WTF with Marc Maron Podcast - Episode 1306 - Roy Wood Jr

Episode Date: February 17, 2022

Roy Wood Jr can't be angry on stage. He wants to be angry. But he believes his face is too round to be angry. Now, whenever Roy wants to say something mean in his act, he knows he has to smile while he does it. Roy tells Marc how he learned to navigate the way audiences perceive him while doing the Southern standup circuit and honing his skills on The Daily Show. He also explains how doing the show Finding Your Roots upended what he thought was the truth of his life story and prompted him to undertake a personal journey.  Sign up here for WTF+ to get the full show archives and weekly bonus material! https://plus.acast.com/s/wtf-with-marc-maron-podcast. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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All right, let's do this. How are you, what the fuckers? What the fuck buddies? What the fuck nicks? Roy Wood Jr. is on the show. He's a correspondent on The Daily Show with Trevor Noah, which we talked. I don't think we even mentioned it. We maybe mentioned that.

He also hosts the podcast Roy's Job Fair. He has three stand-up specials, Father Figure, No One Loves You, and the most recent Imperfect Messenger, which is great. Excellent. And I got to be honest, man, I didn't really know this guy. His name came up. I talked to Brendan about it and I, you know, I dug in and I was like, holy shit, this guy's one of the best. He's one of the best. He's not afraid of taking risks. He's not afraid of taking risks. He talks about real things. He's smart.

He knows and understands policy, the subject of race from a personal point of view. He wrestles with things that we all wrestle with, but he's got a delivery and a long form approach that is just so sharp and so funny and so deliberate. He's just a he's a real deal he's a guy that can talk about real stuff in a way that's provocative and meaningful and funny i was so thrilled to watch him i don't see a lot of new stand-ups i think i've met him once before twice before i think we talked about that but i never really sat down and took it in and it was just such a fucking pleasure to watch Roy Wood Jr. work. Like in a way that I'm like, this is what it's supposed to be.

This is what comedy is supposed to be. Just loved it. I was very excited to talk to him. I talked to him in New York in the fancy suite. When I was in the fancy suite, that's where I talked to him. Breathe it in, man. Breathe it in. Look, if there's nothing you can do about it, there's nothing you can do about it.

You can only do what you can, and it's probably not enough. Know that. Feel that. Own it. Man, things are fucked up. What can I do? Very little. I'm sorry, man.

I'm sorry. I'm suffering from a hope deficit. I just don't know what hope means anymore. You know, I can feel good, but it's very hard to find encouragement or positive input. So I'm at a hope deficit. All I can think about is in terms of hope is that anybody who's dying, a week before they die, someone says, you're going to be all right, man. You're going to make it through. You're strong. You're going to kick it. You're going to be all right. You're going to be all right. A lot of people who are about to die hear that. It's

going to be okay. What is that? I don't know if that even falls under the umbrella of hope, but you put it in someone's head. You want them to feel good, right? Everybody wants to feel good. That's what's interesting about doing comedy now in this time of havoc and darkness. Oh my God. I'm chuckling. Got the chuckles. I talked to my friend about san francisco i'll be there tomorrow night or no saturday night tomorrow night in napa go to wtfpod.com slash tour because like i talked to my booking agent a lot of sales are soft in san francisco because a lot of people left it's not really from what i understand it hasn't really you know't really bounced back a lot. Most people are working from home.

Downtown is kind of sparse. The Tenderloin is out of control and terrifying with some chaos. I've lived up there. It was chaotic when things were going well in San Francisco. It always has an energy to it, man. There's something about San Francisco. It crackles with something, and it's never clear whether it's good or bad to me. That was one of the's something about San Francisco. It crackles with something and it's never clear whether it's good or bad to me. That was one of the interesting things about living there. Like,

what the fuck is going on here? There's an electricity to it. I don't know if that's gone out and it's just entered into some kind of sad spiral of people leaving. I don't know what's going on. All I know is my buddy said, yeah, you know, it's bouncing back. It's interesting. There's pockets sort of like the Lower East Side was in the 70s. I'm like, that wasn't good. I was in the Lower East Side in the 80s. Not great. But you like it. I guess you got to rationalize the grit.

