The Digression Sessions - Ep. 151 - Rob Cantrell! (@RobCantrell @JoshKuderna @ThatMikeFinazzo)

Episode Date: March 16, 2015

Our guest is comedian, actor, and rapper, Rob Cantrell! Buy his new album, Dreams Never Die, and follow him on Twitter here - @RobCantrell Follow us too! @JoshKuderna @ThatMikeFinazzo @MikeMoranWould @DigSeshPod Rate and review us on iTunes & Stitcher. And Like our facebook page!

hey everybody i'm josh kaderna and i'm mike moran and you're listening to the digression sessions podcast a baltimore-based comedy talk show hosted by two young, handsome stand-up comedians slash improvisers. Join us every week as we journey through the world of comedy and the bizarreness of existence. As we interview local and non-local comedians, writers, musicians, and anyone else we find creative and interesting. Yes. Who's the guest this week rob can trail rob can trail mr rob can trail is the guest on this week's program comedian rapper actor all around nice fella is the guest mr rob can trail uh he has a new album out called Dreams Never Die. And it's a music album. There's some rapping going on, some hip-hopping on this new one.

And it's on iTunes and Amazon, so go get that. And a friend of ours got to direct his video for Coffee and Weed, the remix, the DC Go-Go version. Our friend Jason Nunez did that, so that was a cool little uh tie-in and we'll play a little snippet of it too that'll be the bumper music on this one and uh um instead of our usual grand buffet uh bumper music so uh yeah it was uh this was fun man rob is uh he's a really cool guy super super funny comedian and uh he was at mcgoobies's this weekend and was nice enough to have Mike Fonazo and I go over to his hotel room to talk turkey. Got into it. We talked about working in cubicle jobs, his time on the marijuana logs, which was something that Tony Kameen and Arch Parker and Doug Benson started.

Getting arrested in New York for pot. No shocker there. And then, yeah, we were just telling a bunch of stories, and then somehow a story came up about Rob injuring himself on his bike and having to get stitches in his dick. It was pretty insane, pretty insane. One of a kind story. And, yeah, this was a really fun chat. So I hope you guys are into it thank you

for uh listening thank you to rob for doing it and uh thank you to mike finazzo for uh filling in for mike moran you can find mike finazzo online he's that at that mike finazzo on twitter and uh i think mike finazzo.net and you can get his albums and all that stuff. Rob Cantrell is Rob Cantrell on Twitter and robcantrell.com. So yes, thank you guys for listening. This was a fun one. So real quick, just a couple plugs for shows and Twitters and all that stuff before we get into it. I will be at Magoobies actually this weekend, Thursday through Saturday, hosting for Ralphie May. So hopefully some of you guys can come out to that.

That would be awesome. Find me on Twitter and Instagram. I am at Josh Coderna. Mike Moran is at Mike Moran Wood. And yeah, write reviews. Rate us. Love us. Love us everywhere on iTunes and Stitcher, guys.

And then find us on Facebook. Go to the Degression Sessions page. Say hello. We appreciate that. And check me out. I was on a local podcast here in Baltimore called Eric Tries Too Hard. So check that out if you're nasty. All right, guys.

Well, that's it. This is just a quick intro. In and out. Thank you guys for listening. Really appreciate it. Thank you to Rob for doing it. Let's get into it. Let's talk to old Rob.

Old Rob Cantrell. We love you. Now, do you think the guy with the ski mask brought his own or they provided him one? Yeah, his eyes are open. Like I kind of tell who he was and he was like, I'm the only dealer in Southern California for all of this. All your dudes are going to know who exactly you are. You are the one guy.

Kind of the eyes are like this. Kind of like this. You can see the mouth. It's like this. And he's like, I controlled all the ecstasy in Southern California. And I'm like, okay, you're the one guy. All your business partners know exactly who you are right now. Hey, Brian, what the fuck was that, man? You're telling them all our fucking smuggling secrets.

What are you doing, Heisenberg? Yeah, he's like, well, you know, I had we worked 20 years on. What are you doing, Heisenberg? Yeah. He's like, well, you know, I had a ski mask, bro. What else am I supposed to do? Are we on? Yeah. Oh, wow. This is it.

This is the podcast. This is the professional podcast. Cool. So we're in the mix. Rob, thanks for doing the show, man. Thanks for having me. Yeah. Josh.

Yes. Thanks for having me. Yes. Rob. Mike. Rob. Josh. Yes. Thanks for having me. Rob. Mike. Rob. Josh. Michael.

Mike Fonazzo sitting in on this one. Michael, how are you? I'm good. How are you, Josh? I'm well. Rob. Good, good. Great.

That's been the podcast. Thanks for coming on, man. Thanks for coming by, guys. Before the mics got hot, we were talking about Coffee and Weed, the DC remix, the Go-Go mix. I watched the video. Music video I just put out. Yeah, and it's getting some traction online, which is pretty cool. And our friend Jason Nunez shot some of it, and we were talking about that. Brilliant, brilliant young mind.

He really is. He's a young go-getter. Yeah. I like at the end of the video where you're smoking in front of the Washington Monument, and it's like, oh, cops, cops, cops, cops. Because it's like, they are smoking a lot of weed in public here. Yeah, it was sketchy, man. But we planned it, and we didn't have any weed on us.

The big secret, I guess I don't want to let it out, but no, I didn't have any weed when we were outside. Because I got arrested in New York. I did three nights in jail for a half a roach in 2007. Whoa. Yeah, I had a whole bit about. Yeah, I went in Friday and didn't get out the Sunday. So it was technically two nights.

But it was like Sunday at like 11 p.m. And I went in like Friday at 12 at midnight. Right. So I didn't get out till late Sunday night. Wow. So were you just smoking outside? Yeah. I've told this story before, but it was a show called The Fuck Monkeys.

And The Fuck Monkeys, and actually this guy actually this guy matt lappen and he wasn't with me but he is a producer at the cobert report and he had this cool show that he would get some rioters he would get some kind of comic alt comics or whoever was friends with him and then he would have a band and it was this really uh cool venue and sometimes he had a crowd it was it wasn't like the hottest show but it was like the craziest show because they had a band he would just go nuts he had like a good party and he had a good group of friends and the show was called fuck monkeys the show was called fuck monkeys sounds pretty nuts already yeah and i think you know he was making money at the cobert like it was kind of his just like cut loose cut loose you know let's

you know it wasn't his it wasn't his day job it was kind of his just like cut loose, you know, it wasn't his day job. It was kind of his day job was running the show or working on the show. And then this was kind of like his weekend Friday. You invite the interns and stuff. And I would always do stand up on it. And they liked having me on the show. And I would throw away my material and kind of just goof off. They didn't.

The weirder, the better. They loved as weird as it gets was good but after the show there was a guy that played guitar in the band and i still know him but uh he's awesome dave uh but i met him just that night and he was a professional violinist he still is he's like a symphony playing violinist like his friends were like really high-end like smart arty dudes but they also raged like fucking maniacs yeah and uh he was like rob i got this i got some weed let's go around the corner and nobody had something to roll it with so somebody had to go to the bathroom and roll the joint and then we just went down the street and it was just me and him

and i had an old i bummed a one hitter we never used it. And it was just all clogged up because it was so clogged. And all of a sudden, like I've told this story on stage. I don't want to go too much, but three people came up to us. We were just smoking a joint behind this corner. Nobody was on the street. And three people in regular clothes came up to us like,

Hey, what's up? And then all of a sudden they just pulled badges from under their shirt. Shit. And cops came out. And then two cars. Whoa. Cuffed us, searched us.

They found my one hitter. And that's where I really technically got taken in for was actually a clogged one hitter. Right. Because there's like resin and everything in there. Resin and everything in it. And so they took us and then they processed us. And it was during this Giuliani thing that they wouldn't charge you,

but they would put you in the tombs. And that's where I went, the federal holding cell. Like they took me to the local precinct. And that's the story. I had to call my girlfriend at the time who I was living with and who doesn't smoke pot. And I was just like, I'm sure she was thrilled.

So pissed. Show was great. Good news. Bad news. Bad news. Afterwards. I think I may be in jail. We may have to get a lawyer.

Like, uh, and I had a show in Chicago with the marijuana logs that I performed with on Wednesday at this like theater show. And it was good money. It wasn't great money. It was money to make rent.

Right. And I was counting on that money. Yeah. And so this thing could have fucked everything up. Right. Uh, you know, it's my life is a house of cards.

