thank you.
Guest:I'm working on my set.
Marc:So this is... Oh, that's the picture.
Marc:I was wondering, are you texting?
Marc:No.
Marc:Oh, yeah, look at that.
Marc:And he's laughing.
Marc:Yeah, he's laughing.
Guest:You and your thin tie.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, that's a great shot.
Guest:Yeah, I did Fallon a few years ago, and the lady said, hey, I was going back through the files, and I found this picture, and I never got anything from Johnny.
Guest:So I'd been there for 25 years, and I said, oh, my God.
Guest:An actual picture?
Guest:Yes.
Guest:She had a photograph?
Guest:Yeah, she gave me that picture.
Guest:Oh, that's great.
Guest:And I said, you have no idea how much this means to me.
Guest:Oh, that's beautiful.
Marc:You know, what's funny is like, you know, I was in the hotel room because I did a string of dates last week.
Marc:I'm watching all the late night guys.
Marc:And I got to be honest with you, you know, Fallon's really the most fun to play to, no doubt.
Marc:When I do Fallon, like he's really looking at you like, are you going to do?
Marc:yes yeah let's do it yeah and and jimmy loves stand-up you know loves comedy so yeah he's excited yeah i i did because a lot of people were kind of hard on him at first but i'm like he's the most fun to as a comic to sit in that chair next to him and like he's looking at you for real like make me laugh and he also knows how to save people like he you know if you're oh yes so he's good at that but see like you like letterman loved you
Marc:Well, I mean, I did it a few times, and I don't know that he really remembered me.
Marc:I saw him the other night, dude.
Marc:It was very funny.
Marc:Someone brought him over to the comedy store to see me specifically.
Marc:Like, I've interviewed him.
Marc:Like, he knows me, but I don't think he remembers anybody who was on his show.
Marc:Sure.
Marc:More than, if you've only been on there like five or less times, I don't know.
Yeah.
Marc:But it was so funny because I'm backstage at the comedy store.
Marc:And it was like a weird night.
Marc:It wasn't even a regular night.
Marc:It was a produced show that I agreed to do.
Marc:And the manager comes back.
Marc:He goes, David Letterman wants to talk to you.
Marc:I'm like, he's here?
Marc:And he's like, yeah, he wants to talk to you.
Marc:My first thought was like, am I in trouble?
Yeah.
Guest:Going to the principal's office.
Marc:Am I out?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Am I not going to?
Marc:But I hung out with him.
Marc:So what'd he want?
Marc:He just would come down with some people and he just wanted to tell me that he loved what I was doing because no one was doing it and it needed to be said.
Marc:And then we just talked for a while and he was like, yeah, we laughed.
Marc:I got him laughing.
Marc:That's the best thing.
Marc:Even in that picture of you and Carson, like I was on the patio of the comedy store and I got Dave laughing and you know that laugh from your whole life.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:To make them laugh.
Marc:It's like, oh my God.
Marc:It's happening inside of you.
Marc:It's great.
Marc:So five years in, you're out there.
Marc:Were you middle when you did it?
Guest:Well, I'd gotten to the point where I was... My first headlining gig was a year and a half into it.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:Well, okay.
Guest:So I was kind of headlining like a triple gig.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:No, it was like a KC, the treehouse in Kansas City.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:So but I was like headlining funny bones and punch lines and improv and things like that.
Guest:But I was living in Atlanta and I kept mailing tapes to The Tonight Show and they would just mail them back.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:Dependent didn't have any.
Guest:No.
Guest:And they were like.
Guest:And my wife finally said, you're not going to know if you can do this or not unless we go to L.A.
Guest:So we like the clamp.
Guest:It's in reverse.
Guest:And we go to L.A.
Guest:What's she doing for work during this one year?
Guest:At this point, she's selling milk for a local milk company.
Guest:She's doing a little bit of acting.
Guest:But we're starting to make enough money to live.
Guest:But you've got to go out for it.
Guest:But Leno, I will have to say, Mike Lacey at the Comedy Magic Club liked me.
Guest:I went down there and Mike had Leno watch me.
Guest:But you moved out here.
Guest:Yeah, moved out here on a U-Haul.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And so Leno went in and put a word for me.
Guest:And then we'd been here about three weeks.
Guest:And I did a set at the Improv.