You know what I mean? Rationalize the pain. Rationalize the chaos somehow to get through it. Because what are you going to do? Hey, how can I help? There what are you going to do? Hey, how can I help? There's nothing you can fucking do. Go feed some people,

give some money to the right place. Volunteer. Got to rationalize the chaos. It'll be all right. You're going to be fine. You're going to get through this. The comedy has been good. Looking forward to playing all the dates.

We added a show at the Wilbur. What is that? That's on, was that April 16th, I think? Put a second show in there. Because they're like, let's add one. We sold out that one. Did you? There's still some tickets, I think,

for the second show at the Palace of Fine Arts in San Francisco on Saturday. Napa tomorrow. Maybe a couple tickets. I'm going to be at Largo March 3rd here in Los Angeles to dick around for an hour. San Luis Obispo on March 5th

at the Fremont. I'll be at the Lobero in Santa Barbara on March 6th. And then I'm going to go to the East Coast where it's chilly. College Street in New Haven, Connecticut, March 9th. Get tickets. Music Hall in Troy, New York, March 10th. Get tickets. The Colonial Theater, Laconia, New Hampshire, March 11th. If you don't get tickets for that, I might cancel it. Flynn Center, Burlington, Vermont. You would think people would like me there. Buy some tickets. Flynn Center, Burlington, Vermont, March 12th. I don't want to cancel. Buckhead, Atlanta, Georgia, April 1st. Tarrytown Music Hall, Tarrytown, New York, April 14th. Columbus Theater in Providence, Rhode Island, April 15th. The Wilbur in Boston. Now two shows,

7 and 945 on April 16th. And I'm going up to the State Theater in Portland, Maine on April 17th. Buy tickets. I don't want to be disappointed or feel like it's fucking sad. Paramount Theater, Moon Tower Comedy Festival, April 22nd. That'll be good to go to that place and go to Opie's Barbecue. Be at the Barrymore Theater in Madison, Wisconsin on April 27th with Esther Povitsky. I'll be at the Turner Hall Ballroom in Milwaukee, Wisconsin on April 28th with Esther Povitsky. The Vic Theater, April 29th in Chicago with Esther Povitsky. Minneapolis at the Pantages, April 30th with Esther. Then I'm going to do a run at Dynasty Typewriter here in LA, May 2nd, May 3rd, and May 4th, all those with Esther. Carnegie Music Hall in Pittsburgh.

May 12th. That's creepy. We got to drive up the hill to the creepy haunted venue. I'm doing it again, though. Mimi Ohio Theater in Cleveland. May 13th. The Music Theater in Royal Oak, Michigan. Isn't that the Music Box Theater? May 14th.

Kennedy Center, D.C., May 20th. Count Basie Theater, Red Bank, New Jersey, May 21st. Keswick, Philadelphia, PA, 730 on May 22nd. Go to wtfpod.com slash tour. Get tickets. I'm coming. This might be it. Not because I'm going to die. I just might be done.

How long does one have to do this shit? What do you have to prove? What do you have to prove? I'm not greedy. I don't want power. I just want to keep creating and try to have a little fun before we all can't breathe at the same time. How are you? Everything all right? Roy Wood Jr., as I mentioned earlier, is one of the greats, and you should pay attention to his stand-up, because it's top-notch, man. Seriously. Father figure, imperfect messenger.

My faves. I got to talk to him. Didn't know him. And I don't watch The Daily Show. Don't even think we mentioned it. So don't get all weird about that. Wasn't out of disrespect. It was me talking to a stand-up comedian. I'm a stand-up comedian. Talking to another one. Roy Wood Jr. Floyd. Don't think you need business insurance? Think again. Business insurance from Zensurance is a no-brainer for every business owner because it provides peace of mind. A lot can go wrong. A fire, cyber attack, stolen equipment, or an unhappy customer suing you. That's why you need insurance. Don't let the, I'm too small for this mindset, hold you back from protecting yourself.