And this was one of those times where I was just like, Oh my God. Yeah. Uh, and so, yeah, I ended up going to, uh, they, so what they do is they don't charge you. It's kind of unconstitutional what they do.

It's really controversial. Yeah. It's like they don't charge you. They just hold you for like three or four days, and then they put you in the hole. They put you not in the hole but the tombs, which is pretty much the hole. It's a federal holding cell. It's where everybody goes before Rikers. Whoa.

So when you say tombs, is it just underground, just a ton of jail cells? Yeah. It's like in the city hall building, like way downtown. I went to the local precinct, and that's where my girl... And that was kind of nice, like Hill Street Blues. But the tombs was like this big fucking industrial... In the bit, you compared it to the Pink Floyd song, right? Yeah, the bit was, and I swear to God,

and I was high as hell when all this was going on. That's terrifying. I'm cuffed up. It was so terrifying. So traumatic. I laugh about it, but it really was one of the more traumatic. If you've never been arrested before, it is fucking awful. It is literally somebody taking your free will away from you like literally

so much overkill too out of nowhere two cop cars like what happened was it was a heroin at area it was lower east side and it was back when i mean back when it was like four years ago but there are still some streets in the lower east side that are like alphabet city that still have yeah that tinge of old new york where if you're gonna go cop some heroin you go down there so we just ended up walking down this wrong street and we were on the street that all the cops were looking at and they weren't gonna get anybody that night and they're like let's just get these dumb potheads and we're gonna bring them home and make our quota like it really felt like that the cops like get in the car fuck monkey yeah busted up the fuck monkeys busted up the fuck monkeys uh but yeah that was the thing was uh

you'll make captain for this yeah they make that quota getting these fuck monkeys off the street uh but that was this like when i was in the cop van i was in this van going to the tombs and pink floyd welcome to the machine came on the radio wow going into the fucking because this big gate goes opens up and you drive the van you go down underneath and they just like pull you in this line welcome in there with everything you welcome my son to the machine and i had no and i was just like oh shit i'm gonna see the devil tonight this is just one of those just i just drew the bad card and uh everybody has a like thing it wasn't like drunk driving or it was just literally i just was smoking pot on the corner and i was like only been in the in town like a year and a half or two years and i

was used to san francisco like i was used to california and new york used to be a little bit more liberal with weed now it's gotten it's now the tide seems to be coming back on the east coast at least but i really was used to like if it's one in the morning nobody should bother me smoking pot after a comedy show which in san francisco it's just so normal right yeah so fucking normal like it's literally nobody will give you a second look if it's just three guys just after a show somebody's around the corner just like somebody's smoking cigarettes or something right so did they hold you that long because it was the weekend yeah because of the weekend and because there's so many people and they were saying like because it's a weekend they have one judge on like there's only one judge that sees you and the move

is is that they hold you and then that you get up to the judge and they're like well if you admit to this we'll waive everything and you don't have to fine and it's just time served so i went in front of the judge yeah like if i was a hardcore like no fuck you i'm gonna get my super lawyer down here we're gonna we're gonna get you guys yeah but i just wanted to get home i just wanted to make that i just wanted to make the flight to chicago right and i needed to get back to my girl. And I was in the tombs for two and a half days with like 25 dudes in there. One shitter. Yeah.

One shitter that's outside. Couldn't shit. No shitting. Everything locks up. Yeah, man. There was one guy on the shitter with one eye and he was screaming for his methadone and he was just diarrheaing into the like it's there was some really hardcore shit that was going on in there like hey hey uh that was the whole thing i i used

to have i had a 10 minute bit it's on one my, it's on my first album called Keep on the Grass, which is no longer on sale, but they play it on Sirius. Oh, that's cool. But the line was, I had these big thick glasses on and I had this red sweatshirt on. And right when I walked into the cell, like it was just,

there was this like Rastafarian, like a real Rasta, like from Jamaica was in there. And he just eyes me up and he's like, yo, i found him there's waldo and all the cops started laughing the whole jail started busting it was like you i'd never have gotten a bigger laugh in my comment like the cop that was carrying me in started busting out laughing because it looked i it looked like i was not supposed to be in this federal fucking jail not only are you these guys are there was murderers

in this little holding cell with me you're in jail and you're getting roasted too nailed it got him got him uh so that yeah that that was that whole thing. But then the crazy thing happened was last year. And I told Matt, he was bummed out, but he wasn't around the Colbert guy. He's just like, shit, that sucks, dude. I heard, you know, but everybody was just like, you know, I had to keep on living and I just went on and I didn't have to pay a fine or anything.

Were you the only one that got arrested? Me and Dave, the violinist. Oh, okay. Me and the professional violinist. That's what I say. They're getting serious criminals off the street. Thank God. Me and this guy that plays in a symphony.

Not anymore. No, he still got his gig. I don't think the symphony cares about weed. He was a lot... I was wigging out. He was actually a lot cooler than I was. I think he had money. I think he was... I he was a lot i was wigging out he was actually a lot cooler than i was i think he had money i think he was i was more worried about like if you don't have money and some shit happens and you can't get a lawyer like yeah once you're in the system and i was in the system

it's anybody's game how the ball's gonna spit you out that's such that's the scary part because it sounds like just clerical errors it's like hey it's the weekend man you're like no i'm in jail yeah yeah is it like my package didn't arrive like hey what are you gonna do it's the weekend yeah it's my freedom there's the one-eyed guy on the toilet just screaming like just wait it out you're good all right just eat a cheese sandwich is that what they're feeding you yeah you gotta it was like a cheese sandwich oh not melted uh-huh just like some then they split that i think it was like a peanut sandwich, not melted. Uh-huh. Just like some, and they split that. I think it was like a peanut butter sandwich too,

like with no jelly and then some like Lukemore milk, like those little containers. Living the life. Yeah. It was brutal. But people go through worse shit than that. But that was my one thing. But what ended up happening was Matt Lappin gave me a break.

And I was on the Colbert Report last year. And I got to do a scene with Stephen Colbert. I smoked pot out of his shoe. Oh, cool. I haven't seen that. They talk about the banning the bongs in Florida. And he's like, you can't bang bongs. You know these potheads.

They'll smoke something out of anything. They go, hey. And then he goes, hey, what are you doing? Are you smoking out of my shoe? And he pops out of pops out and there's a big bowl out of his shoe and i start hitting his shoe i'm like oh man sorry dude i didn't think you were using this but i had to go underneath his desk and be underneath his desk and then during his like rant i at a certain word i had to start toking on his shoe because the whole bit was me blowing out a big billow of smoke. Right. Yeah.

So you have to come up with that already. Come up with that and then do like four lines with him. Like go back and forth a few times. And it happened one day. Matt texted me like, hey, are you available? We have something for you. And I had, yeah, I was watching my kid at the time. I got a babysitter and i went up there

and literally it happened in seven hours like they sent me the script i went up there they're like do you have any stoner clothes or something so i had this tie-dyed i had this long sleeve tie-dyed that i found in a hostel in san francisco when i lived there that had a glow-in-the-dark jimmy hendricks head and then i had this like red velvet uh vest that i found at high times magazine because i would write at high times now and then i've done some freelance there i've never been full-time but uh i used to blog for them and then i did a ton of stand-up on a lot of their events and uh they have paid me on those but um but uh so i had this like vest and the funny thing is so i had this like outfit and

they brought a costume person in who had this like big bag of like all this stuff and she took a look at me and goes this is perfect she's like i don't need any of this she goes this is it you don't need any of these clothes so i had the wardrobe down i just got my hair cut so my hair was a little shorter but uh yeah it was great we ran through the lines of the cold reading and then i even got to go and then they brought me in a room like right before i was gonna go on so i did read the lines and steven was so sharp and so cool. And the line, I was nervous, right? And there was like four lines. And I just got him like an hour ago.

And he was like, Rob. And I kind of miffed up on the first run through. And he goes, Rob, don't worry. Look, there's four monitors. Use any one of them. You point it to all the screens. And there's literally like my lines on like four fucking big screens surrounding me he goes don't be afraid just use those i said okay cool cool

and then uh and then right before we went on they were like the one of the producers said hey can you come down to this room went down in this room and then it was just me and steven in a room going over the bit and he was just like okay this is what i want you to do and uh he goes play to your play to my shoe play to my shoe like the whole time and then to close the bit was like he pulled out a frisbee to get me off stage he goes hey and he throws it away and i chased the frisbee off the scene so in sketch writing it's called an out right you always have to have an out so So that was the out. But he gave me just great advice.