Guest:And Jim McCauley followed me out into the lobby.
Guest:And he said, why haven't you done The Tonight Show?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I said, because you keep sending my tapes back.
Guest:You don't even open them.
Guest:And two weeks later, I'm on The Tonight Show.
Marc:And at that point, that's what, 86?
Marc:No, that's like 89.
Marc:Oh, so it's 89.
Marc:So it's almost done.
Marc:So it was like The Tonight.
Marc:I don't remember when he retired.
Guest:I think he quit like 90 or 91.
Guest:Right.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So, like, it was weird because you talked to the guys from the 70s.
Marc:They're like, that first one just meant you better have nine other ones ready.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:That was a whole different time.
Marc:Those guys, they do five and you didn't know if they're going to call you in two weeks.
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Marc:Which they might.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:You know.
Marc:But so you had the one shot with him.
Guest:One with him, and then Jay took over, and I did a million of them with Jay.
Marc:It's so funny, because I just drew a line with Jay.
Marc:I was like, I'm not doing it.
Marc:Because Letterman was my guy.
Marc:So I had this loyalty thing.
Marc:I'm like, if those two got problems, I'm going with Dave.
Guest:Well, remember back in those days, we almost had to declare.
Guest:You either had to be a Jay guy or a Letterman guy.
Marc:I was definitely a Letterman guy, even though he wasn't putting me on a ton.
Marc:But I definitely was a Letterman.
Guest:But didn't you... Was Letterman weird for you to do?
Guest:Like, I remember... Like, Letterman would almost try to trip me up.
Guest:You know?
Marc:Well, I didn't do much panel.
Marc:Like, I remember... Like, I just... Like, I did four episodes.
Marc:I think I did four stand-up shots and one panel towards the end.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And the stand-up, like...
Marc:You know, I work with Eddie Brill.
Marc:Zoe Freeman got me on first, and we work with her, and I work with Eddie on the sets.
Marc:And I just remember one set I did, they all went pretty well.
Marc:My first Letterman was great.
Marc:And I remember going to the panel, but we didn't do much of it.
Marc:But right when I sat down, he goes, you can make that work on the road?
Marc:That's what he said to me when the cameras went out.
Marc:I'm like, yeah, I can.
Marc:I wasn't sure how to take it, but I'm like, I can too, I can.
Guest:Oh, I remember, like, I always preferred to do stand-up, but that kind of went away, you know.
Guest:I love doing panel, but I did stand-up on his show.
Guest:Well, stand-up, I was in control of the pacing and all, as opposed to somebody setting you up to tell the story about your vacation.
Marc:Well, I always liked, like, I did, like, 50 shots on Conan.
Marc:Like, I was on Conan a lot.
Marc:I was on Conan a lot.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Didn't sell one ticket.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Because I think I changed my haircut too much.
Marc:I always blamed it on my haircut.
Marc:If I could just level off on a hairstyle and some way of dressing, I would be successful.
Guest:I picked a hairstyle when I was a junior in high school and I never changed it.
Guest:I see it.
Guest:And the mustache, you know, you're set.
Marc:But I...
Marc:The guys I always liked watching were like Richard Lewis on Letterman and like the panel guys.
Marc:Because then you could build this character thing.
Marc:So I just did panel all the time.
Marc:And the other benefit of it was if they got stuck, they would call me.
Marc:It's like, can you do it tomorrow?
Marc:You got anything?
Marc:I'm like, I got a bunch of half ideas.
Marc:You could go on with half ideas because they were funny enough.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Do you know what I mean?
Marc:Right, right.
Marc:Didn't have to be developed stand-up.
Marc:There's part of me that's sort of like, I wonder what it'd be like to do one of that.
Marc:Because by the time the 90s come around, you're talking about four and a half minutes, five minutes.
Marc:You're not doing eight minutes stand-up.
Guest:No.
Marc:I mean, it's like five minutes.
Guest:And I will say, like, doing that thing with Johnny.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Because you did stand-up and then sat down?
Guest:Well, you don't know.
Guest:I got called to the- Oh, so you don't know if you're going to sit down, but you did stand up.
Guest:But you know how it is.
Guest:You've got to prepare that.
Guest:And they say, I'm not talking 555 and I'm not talking 605.
Guest:It's six minutes.