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When I die here, you'll never leave Japan alive. FX's Shogun. A new original series streaming February 27th exclusively on Disney+. 18 plus subscription required. T's and C's apply. Now. The first nice hotel room. The first nice hotel room I ever stayed in in comedy was a Candlewood in charlotte north carolina that was the first hotel

with the hallway where the room didn't open up to a parking lot okay yeah yeah yeah and i remember it because it was a fallout i don't know who was supposed to feature for tommy davidson but shit happened and i got the call like friday morning in tallahassee was that your was that the break was that the big break that was the break with the comedy zone shane who booked at the time probably 60 percent of all the road work in the southeast yeah like you couldn't be a road comic in the south and not work the comedies right like that was i feel like i've done one comedy zone yeah i don't i don't know when doing what you were doing in the late 90s, early 2000s,

you'd have gotten into a lot of fights in the South. Talking shit to rednecks and looking blue hairs. I didn't understand it until I did a gig in, I think I was in Lexington. They had me do a show there. Comedy off Broadway. I don't know which one it was, but I know that I was doing a lot of religious stuff. And then I'm driving around and I'm like, holy shit, there's a church on every fucking corner in this place. And they never asked me back.

And it was dicey. It felt uncomfortable. It's like that old Doug Stanhope bit. If you want to read the Bible, just drive down the freeway in the South. You'll get one billboard at a time yeah yeah but the south though like that was like starting in birmingham and like working a lot in florida you just had to be diverse enough because if you don't get on stage every week it's a bunch it's a different motherfuckers like it's not like being a city comic right this is your scene it's like no bitch monday it's a casino yeah then it's a fucking

it's a black room then it's mainstream and then it's hillbillies that want to square dance and you're holding up you never know yeah i used to do my stuff i started doing one-nighters so it wasn't even a thursday friday saturday thing it was like you're going to the ramada inn in worcester so it's it's not even a real comedy club. No, it's comedy night. Yeah, exactly. At a different. We do other shit, but tonight we do comedy.

I remember there was a menu of the week's events at one place. It was like country western night, free food, comedy was a Wednesday. And then karaoke. Yeah, exactly. Karaoke is the big draw on a Thursday. comedy was a Wednesday. And then karaoke. Yeah, exactly. Karaoke's the big draw on a Thursday.

I don't, like, sometimes now that I'm older and I've got, I'm a little more sensitive about shit and I think about young me in some of those places, it hurts me. It hurts me. Do you wonder, I started thinking this more recently, just how much the scene you came up in influenced your writing style or if that's who you really were

as a performer like in the sense that i feel like i had to figure out early on what is the joke and the angle that hits these four different demos so that every night i'm not restructuring my act how do i get a dope boy an old person and middle america to laugh at the same joke you were thinking that early i had no choice it was either that or rework the material every fucking night because every night was a different demo so i don't know if i was that much of a salesman i think i was you know fueled by insane fear and a lot of anger. And I just was like, you know, I'm going to do it.

This is what I do. This is my thing. Yeah. No, but see, I guess for me, it was always the fear of not being rebooked. So the older I've gotten. I didn't understand that initially. I thought like, you know, I'm here. You know, I never thought like this was a business. No, next year, bitch.

Yeah. No, no, no. I just never understood why I couldn't get more work. It became this sliding scale of the joke I want to do versus the joke that's going to get me ass back. And that became an oscillation of those bits. And then less and less. Once I got the Daily Show, it gave me a little bit more freedom to do what the fuck I want when i get to a city but yeah up until that point no man you're on fucking pins and needles so when you started well i mean you grew up in where birmingham yeah and you you don't live there anymore you know no i still i'm in new york now new york is where i paid i shot a movie in