And he was so professional, but also cool and natural and sharp. And so it ended up being as bad as that jail thing. I don't know if Matt would have thrown me that bone. And I never jocked Matt for any work. I knew him. I had a cool relationship with him. But I never was like, hey, get me on the Colbert Report. I report give me i never did that yeah you don't want to be that guy i never because then i've been that guy with other friends but for some reason i didn't do it with

him and he was actually like a legitimate like he thought he kept on booking me on his fuck monkey show so he actually actually legitimately liked me. And we had a legitimate cool friendship. And I respected him. And I respected what the Colbert Report was doing. It was just cool to be a part of it. No, that's amazing. I think his desk bits, those are some of the best stuff he does on that show.

Or did. But he would do that all the time. He would always have people under the desk. And I always wonder how long they're under there because some stuff like one bit he literally had somebody under there just so he could high-five them like somebody just stuck up their hand from the desk and he just high-fives it and the hand goes back down and there is a reel of all the people that come out of his desk they did a like when the show was ending and i made the reel nice i made the reel so they did like all these people.

There was me popping out smoking pot out of a shoe. I am telling you, you listen to me, folks. Do not put anything past these do-bit-yourselfers. I mean, equipped with a stinky nug and no pipe, there is literally nothing that they cannot excuse me. What are you doing down there sorry man look look look and I mean it didn't go

huge on the fame meters but it's something that I just was like man you know feather in the cap that was the feather in the cap I may have not done X amount of comedy specials or what not but I got to do a scene with one of the best that's ever done comedy. Absolutely.

That guy's a genius. Yeah. You can't fuck with that show, man. The Colbert Report is just so funny and hip in its own way. Daily Show is great and awesome and super funny, but there was just something when steven colbert was on like it was just another level of just like subversiveness and weird it just was weirder you know oh yeah it was just weirder and trippier and strange and out there yeah he murdered it

it'll be weird to see how he does in late night now yeah that show it's because he's such a likable guy out of character too it'd be interesting to see if it's like a hybrid that show it's because he's such a likable guy out of character too it'd be interesting to see if it's like a hybrid of the two or if he's still this weird esoteric kind of performer and it'll be uh yeah i'm excited to see the interviews too yeah on colbert like no one stood a chance on that show that with the interviews just destroyed everybody whoever it was i mean like play it playfully but like you could really always pull it off yeah yeah like he he would be deferential and like give them their space but he was still winning that interview whoever it was if it was like maya angelou or like i don't know

bill clinton but when you have that character you can push it but i i just think he's such a talent and smart and he did years of improv before that he was on that dana carvey show like with louis ck like he's been around like and when i was meeting with him i was like oh this is a high-end comedy mind like this guy really just strangers with candy was great too that's where matt started with them was strangers with candy that's how he got in that's one of my favorite shows man the goddammit bit that they would do like god damn it i love that that was such a great concept that whole strangers with kid oh yeah so funny principal blackman uh so man that's so cool you got to like hang with him glad that he was cool

too i've never heard a bad story about him like, I didn't get to hang with him that long because it was all business. But I did have like a, we had 10 minutes alone together and we're talking comedy. And I was like, I just shut up. You know, I just was like, I'm just going to try to gleam as much as I can. Can't give him advice. Like, I think the bitch should go like this. Yeah. And everything he told me and I didn't do it 100%.

But when I looked at the thing, I was like, oh, I should have done it even more he was right like that was so right like like comedy yoda comedy yeah you know he just knew that show he knew what was gonna work and uh but i did talk to matt about the new show and he was saying is like their whole thing is satire like yeah and nobody's doing satire so they're gonna go really broad on like you know just satire like that's so it'll still be kind of biting and a little subversive yeah i think that's it's gonna be i think they're not gonna because he has a lot of the same crew like you know you after a while you just get used to people you work with and they understand like how you work like paul daniello is still gonna be the head writer i'm pretty sure yeah. Yeah. Dude from Strangers with Candy as well.

So yeah, it's pretty much just the same crew, just different show. Different show. And they're going to try to take that and put it into a... Like I was saying, I was like, it's a mainstream audience. They're going up against a main... So we'll see. It'll be interesting. But I'm sure... Those guys are killing it so hard.

It'll be good to see somebody that smart have a challenge. And to see something different too. Yeah. It's like you don't want to hire somebody that smart have a challenge and see something different too yeah it's like you don't want to hire steven colbert to come in and do fallon you know yeah totally which is like fine but it's also it's just like it bring in the person you're not gonna be better than fallon doing fallon you're not gonna be like fallon's so good too you know but he's good at what he does which is like music comedy and just being nice and funny and like kind of in the moment and like light-hearted whereas steven i think is a little bit more great it's a satire has more of a bigger painting like it's more of a grand yes but it could but it's also takes it may

come off wrong in that format but if it does come out right right it can look like the mona lisa right right and that's what i think the cobert report was was like oh this is a fucking real deal painting yeah it's not just like a sketch show it was like a whole thing going on uh do you have any experience doing comedy or doing stand-up on late night stuff? Shows? I do, but nothing that I can brag about. Well, it's hard. Yeah, I haven't got back on. Yeah, you got four minutes. It's a chess game, like that late night spot.

And my styles, really, I digress a lot. And I'm all over the map. But what happened was I was three years into comedy, and I got last comic standing the very first one that's pretty quick though it was quick three and a half years and then it was on national tv and then that year they also played it on comedy central at the same time so i was played on comedy central and on nbc so i did get like uh in the time i got craig kilbourne and i went on craig kilbourne and i did all right i

didn't like cold crush it and it was just like a three-year comic doing his set and so it just didn't give me anything to keep going down that route and then last year i did that access tv i don't know if you guys know that gotham gotham Live at Gotham? Yeah. The Live at Gotham. Cool. So I did that last year. But I haven't submitted to do a late night show in a long time. I want to. I'd love to do Fallon or, but maybe the Steven show, you know, that will be kind of, since I already have a relationship there and maybe they're looking for a new batch of people, maybe I can prepare something for that. I feel like he'll have a good group of guys too.

I didn't even think about that. He's going to have access to people doing stand-up which is really cool yeah because he kind of stretched out too like in the later years of his show having bands on and like i think kendrick lamar was his second to last show which is so weird for colbert and i don't know it's gonna be really cool he's got a good eye for music yeah and then stand up too i think it's probably gonna extend into that too totally that's awesome uh with uh with music though how long have you been doing that like is that something you're is that more of like a hobby it's like the uh i mean stand up is the bills uh-huh kind of keeps me alive but even back in the day in san francisco i started in san francisco in my mid-20s and uh even when i started i had a project with two other comics we had a jazz band it's called the jazz

band it was called the jazz man mega band of power love and cheap thrills and uh we had a saxophone player and i would tell jokes and i had a spinning kazoo and a triangle and a couple other things and then we had a guy on stand-up bass and we did some gigs at the punchline we actually opened up for a couple bands and but it was totally a goof thing we had sketched out bits it was more like my friend it would be like doing a podcast now it was like something i just did besides stand up right right but it was a lot of fun so i did that and so that was like i always had like a music thing that was like this jazz thing and that's what i liked was like kind of doing an ensemble thing um but i also knew that i had to concentrate

on stand up in order to if you you can't go half ass and-up or it's just sucks yeah you know just being mediocre at stand-up is not fun like it's only fun when you're winning and you can kill and you're and it takes a long and it takes dedicating your life to it right that's the only that's the trick yeah so yeah when last comic standing i happened i was like i gotta just focus on stand-up and try to get as good at stand-up as possible. So I kind of dropped the Jazzman Mega Band. And then I went to New York. That sounds so funny. I had to drop the Jazzman Mega Band.