Guest:You're doing it around.
Guest:You're going all over town and making sure this thing's exactly six minutes.
Marc:Yeah, because you pulled it all out of context.
Guest:Yeah, it's all out of context, all pieced together.
Guest:So I go up.
Guest:They open the curtain.
Guest:I find the star and I get about three jokes in and I get an applause break.
Guest:Now, I'm smiling, but inside I'm going, oh, shit, this is messing it up.
Guest:And I'm thinking three minutes down the road going, all right, I got a tag on that joke about my dad.
Guest:I'll throw that.
Guest:I'll get rid of that because this...
Guest:You were pulling stuff out?
Guest:Yeah, I'm pulling stuff, and then I get two more jokes and an applause break, and I'm like, crap, I've got to get rid of that whole joke.
Guest:So you're smiling and talking, but you're really editing two or three minutes ahead of yourself.
Guest:That's funny, because my thought would be, like, just talk over the applause.
Marc:Just stop the applause break.
Guest:there's no way i'm rearranging this thing i'm just gonna have to step on this applause so i can get we don't want them clapping exactly yeah so after that you're made guy yeah kind of i mean it kind of happened pretty fast i in 90 i won the uh american comedy award the club comic of the year and then i got
Marc:Oh, and they still had that little book that was at comedy clubs?
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Or was it the Punchline magazine or whatever?
Guest:Yeah, and then I did a Showtime special that year.
Guest:It was like 91.
Guest:Yeah?
Guest:Yeah, so.
Marc:And who are the guys that are like around?
Marc:So Jenny's still huge back then?
Guest:Jenny was big.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Slayton?
Yeah.
Guest:Slayton was big.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:Because you're going all over the country, right?
Guest:So you see Jake Johansson.
Guest:Jake Johansson.
Guest:Drake Sather.
Guest:Yeah, that was one of the... I worked with Drake quite... We did some little comedy festival thing together for a while.
Guest:He made me laugh.
Guest:Dark guy.
Guest:Dark guy.
Guest:Larry Miller.
Guest:Larry Miller.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You talk about funny.
Guest:Great.
Guest:Oh, my God.
Guest:He can string a story out.
Guest:Mark Schiff.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:Mark Schiff.
Marc:He talks.
Marc:He's got that weird wispy thing.
Guest:Mark told me I worked with him at Zanies in Nashville early on.
Guest:And he took me to dinner.
Guest:Back in the days where we weren't making any money.
Guest:Maybe it was before it was orthodox.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And he said, you know, I just decided if I ever headlined, I would take the other guys to dinner because they're not making any money.
Marc:Oh, that's nice.
Guest:And so I'm like, I'm going to do that.
Marc:That's your policy?
Marc:Oh, that's good.
Marc:So how does it really go down?
Marc:You know, like, because I don't know, like, I knew Dan Whitney for a minute when he was at the Comedy Store when I was a doorman, before he was Larry the Cable Gun, right?
Marc:And I never knew Yngvall.
Marc:I never knew his work at all.
Marc:And, you know, Ron White, I kind of knew by reputation.
Marc:But these guys, by the time you guys decide to do that thing, are big acts.
Marc:Right?
Guest:You know, at least regionally the biggest guy on the funny bone circuit.
Guest:You know, right.
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Some people.
Guest:And when I started doing funny bones, they would kind of compare us.
Guest:Some people thought Foxworthy was funny.
Guest:Some people thought involved was funnier.
Guest:And then we met and we went, oh, how we like each other.
Guest:I thought I hated your guts.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Just because of what you're hearing about each other.
Guest:And I knew Dan when he was Dan Whitney.
Guest:Right.
Guest:You know, he was like the opening act at the Comedy Corner in West Palm Beach, and we were both Braves fans, so I'd schedule two weeks down there during spring training, and we'd go to ballgames every day.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:And Ron, I saw Ron the first night he ever went on stage, his first amateur night.
Guest:Yeah, in Arlington, Texas.
Guest:Arlington.
Guest:Uh-huh.
Guest:And he was selling windows for a living.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:He's a seller, that guy.
Guest:And I went and found him in the corner, and I'm like, dude, you're funny.
Guest:You need to be doing this.
Guest:So, wow.
Guest:So you saw him, like, when his very first time on stage.