birmingham a small movie i know dude we came in about three months after you to do my comedy central pilot there i fucking got comedy central to agree to shoot a scripted comedy pilot what's it called fucking alabama it's called jefferson county probation it's dead on the vine it is between the merger and covet they're not fucking with scripted anymore really over there so like they they killed i'll give them credit they killed everything and shit that was already on they sold off to hbo max so so what was that show about um so you know i got arrested when i was 19 i was yeah i stole some jeans and shit and so my first three years of stand-up i was on probation what compelled you to enter a life of crime money bro and adrenaline that's the other thing is that were you with some shitty guys no this was all

oh you i enterprise this i can't i was not around the wrong crowd i was the wrong crowd yeah and like that time on probation like really informed a lot of like the choices i made the rest of my life but i had a probation officer that let me travel which is like against every fucking rule you can like you're not supposed to leave the state yeah when you're on probation yeah and he's like no for as long as you are going and doing something that's productive right you're yeah yeah and so as long as you're not going to steal more jeans yeah just don't go to dillard's you were banned don't go to dillard's like little shit like yeah all right.

To get a travel permit, you have to show proof that the event is happening that you're going to go to. Okay. And so you're doing open mic. Like I'm going to Good Nights in Raleigh. Oh, yeah. To do open mic. When it was Charlie Good Nights? Yeah, it was Charlie Good Nights. Tom Williams was still running.

Tom Williams. Yeah. And so I would take the Greyhound from tallahassee to raleigh yeah my probation officer would say something like well you have to i need to see a flyer that that shows that you're fucking the open mic roster yeah i'm like it's open mic there's no fucking flyer he goes well someone needs to make make a flyer and that's how i learned graphic design so it's it was things like that that helped and that's still to this day that's a tool i still use so there's an there's a way graphic design yeah i mean just computer shit i mean my degree is in broadcast but at the time i was with

the campus newspaper so i learned i was learning camera shit and all of that stuff too but to be able to travel and do what i wanted to do i had to gain skills and so that when you look at criminal justice reform from a place of true reformation and not just a probation officer being some sort of fucking chaperone yeah a fucking narc i think we could really change the way we look at uh reform there's more people on probation than in prison so my point is that's positive, isn't it? I don't know. Probation isn't necessarily freedom. It's just not prison. It's still a thousand levels of fuckery to keep you from getting employed because you you've been you've been arrested.

But then the judge will turn around and send you to jail for violation of probation if you don't get a job. But how can I get a job if I've been if I got the scarlet letter on me, dog? and probation if you don't get a job but how can i get a job if i've been if i got the scarlet letter on me dog so it's just this constant loop that so many people that are on probation go back to jail and all of that shit so i just wanted to show to kind of kind of spoke to that shit and alabama is pretty disproportionate with blacks in prisons but i wasn't trying to make the show like super woke or anything i was like if i could just tell the story of a probation officer that's trying to look at the system differently yeah have a little heart yeah just have a little heart and so my point is the film and tv community is still growing in alabama and people like you coming there like it's the crew is there they just live in new orleans and atlanta because that's where the work

is so they're all yeah just but they're close by bro we had a crew of 90 60 of them were alabama residents and they're so it's so the good people they're so proud of the city yeah birmingham's pretty nice little city like i'm i'm a white jew i go to the south and i just assume that no one's gonna like me white people and black people going to have a problem with me somehow. Yeah. But Birmingham is one of those little kind of blue cities, which, you know, as many times I play a lot of blue cities. But you start to realize blue cities are just, you know, frightened people that don't really talk to the people they work with. Correct.

And they know they're surrounded by their overlords in the county. That's right. They're like the brick and mortar store. Yes. For the state. Right. So the this state a bunch of backward idiots but we're gonna let the gay people live there because you know they got the clubs and they do nice boutiques yeah it's craft beer yeah they're bringing money but i uh i made sure to uh to sort of appreciate where i was i drove to montgomery i went to the uh the the museum yeah the lynching yeah oh my god dude equal justice initiative

that memorial uh it it delivered the message i could i can't go twice everyone should go but i could never go but you know like as it just a white dude going to that thing it was like okay i can see it like when you see every single lynching that is known that happened in the last 200 years just document it and prove it's overwhelming and the weight of the visuals that the way that that that that piece of public art is is by far the most intuitive empathetic execution of something that heavy and i've been to you been to the dead Jew memorials, but this thing was something else. The only other thing I've been to that was close,

and it's not comparing the two conflicts, of course, was the Vietnam memorial in D.C. Oh, yeah, yeah, exactly. The somberness where no one's talking to each other. And it's not like some sort of spectacular thing. No. It's just this, whoa. Yeah, it's just, oh sort of spectacular thing. No. It's just this, whoa. Yeah, it's just, oh my God.