We loved the name. We made it so long. This is the Jazzman Mega Band of Power, Love, and Cheap Thrills. And we would close with What a Wonderful World. And then we would mix it with like we do i would uh yeah yeah we we we couldn't decide what song we would close on so we would go i like wonderful world and i like uh egg man so we had the egg man and then wonderful so we would sing part of that and do the other part and we were really like and wear crazy outfits and smoke tons of pot right before we go on stage like really super loose like super

loose goof didn't you know we were in our we really didn't give a fuck uh and it wasn't it wasn't like we were all stand-up so it wasn't like our main thing it was really for shits and giggles excuse to hang out and mess around totally yeah totally and do something as much as fun as stand-up is it does it's bricklaying you know it does get monotonous so it's nice it's like doing a podcast or doing short films like it's nice to do something creative that's not stand-up that you can kind of and then when you get back to stand-up you can take what you learned from the other thing and put it towards that have that fresh energy just working a different part of your brain and sometimes that helps you know stand up and still being creative at the same time yeah yeah um so did you move out

to san francisco to do stand up yeah i did you're from the dc area right from the dc area i was born in washington dc lived there till i was about 10 and then we moved down south to bunavista virginia buena vista virginia uh-huh four hours down south hey there you go yeah heart yeah uh and then i lived there till i was about 16 and then we moved my mom moved back to dc to downtown dc where i was born and raised so his neighborhood is capitol hill. So I grew up on Capitol Hill and I always had friends around, like there's like seven or eight blocks. There is a community of kids that grew up there that I known since day one that I don't remember not knowing.

And that's where she lives. And I moved back there when I was 16, but I ended up going to boarding school in Virginia. So I didn't go to high school in DC is my is my big question because that's a big DC question like did you go to high school in DC I didn't but I did spend all my summers there throughout my teenage years I waited tables at this place Tortilla Coast on Capitol Hill which I did that since I was 17 till I was like 20 all through my college years and then after college I lived in

DC till I was about 25 and that's when I got like a day job out of school I was a headhunter for Aerotech okay which is a staffing agency right okay uh but I saved up 10,000 not about eight thousand dollars and it was hardcore sales but i saved i moved back in with my mom and i remember all i had i moved back in with my mom and i just said fuck my social life fuck everything i'm just gonna save up money and move to california i know i always wanted to do comedy this is what i want to do but i had this like office job i had to wear a suit and tie starch shirt all this i was going nuts i was going nuts. It was office space all over again. Yeah.

The office was in Reston. I had to drive like two hours to get there. Damn. And all my friends were partying. It was like early 20s or whatever. And you're like, I need to be in the cubicle in the morning, fellas. So I'm going home to mom's house to get some sleep. Yeah.

I had a cool apartment with some young friends when I first got my first job, like the first couple of years. But it just got empty. My life was just so empty. And I wanted to be creative. Yeah. I wanted to be creative. And everybody was just like working and then watching football and eating wings and getting drunk.

You know, just that DC shit. And I was just like, I'm fucking over this shit, man. So I saved up. And I remember it was literally like i was like i'm gonna give it a year and then i'm gonna quit this job and uh but i had a we had a i had i didn't even have cable in my room but i had a like a big box from my brother-in-law of all gary shandling tapes so i would just watch gary shandling all night on these videotapes. Was it the Gary Shandling show? Yeah, the Gary Shandling show, the talk show.

Larry Sanders show. Larry Sanders. Larry Sanders is a perfect show. It's the perfect show. So I'll just watch Larry Sanders. I would watch all of them over and over again. It's so good. And smoke one hitters out of my mom's window in this little bedroom that I hid away in.

And then for six months, this is the other part of the story, I did six months in Southeast Asia. I backpacked all around Thailand, all around Indonesia. I surfed for a whole month in Bali. I learned how to surf at Kuna Beach. What the fuck?

That's crazy. And went out to the Philippines and hiked all around these fucking... How does that work? You're just like, I'll buy a one-way ticket and then I'll be there for a while yeah i'll just come home whenever yep that's awesome and i didn't have i just sold and everything i owned i quit my my lame ass office job told everybody to eat a dick i'm out fuck you fuck you're cool. And I am out.

And I bought a one-way ticket. I bought a two-way ticket. It did six months. So I did six months, and I landed back in LA. But before then, I went cross-country. I had friends in Colorado, so I stayed a month in Colorado and snowboarded in Colorado. Then I went to LA. I took a train from Colorado to LA.

That's awesome. I went throughout the Sierra Mountains. Wow. I was drinking mushroom tea on the train. And I was wild. I was drinking mushroom tea, smoking one-hitters off the Amtrak, landing in LA,

and then I flew over. This was a year before the movie The Beach when it came out. I went exactly where that guy did i did all that riley beach this place in thailand that's all these white sand beaches just topless uh uh backpackers you know chicks from australia and sweden switzerland and wow yeah it was literally heaven on earth like i went through like wow uh full moon parties drinking uh mushroom shakes and going no job just and this was the other thing mushroom shakes it was during bill

clinton's year and the dollar was booming right dollar was booming so all my money just tripled as soon as i went to another country wow so if you had like eight thousand here so the dollar's like two dollars over there so you just dollar's like $2 over there. So you just doubled your money just going over there. And then everything's cheap as hell anyway. Right, right. So I just lived like a sarong douchebag king smoking joints on the Thailand beaches for six months. Buying a plane ticket was an investment technically.

Like guess who doubled his money? Paul. Yeah. And I knew people that ended up staying over there and uh but i came back and i knew i didn't want to go back into corporate america and this was like during the dot-com boom so i had friends in san francisco that had like apartments and like real jobs that were my age but weren't doing comedy but i knew i didn't want a real fucking job that was that was the key was like i just didn't want a real fucking job that was that was the key was like

i just didn't want a real job always wanted to do comedy and i just circled the city paper of their thing it's called the sf weekly and i had an open mic that said stand-up comedy and that's the first time you did it you didn't do comedy in dc never did comedy in dc until i hit San Francisco. Wow. I looked at open mics in DC. It was during the 90s, and stand-up was just dead. You couldn't find these places. There was maybe the improv, but that was just starting out, and nobody went there. Chappelle wasn't a big name then.

I didn't go through the trenches then. I went in in like in 99 in san francisco which had this like cool scene they had two a clubs in town then like three b clubs outside of it and then you had sacramento right and it had this just like leftover scene from the 90s and 80s in a circuit of coffee shops that i could do stand up every night yeah i was gonna say i think the cafes are what i always hear about like what patton would talk about and that type of thing like you could basically get up anywhere even like the weirdest places like a cafe yeah lesbian bookstore laundromat that's where my first set was was the brainwash oh which is like this punk

rock laundromat that has like rock laundry that has like bands and hey beers, but they also have this Thursday night that you can get up and do stand-up at. And it's been there forever. Wow. And that was like my... My first place was the luggage store, which is on Market Street, and you didn't even get a microphone.

That was just like a place where you kind of ran it AA style. Hi, I'm Rob. Hi, Rob. I want to do stand-up comedy. I'm about to suck really bad for the next 10 minutes here we go there's like some homeless guy in the corner watching you because he's jonesing from heroin uh it's that same one-eyed guy he's just following me around see you in 10 years rob who are your comics you liked when you started out or looked up to i mean i always loved chappelle but uh but i i owned all of richard pryor's stuff like early on it was eddie murphy richard pryor

uh snl all that stuff but right when i started doing stand-up comedy the guy i saw go up in san francisco i got to go see the punchline they were like go to this place called the punch line so i went to the punch line and sat in the back and i saw arch barker just destroyed so arch barker was huge influence on me arch was brilliant but he had already been doing it like 10 years is that how you got connected to the marijuana logs was knowing him through san francisco or yeah i would say him and tony kameen tonyony comeen was the other guy in the marijuana logs and then it was doug benson tony comeen and arch barker and arch was already like the king like he already moved to la he was already doing australia tours he already had like some stuff on tv and then tony was already kind of a comedy writer he wrote for some tv shows and he was out of town but they would both come back to san francisco and do shows and stuff so they kind of knew the young locals and that's who i was was

like the guy right that we would end up smoking pot after the show and hang out for years you know i knew those it took me a while even just to get to know him um the scene was that dense and those guys were such made men at the time but uh yeah so that guy arj and then david tell blew me away like just getting to know like the comedy scene what was happening but the guys on stage were like chappelle of course i knew about chappelle but then i started learning about david tell and then like the first time i saw him was co-headlined was Tom Rhodes and Mitch Hedberg. I remember sitting back and I was like, who is this fucking dude? He'd done some Letterman stuff, but I wasn't aware.