Guest:Come on.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:What are the odds of that?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And we just kind of became friends.
Guest:Then he, like, quit his job.
Guest:He started being a comic down there, and I worked down there a lot.
Guest:In Houston, right?
Guest:Well, this was in Arlington, because he was kind of living between Fort Worth, but he hung out with the Houston guys a lot.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And Bill and I became buddies and Dan, I called him Larry half the time and Dan half the time.
Guest:But we had been friends.
Marc:So you all knew each other.
Marc:So you're touring, you're just doing the headliner thing and you're appearing and you did the Showtime special.
Marc:I had a sitcom for a while, which I hated.
Guest:You did?
Guest:I hated.
Guest:What was that called again?
Guest:The Jeff Foxworthy Show.
Guest:That's a clever name.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But I was never one of these guys that wanted that.
Guest:It was kind of like somebody said, hey, would you like to do a sitcom?
Marc:Were you out here when it happened?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So how long did you live out here?
Guest:Like seven and a half years.
Marc:Oh, so you were really doing it.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:And then you just.
Guest:And I started doing it.
Guest:And then they didn't want me in the writing room because I was a comic, you know.
Guest:All right.
Guest:And I'm like.
Guest:Let us make decisions for you.
Guest:This is TV, Jeff.
Guest:And I'm like, it's called the Jeff Farnsworthy show.
Guest:Oh, so yeah.
Guest:So I just hated it.
Guest:Because I'm like reading something that wasn't funny.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then on Saturday night, I'd go out and do stand up.
Guest:And I was saying what I wanted to say and making more money anyway.
Guest:So who produced that?
Guest:It started, my first one was on ABC, and then I did NBC.
Guest:The same show went from one network to the other.
Guest:How weird was that?
Guest:And it got canceled, and then I thought, look, I'm just a comic.
Guest:And I was happy.
Guest:I was happy being a comic.
Guest:I didn't care if I did TV.
Guest:And so I'm like, if I'm just going to be a comic, I'm going to let my kids grow up around their family.
Guest:I'll just move back to Atlanta, and I'll be on the road.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:That's what Nate did.
Guest:That's what a lot of dudes are doing.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And so I had people out here that are going, you're killing your career.
Guest:You'll never.
Marc:Well, you don't understand when you just want to be a comic.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Well, they don't.
Guest:Like, that's not enough.
Guest:But to me, and still to this day, I think being a comic's the greatest job in the world.
Guest:It's better than being a TV star or a movie star.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It's less work.
Guest:Well, it's weirder.
Guest:It's weirder.
Guest:You don't know what you're going to walk in.
Guest:What kind of cojones do we have to go up and grab a mic and think what we have to say is worthy of everybody's attention?
Marc:I know.
Marc:And if you're me, they're expecting something.
Marc:I resent them for that.
Marc:I always start at odds a little bit.
Guest:That's my style.
Marc:That's how I developed it.
Marc:What do you want?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But I'm pretty funny lately.
Marc:I like it when I go, because I'm not even taking an opener right now.
Marc:I'll go out and do an hour and a half, two hours.
Guest:But see, I don't want an opener.
Guest:I'm like, if I'm going to go to all this trouble to get here, I like being on stage.
Marc:I want to talk.
Marc:And also, it's like, it's my show.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Well, if you got the time, just do it.
Guest:But see, I think that's really cool that at this point in your career that you go, I'm pretty funny right now.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:That's cool.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Thank God.
Guest:It only took 30 years.
Guest:No, but you know it.
Guest:You're cocky enough to know.
Guest:I do know it.
Guest:I do know it right now.
Guest:But all it takes is one show, Jeff.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:You're right.
Guest:Right?
Guest:Oh, God.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Some nights I'll say to my wife, I still got it.
Guest:Then the next night I'm like, maybe I should just hang it up.
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:I think I'm done.
Guest:And then you get one new joke.
Marc:You're like, I'm back here.
Marc:I'm back.
Marc:Yeah, exactly.
Marc:so wait no now when when the hook happened were you like you know yes
Guest:You know, I was lucky because I had an upward trajectory, but it wasn't steep.
Guest:It was kind of steady.
Guest:So after the TV show, you're just a stand-up.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, I'm writing the redneck books.
Guest:Oh, yeah, yeah.