The names. Bro, they talked about you. Tom Holland was in the region around the same time shooting something for Netflix. Aaron Eckert. Spider-Man? Yeah, but he was shooting some movie set in Ohio or something. Do they give tax incentives there in Alabama? It's decent.

It ain't Georgia level, but you can get away with doing a lot of stuff for cheaper there yeah so if you play it right the money kind of comes out even yeah if your production doesn't get i don't i can't believe they're not going to make your show that's that's politics man i mean i got other irons in the fire now it's a show that i would love to circle back to at some point since i never saw the light of day it's still in play but like that that whole thing that that's the thing that really, that I really learned about Alabama. You want to talk about politics was the process of just getting the pieces in place to even get a pilot shot there just to get the incentives to talk to this person and that person. And then you realize, oh fuck, we could never take business away from

Georgia because we don't have the infrastructure to train crew. Well, we train crew. You have to make that a blue collar job, which means you have to go with the AIDT training, which trains HVAC and welding and forklift. So you have to put all the crew shit under that and bury it because essentially I'm from Birmingham and I'm loved in my state. Yeah, but at a political level, I'm a Hollywood liberal. That is that is how I'm perceived so i can't come in and go wouldn't it be fun to make movies i have to go jobs yeah i got an idea for jobs don't you want some jobs and then with that shit and that's how we were able to kind of get the ball rolling the politics of that state god bless anybody that has to deal with it because even to get a school to teach the program for free you can't give certain shit to a four-year school that you don't give to

a community college in the same county because the community college is competing for bodies with the so you have to play nice with everybody and it's like five and then covet hit and it's just like all right well let's just not do it yeah the supreme court just did yesterday what they just gerrymandering stands. Stands, yeah. Yeah. So they rewrote, the Republicans rewrote a bunch of the districts and midterms are going to be very interesting in the state. So, I mean, people just got bigger battles to fight, man.

So in the meantime, hopefully I make something with Fox or NBC and then I can circle back around when I got more juice. I like the whole world, though. I sold the show to FX about a social worker. So we're going to see. See, and that's perfect. And that's also reform. Exactly.

That's the other side. Because everything, when you look at crime on TV, it's catch the criminal, it's adjudicate the criminal, or it's fucking the jail, lock them up, whatever. And that's the. And then at the end, you say, like, he did this and that and was in jail 10 years and whatever. Yeah. Reform is rarely on the books. Like I did the research on it. There was A&E had a reality show about clemency and probation officers like 15 years ago.

There's been nothing else since. USA had a show about public defenders about 15 years ago. For me, it just seems like a way that the more the depth of the stories is so much more interesting. And it's like that level of selflessness I don't think is really highlighted enough. And I'll be honest, like I'm starting to look at my creative patterns and that's kind of that's where I gravitate creatively. Like me and Dennis Leary, we just sold this joint to Fox about the National Guard where we play a National Guard unit. To me, the idea isn't even about the national guard as a unit yeah they're the military and people treat them like shit and don't really

know what they do yeah but when you look at what the national guard does at a deeper level they're just a band-aid for government malfeasance it's not just the storm hit pass out the soup it's oh my god this dam is about to break and flood the town but this dam should have been fixed 20 years ago on a proposal that a bunch of fucking town folk fucking voted no on so it's like it's things like that yeah i mean they're replacing school bus drivers in boston right now because of covet and shit like they're like temp service workers like the national guard is such a swiss army knife of an occupation. And it's like that's another way to show how the system fails a lot of people. Because you don't see the National Guard in a lot of rich neighborhoods, bro.