The internet wasn't there, so you had to be a really hardcore comedy nerd to know some of this stuff. But you would learn it once you start doing comedy. Then I saw Hedberg uh that blew me away so hedberg arj and david tell and chapelle were the guys that i really really loved watching yeah wanda sykes was amazing uh lewis black was blowing up at the time like just starting to blow up and he was really funny and i got to work with him and todd barry as well yeah yeah it's weird to think that uh wanda's like dc virginia comedian too like yeah but i don't think she started did she do comics yeah yeah she started here she knew like tony was that's right yeah yeah that's right so okay so you're in san francisco for a while and then when do you make the move to new york or do you get last comic standing while you're in san francisco i'm in san francisco like three years in uh-huh and i first lived with some

friends uh in north beach and i had a couple temp jobs i worked at like an outdoor store and like i was just doing coffee shops and then i also would uh check ids at my friends that bartended at this place i'd do that for like some quick cash. And then I moved to this other place. But then there was a moment where I couldn't survive in San Francisco. Like I was running out of money, but I was still loving it. I've been there like a year and a half. So I went back east and worked with my friend that had a construction site in buffalo for like a month

and a half and then i tried to move to new york and i got kicked out of new york like in a month i didn't last at all the first time like it's just too expensive yeah and i was only like two years in at no credits trying to get up like the whole nine yeah and i found this thing that this hostel in north beach was looking for a night watchman and they give you a free room so i got ended up getting this job as a night watchman at this hostel and i got a free room and i did that for over a year like but i would do the night shift like three days a week like stay up you know from midnight till seven in the morning you got your big flashlight your nightstick yeah just running drunk european hipster uh backpackers and they're fingering each other

in the bunk and i'm like get out of here we're fingering each other in there what are y'all doing this is a double bed you guys can't be humping in here get out of here just stank of just euro trash and ecstasy and bad fucking hygiene uh that was a i that was a wild time too but the thing was that place at my spot was literally three blocks from the punch line and then two blocks from cobs comedy club dang so i could just go boom boom and then i had a free place to live so i did that for a year but then i got burned out on that even and i got a job at a private uh grade school i was assistant to the kindergarten teacher okay and i did i so that was my day job i still had the night stick and the flashlight pick up those fucking blocks and walk with the limp stop helping you too

uh so yeah i don't want to digress too far but yeah then i got last comic standing then things started really picking up and i just quit my job at the school and moved down to la i had an agent i had a manager i was on tv things were running so i was there for about a year and a half and then the heat started to wear off and i was just like if i stay in la i'm going to become a shitty comic like i need to get back to the east coast just worried about getting like hacky or like yeah there's the stage time just isn't that good out west like i think maybe it's gotten better now with like the alternative thing blowing up at the time right now but yeah at the time when i was there it was just so many comics.

And then everything was a drive away. You were lucky. You were working it if you did two to three sets a week. That was a big deal in LA. And most of the sets were showcases at the time. Yeah, you got to do showcases. There's a pressure to it versus, I'm going to go to a mic, and then I'll bounce over here and maybe do three or four in a night.

Yeah, there was none of that type of stuff and if there was it still kind of sucked right so then that's when i moved to new york was uh and this time it stuck like i could land and i had some credits i did tough crowd twice i got to do tough crowd oh cool um nobody ever remembers but i did all right i was on it i was on it who were who are you with that's a good one too the first time i did was rich voss and dave mordahl and cory kahaney okay and it went well and i got really good laugh some people would bomb on that show because you would have to chime in the whole thing was like the guy pulled me aside i was like just try to get a laugh really fast and then everything's downhill so my first couple lines were just like i just made sure i

got on the board did you have any prepared stuff yeah they would send you stuff the night before okay but still it was still loosey-goosey and it's still like because it's not scripted like you have not scripted it was like okay we're gonna talk about this thing in the paper even forget what they are we're gonna talk about this and you but you don't know who it's still super yeah you can't shoehorn a pre-written joke like yeah well saddam you know has pants yeah and it would come off cheesy if you tried to but if you could just do like if you could get one quick line in yeah it just helped get some breathing room breathing room so you just get right on the board so you don't look like the shy guy in the corner rob's on the board rob's on the board and then i'm just sipping my coffee i did my job here but then i got to do it the second time which i think was like second to last week it was on the

air which was kind of sad like the first time i got all like these i got like a tough crowd jacket i got like all this like stuff but the second time I got a tough crowd jacket, I got all this stuff. But the second time, I knew it was getting canceled because I got nothing afterwards. No mug, no robe. There was no mug. All that money was drained out. But it was me and Louis C.K.

Oh, wow. And Paul Macerio. Before Louis blew up. But Louis was still a super great comic that he's always been completely intimidated by um and it was uh yeah it was him and paul macerio and then this guy graham norton that does the british guy he's super funny he was super really nice to me and paul was the warm-up comic for colbert for a while too right yeah and the daily show too nice and i've done warm-up for the daily show a few times when paul hasn't been around so i got to do that a couple times that's

cool so how'd it go was it was it just like a weird vibe in the air because you knew you were they knew they were getting canceled it went well all right yeah but i do remember this i had like a greyhound joke like i said greyhound about like i don't know they were talking somebody got kicked off of a plane for wearing like uh something that said something nasty on a t-shirt and i was like oh i was on the greyhound with like a shirt with a nun with their tits out nobody cared but for some reason they bleeped out greyhound because of advertisements and so the joke in the the joke hit in studio but when they showed it on air,

it was just like, you know, it just was like one of those weird editing things that just made me look kind of, you know, whatever. Right. It's like, what was he on? What did he say? Was he on a cock? What did he say? They got the joke that was actually watching it.

Right. And the show was, like, getting canceled. But I did, that was kind of another proud moment in my career that i did get to do tough crowd with louis ck was one of the guys i'm sure he did it like 29 times but for me being three years like to be on that show was like a huge coup yeah um because i'm not like one of those hardcore new york village dudes at all and i feel like that was like early podcasting basically like you just get comedians in a room and then just talk about any topic basically

totally because i feel i feel like a lot of comedians talked about that like i heard like burt kreischer he was like i would just save him up for a week and i just watch him when i get home uh so yeah it was a huge show to be on for sure yeah it was ahead of its time it's too bad it got canceled it was definitely ahead of its time but It was too bad it got canceled. It was definitely ahead of its time. But yeah, and it was also so organic that sometimes it could be a huge train wreck. Right. And that's what I think. Like, if you weren't into comedy,

you would just see like three middle-aged dudes just yelling at each other. Right. And you're just like, ah, fuck this. But then you look back on it, and it was like, oh, no, you're seeing like Patrice O'Neill and Louis C.K. and Kevin Hart discussing, you know you know some serious

topics yeah comedically with colin quinn hosting the whole thing which is pretty fucking epic yeah and there's still that great clip of uh greg giraldo destroying oh my god oh that was so good so good uh yeah greg giraldo was so so man. Such a smart comic. Did you run into him doing comic in New York? Yeah, I did. He was definitely way ahead of me. I got introduced to him at the Cellar one time, but I wasn't performing, just as another comic, and he was super nice.

But then we did Bonnaroo. He did the last Bonnaroo. I did Bonnaroo, and he was on it too. And I was hanging with Doug Benson, who I'm friends with. And Greg ended up coming in. We all talked for a long time. And it was about medical marijuana and stuff. But I have a picture on my phone.

I still have it of Greg Giraldo with one of the guys from GWAR. And they're hanging out. Greg loved GWAR. gore went over a bunch of pictures with him so everybody was kind of taking pictures of greg with gore so i just whipped out it was kind of like early apple phone it's the dude from gore like in his whole like yeah full garb it's on my desktop i don't have it with me but it's on my desktop i thought about tweeting it out or whatever but it's just like i don't know it's so personal and eerie and i don't want to be kind of a celebrity fucker but right just for my own records it's kind of cool like oh i got this cool picture of greg with gore yeah awesome

um so yeah when did you get involved with the marijuana logs uh it was arch was just doing more and more shows in australia and uh they were booking dates periodically and uh there was just doing more and more shows in Australia, and they were booking dates periodically. And there was just a few shows that Arj couldn't make it, and Doug just referred me. And I knew Tony, and I think Tony was cool with it, because I knew Tony from San Francisco. And so, yeah, I would just sit in with those guys and I would just do the jokes. It was pretty much you would have the script in front of you. It was kind of odd doing Arj's jokes. Right.

So I'd read his jokes. But if you ever saw the play, it was more like a script than anything. But then what happened, this is a true story, that when I got arrested, this was like maybe the second time i did the marijuana logs in chicago and i they were all i told him like i don't know if i can make it this is what's happening and then i ended up making the show it's pretty good street cred for the marijuana log yeah smoking weed new york yeah and during the time in the tombs and they were like rob you got to talk about this because as soon as i I got out of the tombs, I went right to Comics Comedy Club. And they would put me up all the time.