Guest:And you're already doing the blue collar thing?
Guest:No, that started in, when did we start blue collar, Mike?
Guest:Like around, I moved back to Atlanta in 97.
Guest:We started blue collar like 2001 or something.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:That's big.
Guest:You guys made money.
Guest:But we never saw it coming, Mark.
Guest:Our first gig was in Omaha, and we had all taken three months and said, we'll do this for three months.
Guest:And we ended up doing the first one for three years.
Guest:We had no idea it was good.
Guest:But I remember...
Guest:The guys that were promoting it, they wanted some big production number at the end where we all four came out and sang a stupid song or did.
Guest:And I said, and as a and I always tell people this, I'm not just a comic.
Guest:I'm a fan of comedy.
Guest:Well, as a fan of the Carol Burnett show, I used to love it when they made each other laugh.
Guest:And I said, can we do the opposite?
Guest:And you're just trusting your instinct.
Guest:I said, instead of doing something big, can we just bring stools out and just try to make each other laugh?
Guest:And they're like, well, I don't know if it'll work or not.
Guest:And you couldn't practice it.
Guest:Of course it's going to work.
Guest:You got Ron and Whitney out there.
Guest:And so that first night...
Guest:we got 9 000 people and i get to the end i was doing i was fourth up and so i get to the end of my thing i said hey why don't we bring the other guys back and they came out and we do our little thing and at the end of it 9 000 people stood up and we looked at each other and went holy shit you know what have we stumbled on yeah yeah just the chemistry yeah yeah and we were having a blast sure you know it's fun when you just you know as you know the
Guest:The only negative thing about being a stand-up is half the time you're on the road by yourself.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And so this, you were hanging out with your buddies.
Marc:That's funny.
Marc:And everybody's like, you know, how often was everybody like, where's Ron?
Guest:Every day.
Guest:In fact, I was like the dad of the group.
Guest:So I would tell Ron when we had two shows, I'm like, the first show, you've got to mix Coke and Sprite together in your glass.
Guest:Because if you didn't, you couldn't understand him during the second show.
Guest:Oh, man.
Guest:You had to do the fake booze.
Guest:Yeah, the fake booze in the first show.
Guest:And he would do it?
Guest:He'd do it.
Guest:He'd do it for me.
Guest:He loves me.
Guest:Anybody else, he'd have told him to stick it, but he'd do it for me.
Guest:Because you don't want to get him too loopy.
Guest:Heffy.
Guest:He's always called me, heffy, I'll do it for you.
Marc:That's great.
Marc:So, all right.
Marc:So what about this show with the fifth grader thing?
Marc:What's it called?
Marc:Are you smarter than a fifth?
Marc:Now, is this something you did for fun?
Marc:Is this something that sounded like a fun thing to do?
Guest:Because you did it for a while, right?
Guest:I did it for like five or six years.
Guest:Mark Burnett called me.
Guest:He said, would you have any interest in doing a game show?
Guest:And I said, nope, too cheesy.
Guest:That was my first answer.
Guest:And I said, what's the premise?
Guest:What's the premise?
Guest:He said, adults taking an elementary school test for a shot at a million bucks.
Guest:And I started laughing.
Guest:I said, you know what?
Guest:Actually, that's brilliant.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Because everybody's going to think they can do it.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And I'm like, all right, I'll do it.
Guest:But what I liked about it, as opposed to doing a sitcom, was you could stack them.
Guest:You could go shoot a bunch of them at one time.
Guest:Strip them, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:And they go out and do your stand-up.
Guest:I got a Tuesday the whole next week, yeah, yeah.
Guest:And so I went out and auditioned for it, and they gave it to me, and I actually enjoyed it.
Guest:But I was shooting.
Guest:When we were doing the half-hour syndicated version, I was shooting eight a day.
Guest:I'm like, let's just get it over with.
Guest:Let's run them through the thing, and then let me go do stand-up again.
Guest:So, I mean, that was something I never saw coming, but I kind of enjoyed it.
Guest:Because I could still be funny.
Guest:I could still kind of mess with people.
Guest:I could still be funny, and I could still do my stand-up.
Marc:So, when you were building this special, what's your process?
Marc:I mean, like, you know, you're not... Are you doing small rooms?
Marc:Are you doing 15-minute sets?