Unless it's a fucking hurricane or some shit. Interesting. Well, I noticed that like when you – I think that's the depth of your comedy in general. Like, I mean, you actually talk about policy. You know, when you're talking about the issues of mean, you actually talk about policy. You know, when you're talking about the issues of black people, you talk about policy. I mean, the way you encapsulate the struggle or the experience, which is what you do in a lot of ways, is sophisticated and balanced and in depth. Like, you know, when you listen to your jokes like i just i was

just watching something in you know in the new special and it's it's fucking hilarious even the idea of leonardo dicaprio saying the n-word repeatedly but the idea that like he's got to lay low for a decade yeah he called jamie foxx the n-word to his face and then he didn't do another black scene with a black person till don't look up he did every other minority but no it's just such a stupid thing it was fun of like researching that like i watched every leo but yeah but when you found out it was a decade, you were like, oh, yeah. Yeah. I got the joke. But the other thing was also the, can we get a law?

Can we get a law? Just pass one of the things that black people have asked for. But that conversation, and certainly in comedy, and especially now when there's all this idea that people are controversial or whatever, I mean, the real controversial thing right now that anyone should be talking about is like they're fucking banning books yeah and it's just like you know but these people are hung up on whether they can say tranny or not like nobody has the guts to sort of just like explain and it's a rare gift you have to be able to explain and remain funny i think that that most people, not only are they stupid

and don't know this shit, but they don't know how to explain it. Yeah, I'm not anti-murals. No, I get it. But just give me a, give us some laws. Right, right. But I don't think people think that deep. I think people's civic sensibility

or what the government can do for them, it's either shallow or they're just you know reactively angry and dismissive they'll fuck the government it's like what does that mean and we gotta meet him halfway you know what i learned though like i learned early on that anger just doesn't help my delivery or the conveyance of my message right yeah i went through i call it my stanhope phase i went through well let's back up then so and mooney oh mooney i was mainline in mooney you were stanhope for like what how old are you 26 well stanhope is good because he's long form and you know and and when you when you get down the rabbit hole wherever he's the way he illustrates

a thing in order to fuck your brain up is a great story. He's a great explainer. Perverted analogy. Perfect perverted analogy. Right, exactly. But he has to build a case. Correct. Yeah.

With Mooney, you just... The best part is watching Mooney just attack white people for two hours. And then at the end, if there's a white couple that didn't walk out, he congratulates them on enduring. And the audience gives them a round of applause. You can see them. They're smiling like, yeah, we fucking made it. Yeah, yeah. The allies, as you call them.

Yeah. So when I was 19, I didn't have shit to talk about, bro. So I had jokes about book buyback and your roommate eating your food. What were you going to college for? Journalism for broadcast. My dad was in broadcast. I had a bunch of brothers that did it too. So journalist, you come from journalists.

Yeah. You grew up in journalists. What'd your mom do? My mom's a college educator. She's been in higher ed for 30 years so you grew up in in a world where there was a premium on education it was four degrees in the house before i got one yeah and so my dad my dad was not only just a journalist he was a civil rights journalist like he goes all the way back to the 50s to like the riots in uh south africa

civil he went to south africa went to asia covered the civil war got shot at by snipers embedded with black vietnam uh platoons really he was in chicago working at um at the time the first black the first all-black news station to be on and just fucking on a whim just went to chicago to embed with a chicago platoon just to see what the fuck with all the wherever there was racism happening. My dad was like, yeah, let me go be in it. Like all of the most dangerous, horrible. That's why, like now with The Daily Show, I'm like, Trevor's like, will you go cover the.

Yeah, I'll go to CPAC. The least I can do to honor my dad's legacy it's good civil rights movement all that shit bro one of my first memories as a child when my father was being backstage in 84 when jesse jackson was running for president yeah and my dad interviewing jesse jackson yeah so yeah like it so i was in school for journalism i start. What was the story of your dad? What was he telling you? I mean, what were you growing up in? He was angry. Around, yeah.