And I was just so stressed out. I went right into it and just launched into the whole story. And had another 10 minutes. Wow. And then I ended up doing it on the marijuana logs. To close my set, I would talk about being arrested. Which kind of broke. The marijuana logs was kind of more jokey jokey jokey whereas this was like kind of real storytelling so i got to do it at the end so i'd run through the jokey jokey stuff and then

they would give me like a nice little five minute honk to tell this arrest story which was kind of relevant to the whole thing at the time totally um and then yeah they were that doug was even the one i think doug and tony like uh even gave me some tags were like yeah do this and then at the end you could tell your story and do this and i ended up getting like a huge laugh and it just fit well so yeah that that was my addition to the marijuana logs is that i talked about being arrested so that was my big my own personal log that got to be in the show. That's awesome. Was that one of your first big stories on stage?

Because originally when you started doing stand-up, you were more of a set-up punchline guy. So to me, that is a true... I think you said the story is 10 minutes long. Yeah. And last night you were doing stories that are just as as long like when did you transition from like straightforward jokes to that there was another story that's on my album that the first one was like that i don't tell anymore but it was in dc uh and it was about a bad bike accident it was really and i i guess 2005 is when i first started doing that because i did

notice early on i was like okay it seems to be like the there's these keep it real type motherfuckers and then there's these jokey silly dudes but nobody's doing a hybrid right of them both um and i kind of wanted to kind of be able to master storytelling and doing jokes but that seems to where everybody was thinking the same thing and kind of moving towards that anyway but yeah my first story was about a bike accident like i had a really bad bike accident in dc where i was riding a uh it was it was the banana seat bike do you remember the old banana seat bikes and then the big chopper handlebars yeah and i was wearing op shorts with no underwear and i hit the curb and the chopper handlebars yeah and i was wearing op shorts with no underwear

and i hit the curb and the chopper handlebar went right into my nuts oh and cut a slice i got circumcised by a bicycle oh jesus this is a whole story uh and not everything works everything turned out right but i had to get stitches at the side of my dick when i was like seven years old and this horrible bike accident and the whole thing was like they also had to uh give you a shot in your dick too right to numb your dick for the stitches because i had to get stitches in my head and they shot like novacane basically i think for this they knocked me i was in such a traumatic i blacked out oh okay like the whole story is is like i went down this hill just flying with my leg spread doing eagle just not hitting the brakes just like yeah carefree hit the corner bam the chopper handlebar went right into my crotch i was just

like like i just knew something went down and there was this dude standing right there this 30 something year old dude and uh and i was just running around in the street i was by myself he was like are you all right he goes is it bleeding and i go i look down i go and i'm covered in blood and i look back up i go yes and he just runs off the dude just left me there couldn't handle it he was like this spastic seven-year-old is bleeding from his dick he just fucking just wigged out and just ran and then i just ran home crying and screaming and i i do i went to children's hospital in dc my mom as soon as my mom saw me she just lost it because

i she saw her kid and i just bloody crotch what a terrifying thing to say. Mom! Mom! There's blood all over your dick. Yeah. And the funny thing was I couldn't wear pants for like three months. I just had to wear a towel around myself because the head of my dick swole up so big it looked like a grapefruit. It was like this big sombrero head. It was cartoonish. Could you pee? I could pee, but it was like painful uh all of it was

really painful and i couldn't talk about it until i was like 30 like it was something and kids used to like talk about it behind my back because it was just so funny of a story but so traumatic right like it went around like my neighborhood like do you know what happened to rob holly shit oh and i'm sure it got like twisted too just like his dick fell off and they had to sew it on and it's like a different dick yeah all that stuff but that that was the first story that was like something that was in my memory bank that i never talked aloud right right and then i did it on stage and it got this huge laugh and after every time i did that people would come up to me and like oh man you know i had this fucking bad accident or somebody in my neighborhood had this shit happen to him.

But that was the first time I started telling stories. But as I was telling you, stories end up dying on the vine after a while. Like even like that pot story I used to do and it would kill. And even these new two stories, maybe I'm going to do another album. I'll get the stories on there before i'm just tired of them like i'm just feeling like i just gotta push some of this shit up away and keep trying to find some other stuff right right why do you think the stories die i think the freshness of it it's just like like the audience can tell that you're not really connected to it anymore

you're not really connected to it and it starts getting that mannequin feel it starts becoming more of a setup punch line and not like something that's coming from your heart. It's very rote, right? Yeah. So if it's coming from your heart, it gets this really cool connection with the audience. And then it gets this really cool laugh. And I guess it just got to be the repetition of it. And I do do a lot of spots and shitty clubs.

Not shitty clubs, but some rough spots in New York. And I also do some cool alternative rooms. I do them all. But I do a lot of spots. And after a while, the stories tend to lose that pop. I don't know if it's me or the story. I think when you're first telling a story, I think that there's almost a vibe of like, oh, we're having a conversation like i'm telling you this story and we're yeah like like

if you were telling it in a bar and then once you do it you have all the beats out it's more of like it becomes oh i'm telling this at you yeah it's because you know we're exactly where everything versus talking to then talking at right right and having that emotional thing to it so the first time i talked about the bike accident out loud in a comedic way was funny but after a while it doesn't have that same like holy fuck like i just got arrested dude you know it doesn't happen after a couple years you don't have that holy fuck man i went to do the tombs right you know attachment to it yeah there seems to be a certain emotional attachment that kind of gets lost after a while of doing it so yeah i do i you know i don't prescribe on having to write like a new hour

every year or any i'm not at that level but i do know that if you if you just keep doing the same old shit it does end up being tired after a minute right but at the same time if you're doing a late night spot that's the thing i'm always battling with like you got to play your hits and you should play your strongest jokes and even coming back to baltimore like this week i haven't done baltimore in a long like i had some old little baltimore shit that i would do on the road around here that i would break out and fuck around with uh the bicycle story well the last time i saw you i think was at topaz in dc when you're shooting the video and that there were like seven people there and it was like a business conference had just like left or something yeah but uh you you told a story about falling out of a car too yes how

close was that to the bicycle accident i think the falling out of the car was five and then the bike accident was seven rough couple years i did i i am lucky to be alive right i was a wild wild kid you literally fell out of a moving car like going up a hill or something down rock creek park three 35 miles per hour there's another story of a car running over my leg that it didn't crush another weird thing like it was a volkswagen parked uh in it all happened in capitol hill like i was supposed to thought you were fucking cursed but yeah a little cursed i've always been a little cursed and a little blessed all at the same time like i don't know anybody that smoked out of a shoe of colbert you know uh that's true I've done stand-up in Amsterdam for the High Times

Comedy Club and I shared a bunk bed with Dat Phan on national television I don't know you know I've had some rough stuff but I've also got some shit in there that's been really good too stitches in my dick but I saw

Run DMC on their first concert ever I saw the fab boys play in the yeah so i yeah there's a lot of yeah life is it's crazy and fun and wild you know i think everybody has traumatic shit that happens oh yeah yeah i just want to know after the stitches in the dick and falling out of the car how could jail seem scary at all yeah jail was as a spastic guy that loves his free will uh yeah dude somebody cuffing you and stuffing you is whoa because you never think you're going to be in that position either yeah i wasn't that dude i never sold drugs i never was a coke dude i never was an edgy dude yeah in that way i wasn't like running for i've never was like fuck the police man i don't give a fuck so i'm a dick i'm you know i'm rebel without a cost

uh i was just a guy that wanted to do stand up and smoke some pot afterwards right so um yeah i never thought especially after living california that was the whole irony and new york's supposed to be such a progressive place. And then after living in California, where it's literally not a fucking big deal. Right. It just seems like New York's just had so much money and laws, and corporations are involved holding that thing back. And even they're going to probably be the last. That's what's so cool about D.C. legalizing.

Yeah, up to two ounces. Yeah. You tell me what's going on over there. Yeah. I mean, are you seeing weed in the street? I know you can get arrested in the street. You can't like smoke it in the street. But what about at parties?