Marc:Are you just going out and adding, you know, stuff on?
Marc:How do you build an hour?
Marc:I...
Guest:I got to Netflix, approached me about doing it.
Guest:Well, I knew I was I said, all right, the only way I can make myself write a new hours, I've just got to say I'm not doing any of the material I've been doing.
Marc:Exactly.
Marc:And you got a job.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So now you got a job.
Guest:And I said, that's it.
Guest:Not doing it.
Guest:And started doing the note cards and started going to clubs on Monday and Tuesday and Wednesday night.
Guest:And, you know, literally holding them up going, is this funny?
Marc:So you go on the Laughing Skull?
Marc:Yes.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Marc:With note cards in hand.
Marc:So you go to an 80-seater and just kind of figure it out.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:That's the way to do it.
Guest:There's no other way to do it.
Marc:I'll get a black box theater and just riff.
Marc:I'll let people know what's up and fill it up with my fans.
Marc:And I'll say, like, we'll do an hour or so and see what sticks.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know what I do?
Guest:I get three boxes.
Guest:One of them says gold.
Guest:One says silver.
Guest:And the other one says certificate of appearance.
Guest:And I get up there with my cards and I'm like, hey, what about this?
Guest:And if it gets a big laugh, it goes in gold.
Guest:If it gets a kind of a chuckle and go in silver, if it dies, it goes in certificate of appearance.
Guest:So it's a theatrical presentation.
Guest:You've got the boxes.
Guest:But the thing that so fascinates me about stand up is after 38 years, I still don't know what's going to work and what doesn't.
Guest:Yeah, how can you really?
Guest:And that's what makes her fascinating.
Guest:Because if you said to me before we walked in, hey, pick the four cards that are going to work the best, I'd be dead wrong on two of them.
Guest:Right.
Marc:Well, I don't even write cards.
Marc:I have outlines of things, and I do it through talking.
Marc:And a lot of my writing happens on stage, so when it happens for me, I have to corner myself into a situation where I have to be funny to get out.
Marc:So when something's delivered to me, it's literally like, where did that come from?
Marc:Wow.
Marc:Wow.
Marc:Do you run off stage and start writing it down?
Marc:Well, I do, and I just keep repeating it.
Marc:But it all sort of organizes itself on stage, so it's almost like the muse or whatever it is.
Marc:It comes out of the air, and I've become kind of fascinated with that.
Marc:I know it's my head, sort of, but it's in that moment where I know I got a funny idea, but I don't know where it goes, and I'll do the funny idea.
Marc:And in that moment where you have to be funny,
Marc:It'll come out at some point, or it won't.
Marc:Oh, and you're going, where the hell did that come from?
Marc:That's the exciting part.
Guest:That is the exciting part.
Guest:It's when you're taking something, you're like, I don't know what to do with this.
Guest:Yeah, you just remind me, like I did something last night, I gotta... Write it down.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:This is the story of my life, note cards and notebooks with things scribbled on it.
Marc:It was just a funny moment about not knowing what woke is.
Marc:Like, what does woke really mean?
Marc:And then when somebody's anti-woke and you're talking to them, the idea is like, so you're the not woke?
Marc:Well, then I'm definitely woke.
Guest:I don't even know what I am anymore.
Guest:Right, right.
Marc:But it's sort of like, I know I'm not like you, whatever that is, but I don't know how to frame it.
Guest:So when you go to do a new one, I mean, you're committing yourself to a year of hard work.
Marc:Totally, totally.
Marc:That's what I did.
Marc:Well, I don't know about you, but during the pandemic, I had moments where I was like, I don't even miss it.
Marc:And then I got I got booked on the New York Comedy Festival.
Marc:So from the day we could start working again out here to November, I was just like, I got to do a whole new hour.
Marc:I got to figure it out.
Marc:So I booked a residency at Dynasty Typewriter, small, small theater every Tuesday and just hammering out comedy store, hammering out.
Marc:And I don't know where it comes from, Jeff.
Marc:And you never know if you can do it again.
Marc:You don't.
Marc:That's the weird thing.
Marc:That's the scary thing about it.
Marc:Right.
Marc:It's scary.
Marc:Right.
Marc:You're like, I don't know if I got it in me.
Marc:But you've done it how many times when you really look at it?