It seems to be. Yeah. I mean, it just happened two weeks ago. And it was weird. I ran into some other comics and uh they're like yeah like holy shit do you have weed on you like yeah i know it's pretty potent i felt kind of weird walking around like why it's legal now like well yeah i mean there's still a stigma to it yeah i don't i don't know i don't think so i don't think anybody cares i think after a while that people

are gonna hopefully i'm hoping dc will go towards like a San Francisco. And it's such a cool city besides the politics involved. That's what's so great about, I love go-go music and even the hardcore music and even, you know, Chappelle coming from there and Pat doing standup. There's just been a really cool art thing going there because it's just, it's kind of like not a big place.

It's a small town that's still a city that you could you know that's the cool thing about san francisco and dc is like you can do your art without worrying like once you're in la and new york like you know kind of the big boys are looking at you you know there's a lot of money on the table, which is awesome. But the pressure, right? The pressure not to be a slacker. If you're going to show up, it's got to be correct, which is nice, but also doesn't lend itself to learning the process and experimenting and making mistakes. Whereas I think in D. in DC and in San Francisco,

if you're a young person, you know, trying to take on an art form, you just have space to grow in a place where you can do it on a cool level, but also you're not worried that Disney might be watching or, you know, right. It's okay.

A million dollar deal isn't around the table. So you might as well have as much fun and go for your a buck gig you know kind of like you know minor threat for gazi and go go like the reason that shit all sticks is because they never sucked hollywood's dick you know it's just like they just did their thing they weren't in it for the money they were just in it to do what they wanted to get out there in their own way and uh that's you know hopefully i guess what i'm saying is that dc starts just nurturing places that have weed has good art scenes so artists want to be around weed and weed wants to be around artists you know and that's why san francisco has the best fucking music scene you're great comedy great music great food great all that shit none of it's like on a huge level but

then you just get the real deal you know coming out of those places it's not so packaged did you watch uh the foo fighters documentary totally i was gonna say that was that episode was so great dc went so good yeah especially talking about gogo just how independent the scene was it's like it really was just people in their own little corner of the world just like growing and progressing to what they were supposed to be not because they were trying to conform to something else and it was beautiful yeah so yeah that series was dope and the dc one was yeah he really put it down for dc really well dave did dave girl i like i'm acting like i know him but but no he he did for a guy that's not really go there's nothing really hip-hop about dave growl at all and in go-go's

is as hip-hop and african-american and black as it gets that's probably i mean it that's why it never really crossed over to mainstream america it is just funky dope ass music like even it's funkier than hip-hop at times you know because it's just a awesome groove the groove that's live and if you want to shake your ass and go nuts go to a go-go man uh did you go to any of those shows growing up like being in this area was that was that your thing as a kid yeah i listened there was this am station i forget what it was but there was an am station in dc that was all go-go all the time yeah and you could think of am it was am it wasn't hip-hop like but pgc would pump it and so yeah my friend had a beat-up lincoln through my teen years even early college i would smoke one hitters and listen to hip-hop and go go and go eat at roy

rogers go to a house party get shit phased try to hook up end up passing out in my mom's house somewhere and then going doing it all over again and working some shitty job but living for the weekend and smoking weed and listening to go go watching the box remember the box the video jukebox you would get all the go-go videos from the video jukebox but yeah i saw chuck brown play a bunch i saw rare essence uh we had season tickets to the redskins game when i in the 80s my dad worked for the mayor of washington dc mayor the first mayor is mayor washington um right and one of his predecessors one of my dad's peers was marion berry but my dad never made any money but he bought a house in northeast dc that we still own today but back in the 60s

when it cost like 10 cents he was just a kid from southern virginia um and that guy was like a hill staffer and worked his way up to city politics but we he ended up getting season tickets to the redskins and when they were at rfk so we were like this family that had like i had friends that dads were like congressmen and senators and they didn't even have season tickets like my dad dang was in with the city government and if you're in with the city you know there's you don't get a lot of money but people like the congressman that wanted to grease the city had to go through my dad so he had like this he had a little bit of power in the city that he had these tickets so we would go see so i saw gogo when i

was five years old six years old going to go see the redskins and the fun Bunch and John Riggins and the Greaseman and Captain 20 like I know all this DC shit yeah and uh and I remember when Minor Threat and Fugazi was around my friends I remember the day my couple my friends turned punk and I was like what the fuck is that uh I never really went punk I just liked I just liked hip-hop I was just break dancing. And that was the generation before me was the hardcore dudes. Those were the little bit older, edgier dudes. I loved Go-Go and Drop the Bomb. And then when Run DMC and all that started happening, that was when I was 10, 11, 12. That's when we moved to Virginia, but I was still coming back to D.C.

But the last time I saw Chuck Brown was in New York, like a month after I got arrested. And he's like the godfather of go-go. Godfather. He made it. He made it. And he just played go-go. If you don't know Chuck Brown, go look up Chuck Brown.

And he played rhythm guitar, a lot like Bo Diddley, but he would have this three or four drummers behind him, and they would crank this beat that's heavily. It got a lot of cow Diddley, but he would have this, you know, three or four drummers behind him and they would crank this beat that's heavily, got a lot of cowbell and congas and it's just got this rolling fucking cool beat that you could play anything over that sounds dope.

It's kind of like that funky drummer loop. It's just like a sick fucking groove. And it seemed like he had his own thing too, like on the Foo Fighters show, they're like, oh god, like the crowd would get into it. Yeah, it's a crowd. Can I give it to him, Chuck? Give it to him, Chuck.

Wind me up, Chuck. Yeah, that's right. Wind me up. Yeah. A cat in a hat. All that, man. Yeah, these were like a pink suit and shit. It's a go-go.

A lot of crowd response in that go-go beat. So that's Coffee and Weed. I do that call and response. So you got to have a lot of call and response. It's a lot about the crowd as well as the performers yeah uh so yeah you gotta have a lot of call and response but i saw chuck brown right before 2007 and my friend from dc nick kaufman whose dad lived around the corner from me in D.C., who booked jazz clubs and smoked weed.

This guy was an interesting dude. And he still is in New York. And he played in bands like Opening for Scream with Dave Grohl. He did play. He was telling me, because he was older than I was. So he went and saw Bad Brains minor threat at like a church he saw them at kilimanjaro like he was saw he was a musician a young guy that was like an early hipster in dc but we went and saw chuck brown together he told me yo chuck brown's playing in

an hour at joe's pub which is like this like cool theater in new york and we went there and we saw chuck brown we got these tickets and everybody was dancing it was all dc people it was so fucking nuts man and uh that was the last time i saw chuck the round play but it was sick yeah and little benny was his horn player and there's a scene in my video where i'm on this street corner has little benny way behind me oh yeah and there that little benny is right U Street but little Benny was a part of Chuck Brown's horn section and little Benny would also rap but also played the trumpet could just pop and then you know do lyrics and then he was kind of like the brass section leader and he was also playing with Chuck that night so it was like Chuck and little Benny passed away too so i saw two of like the really go-go greats that night at like at like a really classy joint in new york and

and they were all in suits and they just ripped the room apart like ripped new york apart and it was all dc people like if you're from dc let me hear you everybody's like yeah it was all everybody that was transplants in new york was in in the hat so it was all like yeah and then my weirdo buddy nico was dancing around like we were just going nuts that's great and i and i hadn't smoked pot for like a week no a month because i was scared i gave myself my girl was like you got to get your life together you got to quit smoking pot this after you got arrested got after i arrested but then my friend was like yo we're gonna go see Chuck Brown and I was like I'm gonna smoke

some fucking weed man and I did a spot that night I did a spot and then I ran into a comic and I remember smoking like a bowl

in some bathroom in a bar and then my friend pulled up and I jumped in his car and we went right to the Chuck Brown show

so I just got high jumped in and this all happened in an hour like he texted me like Chuck Brown's playing over here I said i'm free let's do it let's go let's go let's go yeah and we just it was like one of those spur of the moment like it wasn't like oh i'm in a month my man is coming i'm gonna buy tickets on line or schedule it was literally like what i'm gonna do tonight and i just went oh fuck yeah let's go yeah and you must have been high as

shit too because your tolerance yeah my tolerance is down and then he's go yeah and you must have been high as shit too because your tolerance yeah my tolerance is down and then he's in suits and little benny's dancing around we actually talked to little benny on the way in i remember we talked to him a little bit because it's a small venue it's like a big like kind of club but it's really super nice like the tickets there are like 35 bucks and shit like yeah for just like even the small stuff that's great man so are you uh are you still in new york then yeah i'm in brooklyn new york uh-huh you like it up there i love it love it brooklyn what's it uh you have how many kids just one just one just one and done

one and done i like uh what's what's the track on your album uh babies and shit yeah babies very honest look at being a father yeah and the chorus is uh that's the video i need to get to but of course i'm really proud it's wifed up my chick gave her the dick nine months later i got babies and shit so that's just kind of a thing like yo what's up what's rob doing man we used to smoke we didn't hang out with him oh he's got babies and shit he ain't hanging out anymore he's one of those fucking dads that's who i am have you heard his song have you heard this song man don't you know he's got babies and shit rob can't hang out to four anymore has that changed i i'm sorry to talk i hate talk i just

said talked in the third person i hate talking in third person. That's the most douchiest thing is when you third person it out. No, you were a character. You were somebody else. Yeah, I was a character. I want to apologize for douching on the third character. No, man. You're good. I mean, I'm guessing that's just completely different.