Marc:It doesn't matter, though, does it?
Marc:Well, every time.
Guest:You know, I've done like seven or eight albums.
Guest:So every time you do an album, you're starting from scratch.
Marc:Exactly.
Marc:But you don't think of it that way for some reason.
Marc:It's like you were saying, you feel like the new guy all the time.
Marc:Because every time you start that process again, you're like, I don't know if I can do it.
Guest:Or do you have like one little piece of it that you cannot make it work and you're like, crap, I know this is funny and I cannot make it work.
Guest:And then one night on stage, something just comes out of your mouth and it gets a big laugh and you're like, holy hell, it just worked.
Guest:That's my whole process.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:That's the only way I can do it.
Guest:Wow.
Guest:But that's the good part.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Oh, there's no better feeling in the world.
Guest:Right.
Guest:It's not the polished end thing.
Guest:No, it's better than an orgasm.
Guest:Absolutely.
Marc:Oh, this is awesome.
Marc:When you walk off and you're like, and no one would even know which moment it was.
Marc:No.
Marc:Because it's usually one moment.
Guest:But you're laying in the bed that night going, it worked.
Guest:Where'd that come from?
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marc:Thank God.
Marc:Thank God.
Marc:But that's the other thing.
Marc:Like I, I have to assume, cause I don't, I've done a little homework on you, not much, but your faith has gotten you through in a lot of ways.
Marc:No, I mean, it's just always kind of always, always been there.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But like, like in dark times, like, you know, when you, but like, do you feel like, do you hold it responsible for, for the being?
Marc:Cause you didn't get screwed up.
Marc:You got a nice woman.
Marc:You got, you know what I mean?
Marc:Has it always been there?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:In a real, in a present way.
Guest:I mean, I guess so.
Guest:You know, like, I mean, Leno influenced me or, you know, if you work clean, you'll always work.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Well, OK, well, sure.
Marc:I want to work.
Marc:So, but you don't strike me as a fundamentally dirty guy.
Marc:If that's what you are, that's what you're going to be.
Marc:Right, right.
Marc:Even in the new special, you take it right up to the edge with porn.
Guest:You don't go too far.
Guest:But that's always the guy I've been.
Guest:I walk right up to the edge.
Guest:Like my mother used to say, if I told you not to cross a line, you would walk right up to it and balance on one foot over it, but you wouldn't go over it.
Marc:Right, and I can feel it with your audience, because I can feel like you know right where you've got to stop.
Guest:And they would be disappointed if I went over it, I think.
Guest:No, I think so, too.
Guest:They'd be like, well, that got a little, you know.
Guest:You know, but it's like with my faith.
Guest:Well, I mean, it's faith.
Guest:It's like you either believe we're an accident or that we were created.
Guest:Right, right, right.
Guest:And so, I mean, that's pretty easy.
Guest:Which side of the fence are you on?
Guest:Well, I think we're pretty amazingly complicated to just be an accident.
Guest:Sure, sure.
Guest:And so I'm like, okay, we were created.
Guest:Well, if we were...
Guest:Why?
Guest:Well, we have to be created with some kind of purpose.
Guest:I think mine was to do this.
Guest:This was my gift.
Guest:I think this is your gift.
Guest:Some people, they're good at wiping old people's asses.
Marc:That's their gift.
Marc:Well, you know what?
Marc:I think a lot of people are going to have to do that, whether it's their gift or not.
Marc:Yeah, right.
Guest:But, you know, I'm not one of those people...
Guest:If what I believe makes me be kinder to you, be kinder to my wife, be more accepting by other people, then how can you look at it and go, that's a bad thing?
Marc:Oh, no.
Marc:I'm not here to judge, but it's just so funny because the way I work, if what I'm doing makes me kinder, better to other people, better to my wife, it's usually because I really did a bad job of her.
Yeah.
Marc:It's not because I learned some lesson from the Bible.
Marc:It's because I got a lot of hurt people back there.
Guest:Yeah, right?
Guest:Well, that was my dad.
Guest:You know, he was married six times, and he just couldn't keep his pants zipped.
Guest:And every time he unzipped them, the world blew up, and he just kept walking, you know.
Guest:Is he still around?
Guest:No, he died in a car wreck in 99, but he was a carrier.
Guest:He was funny, though.
Guest:Yeah, he must have been funny.
Guest:He was funny.
Guest:Yeah, he could talk to women.
Guest:Well, it sounds like it.
Guest:Do you have a lot of step siblings?
Guest:No, I actually have.
Guest:I don't, but you would think that I would.
Guest:But he didn't last that long?
Guest:No.
Guest:And he used to be like a deacon in the church.
Guest:In fact, I think he got...
Guest:Wow.
Guest:When my when my little brother was born, I think he got caught in bed with a church organist or something.
Guest:Wow.
Guest:He was a player.
Guest:I mean, you're doing that in the church.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Well, you know, those a lot of those guys.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But yeah.
Guest:And he left.
Guest:You know, they got divorced when I was like eight or something.
Guest:Sounds like it was probably better off.
Guest:So for me.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:for growing up without a dad right it became like once i had kids yeah it was very important for me to not let that happen sure so even though i had a job that was taking me on the road i was paying to go home that night so i could get there and take my kids to school the next day that was oh yeah that was the priority and so that probably kept me out of a lot of trouble sure sure responsibility yeah and and and and honoring it well
Guest:Having kids changed.
Guest:I tell people, the day my first kid was born, that's the day I became responsible.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:And they turn out okay?
Guest:They're great.
Marc:Oh, good.
Marc:They're great.
Marc:Congratulations.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Got a new special.
Guest:You got good kids.
Guest:A new grandson.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:My kids...
Guest:My kids even want me to live close to them.
Guest:They're both like nine minutes away.
Guest:Well, yeah, that's because they want you to babysit.
Guest:Don't be fooled.
Marc:And I do.
Marc:All right, man.
Marc:Well, it was certainly great to catch up.
Marc:It's been a while.
Marc:Yeah, man.
Guest:It's been 35 years.
Guest:But it thrills me because I know you're one of these guys.
Guest:We can't help it.
Guest:This is the thing that... This is the gift we were given.
Guest:And it's like, what are you going to do with it?
Guest:But to see you...
Guest:Do so well with it and be successful with it.
Guest:And you're like, yeah, that's cool.
Guest:Well, thank you.
Guest:And I think the older we get, comic minds understand each other.
Guest:Look at comics.
Guest:It's like we're a secret society.
Guest:We are.
Marc:It's like some weird brotherhood.
Marc:The fact that whatever it is, however anyone judges us or however... The fact that you and Ron White...
Marc:are on the road.
Marc:There's a tolerance and an acceptance and a weird understanding we all have.
Marc:Even the worst of us and the best of us, we know all the different kinds.
Guest:We do.
Guest:But people ask me, who's the funniest person you've ever known?
Guest:And I say, Ron White.
Guest:Of course.
Guest:He's right up there with me, too.
Guest:Oh, my God.
Guest:He's the funniest, just naturally funny.
Guest:But he's also the guy where you're like, how is he still alive?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Do you want him to marry your daughter?
Guest:Hell no.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But God, is he funny.
Marc:Oh, God.
Marc:He was telling me how he fucked up the last marriage.
Marc:And I was like, dude.
Marc:He marries them all.
Marc:I'm like, Ron, just date.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Just date.
Marc:What's going on with this?
Marc:He's still got that ceramic business down in Mexico?
Guest:I think the ceramic.
Guest:I still got one of his ceramic pots from that business.
Guest:Is he in the tequila business still?
Guest:He's still in the tequila business.
Guest:All right.
Guest:Say hi to him.
Marc:I will, buddy.
Marc:Nice talking to you.
Marc:Thank you for having me.
Marc:Yeah, absolutely.
Marc:Oh, by the way, however much shit you had to go through, whatever aggravation that you had to go through to get that last story on that special, on the new special, what's the special called again?
Marc:It's called The Good Old Days.
Marc:The Good Old Days.
Marc:That last story, it was worth it.
Marc:It was worth it.
Marc:Thank you.
Marc:Yes, sir.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Thank you.
Marc:That was Jeff Foxworthy.
Marc:Nice guy.
Marc:And the new special is called The Good Old Days on Netflix.
Marc:Here's some Stratocaster for you.
Marc:Straight into the champ.
guitar solo
Guest:Boomer lives.
Guest:Monkey and La Fonda.
Guest:Cat angels everywhere.