Like, it changes your life. It changes your life. How's that doing comedy and having a kid? It's hard. It's all hard. It's just there's no easy way around it. It's hard, but it also is challenging. And, you know, you just realize that everybody has to go through just some crazy-ass bullshit just to get through the day.

And having a kid's awesome. And she's so awesome. And I love her. And, you know, I'm with her a lot. And so I've been with, you know, my daughter, you know, the first three and a half years of her life. Like, I've been around a lot, a lot her a lot. And so I've been with my daughter the first three and a half years of her life. I've been around a lot, a lot, a lot. And as a comedian, too, you can hang out during the day with her. Yeah, I can hang out during the day.

And my wife's cool enough not to do the early, early mornings on me too hardcore because she knows. So I'll start getting up and running around 8 or nine where she's my wife's up at seven but she's going to bed earlier yeah and uh you know i'll deal with most of the day but she goes the baby goes to bed or the kid now goes to bed at 7 7 30 so once she's in bed my mom uh not my mom my wife who's her mom is at home and then i just go out and do spots and whatnot it's a good setup it's a good setup i mean it's not the best but being a single parent would be so brutal especially in new york especially it seems so hard yeah it's so hard just just everything just traveling just going to the store like getting on the train walking there's so many fucking people and yeah everything

just seems like a hassle to me in new york it is it is but it makes you stronger yeah i mean it keeps me young it keeps me in shape i don't belong to a gym i'm always just moving i'm always grinding i'm always working at it my mind's always engaged trying to figure out how to get to the next step yeah so you don't do that kind of like on the couch there's no time to be that kind of slothed out, even though I love slothing out. Oh, yeah. There's just, it definitely whipped my ass in shape

in terms of like, if I come down to Baltimore, I'm not, I mean, I'm still worried about doing a killer set, but at the same time, it's like, I do sets in New York at the worst places. Yeah. The best place. You just have all, so you just build up this armor that's that is just makes you a better i mean it just sucks you know the rougher it is it does make it better

at times just in the short term though it fucking sucks just in the short term it sucks but in the long term all these decisions i'm proud of them and i'm in a position now that hey i'm not a millionaire but you know you catch me on a good night doing stand-up i can hold my own with the best of them right which is something you know i'm that i'm very proud of and i've worked really hard you know i'm not all the way there yet and there's a ton of work and stand up so hard that you have to just keep writing all the time uh but at the same time at least least I have that badge. Like, you know,

if it came down to it, I could hold my own. You can hang. I could hang on most showcase. If you put on the best of the best, I won't make an idiot of myself. Right. I could,

I could fake the funk enough that I could pull it off and follow whoever, you know, and not wig out. Right. So where do you, where do you feel like is the next thing? I mean, it's, I guess it's a weird question. Cause it's not like's not like and next i'm gonna do this so it's more just like just keep it on

i think keep writing keep performing keep writing keep performing i love to do more independent venues more rock clubs and then a handful of really good mogubi's really it's a fucking awesome stand and that andrew is uh who's running it, Unger, he just knows comedy. I mean, it's not... I like to work venues that treat you good. Whether it be a rock club or it be the most comedy

comedy club, at least if they get... If they're trying. And they're connected to it. Andrew's the owner, but also booking people at the same time. So it's not like he's just like, oh yeah person plugged in here like he's he's looking at he takes pride in yeah pride and then the same thing with the punch line there's just a handful of really good clubs out there that i would love to work and but then there's a lot of clubs that just do a lot of bad shady just short-sighted bullshit yeah after 14 years i just really would love to dodge

not doing nose rooms right really you know kind of do the comedians of comedy you know just kind of have a hybrid of them both you know like i've always i never sat at the cool table but i could hang with those guys i could never was a fully dork dude that i could be though i just always have weaved my way between groups and you know that hasn't it's not great for marketing because in this in comedy business they like to go oh he's an alternative comic he's a mainstream comic he's branding yeah branding yeah i guess i gotta worry about my brand but at the same time it's like i just i just want to keep on moving i think the next generation will understand that a little bit more like they'll see through a lot of the branding bullshit hopefully i don't know but i think things are a little bit more transparent yeah i think

that's better in the long run too because i feel like it's so limiting to be like well that's my brand yeah well then you never grow you kind of just plateau at that thing of like i'm the technology guy yeah i'm the nerd really super dirty edgy dude yeah like it's like no you're not that all the time nobody's anything all the time you know yeah but it is weird to say like my brand is you know yeah i i vacillate it's kind of my thing fascinating uh well cool man thank you for doing this anything else uh uh to plug here at the end uh got the album out got the album out but uh check out my music videos on youtube i got a youtube station rob cantrell youtube check those all out check out uh the ones i'm really proud of

right now coffee and weed helicopter heavy weather andgum are all on my album I got videos for, and those are all on there. And yeah, I'm doing a 420 show in Brooklyn this year, and we just got a cool flyer for that with this sketch group called Murder Fist. And they're probably the best sketch group in New York. So that's going to be on 420 in Brooklyn at the Knitting with murder fists.

Great out for that. Nice. And the album is dreams never die, right? Yep. That's great, man. And your premium episode of Doug loves movies.

Yeah. You can check me out at Doug loves. I've done some episodes, but yeah, there is a premium episodes. I was just there for like the tournament of champions. Yeah. Yeah.

I saw, yeah. Didn't you do like, it was just you versus Philadelphiailadelphia i saw that one yeah yeah you know a bunch of like interruptions and stuff too yep i did a bunch of interruptions yeah uh and then yeah that one in philly that was with burt kreischer and w kamau bell and the thing i've known burt i used to tour with burt and burt's amazing i've i've really fallen in love with that yeah just from his podcast he's so funny and he's so funurt, and Burt's amazing. I've really fallen in love with that dude. Just from his podcast.

He's so funny, and he's so fun. He's just a big little kid. He's the greatest laugh ever. That's what was so hard. I knew Burt. I knew he was going to kill in Philadelphia, and he was working. It was at Helium, and he was the comic all that week. So by the time he was on stage with doug he was just ripping the room apart it was just it was

it was great to be on but also like holy shit he's so fucking funny when he tries to talk through it through his laugh i think that's the funniest thing that was one of my with tom segura was on his podcast he just goes how did your parents not kill themselves because they probably came home like what did you do bird yeah he's great man well dude rob this has been fucking great man i remember uh i remember seeing you like i think years ago at chuckle storm so it's nice to hang and thank you for doing the podcast i appreciate it what was it with chucklestone which uh is in baltimore at the auto bar yeah yeah that was fun yeah it was a great show that great show that was yeah yeah i think you were like selling cdrs and stuff you're like yeah i got albums but they're on a cdr that was i went out of print on keep on the grass and then i would burn my own yeah and then i would print out

the album cover and i would put them in those like little sleeves and then you're riveted it's like it's better to have the bootleg you know what i'm talking about man you want that real shit you want that real shit burned right off my computer trade it in the parking lot you don't yeah you got some weed give me some weed for that you don't need money i'll give you the cd for some weed oh man well cool man thank you for doing this appreciate it uh mr finaz, what do you want to plug? I got nothing. MikeFonazzo.net. Oh, yeah, the website. That's whatever.

He's big into his own stuff. Add that Mike Fonazzo on Twitter. There it is. Please follow me. There it is. Then the podcast is at DigSeshPod. I'm at Josh Koderna. DigressionSessions.com slash calendar for all the dates.

And we got a bunch of podcasts on there. So thank you to everybody for listening. Mike, thanks again. Rob, thanks bye bye everybody coffee and weed Outro Music