He was angry. He watched, he's one of the few people who I know who actively watch C-SPAN. My father had a TV in the house that was dedicated to C-SPAN and he just pressed record. That's where you get the nuance of policy was put upon you as a young person. Maybe so. Yeah. Maybe so. Sundays were 60 minutes.

I could watch football. But when 60 minutes came on, you have to sit. You can't leave this room. So he was angry. Yeah. But I mean, you know, rightfully so. He's from an era where motherfuckers got kicked in the face and bricked and yeah firebombed and death-threatened and then he was the and at a lot of radio jobs he was the first black man through the doors of those

stations so imagine being the first integrator over and over again station after station and just dealing with the same shit wash rinse repeat um he did news commentary too you know so i remember as a kid you know going to the radio station with my dad at like 5.30 in the morning and just sitting on the floor, like waiting for school to start. And I would just listen to him just do commentary all morning. Yeah. Just, I don't even want to call him radical, but he for sure wasn't liberal. He didn't fuck with politicians in general. How was he, like, at home?

Did the anger manifest? No. I mean, good dad, bad husband. So he was in the streets a lot. So my dad might be home three nights out of four. Yeah. When he's home, the house better be clean, your grades better be good, or there's going to be a fucking problem.

Right. And they stayed together. Yeah. For the better or for the worse of all of us, I don't know. How many are there? They stayed together. It's just, I'm the only one by my mom, but I'm the ninth of 11 by my dad. Oh, yeah. In the streets.

In the people. You know, WVON was a very integral part of the 60s and 70s, you know, in terms of news getting out there to black folks. You know, my dad hired Don Cornelius. Like, that's for what job a little stupid little radio effect for media radio for to be a news reporter and that was don's first job in any for anything with a microphone as a broadcaster yeah as a brock period he was a cop before he met my father pulled my father over and gave my father a ticket my dad gave him his card call me for a job it's like the last nice thing a black person's done for the police so that was that was your world i have to assume that going

into the studio and seeing your dad do that must have wired your brain not then it was just some preset yeah it's subconscious but it didn't get activated shit until I was in my early 20s, bro. Like, I didn't, I wasn't political. Like, I went to journalism school because of Stuart Scott. Because he talked about, my dad was so riled up. I just looked at him and I was like, I don't want. My nigga, when are you happy? Now, the answer is when he was in them streets.

When he was happy. when he was in them streets but yeah there is a burden that comes with trying to change and better your people there's a stress that comes with that and he carried that and i was like stewart scott just talks hip and talks about sports we do that at the lunch table and we do that every i wrote the bench playing baseball i crack jokes on it so like this espn seems like the place where you can crack jokes and talk sports right so i'll major in journalism that's what the deal was that's what got me because you don't want to live in you know an angry bitter life you just wanted to live your life yes which is probably selfish because there's a thanklessness that comes with being that type of person why i think i think it must be. It's not a lot of glory.

No, I know. But I think, like, you know, because I've talked to Wyatt Sinek about this a bit. But there must be this weird kind of, like, if you're going to be a public person and be black, you have to make some choice as to how you're going to do it. Correct. And whether you like it or not, you can avoid the choice. But sooner or later, the game is going to force you to choose. And so that's what it came down to for me. And so I ended up going to school for journalism.

I get arrested. I get suspended from school for a year. But I still got my financial aid check. Because of the arrest? Because of the arrest, correct. Student misconduct or whatever. And so I still got my financial aid check so i had i was 19 i had seven thousand dollars and no obligations for the next 10 months yeah and i just hit your

probation and i'm on probation and i just hit the road i had no friends nobody was talking to me like once you get arrested you're not cool anymore you don't not to not to some people well i'm the guy that sells clothes and i'm kind of out of business right now so yeah i'm the guy who steals clothes and sells them yeah i went out of business you have no more purpose for me right so you know that taught me a lesson about people using you too but well yeah so i started doing stand-up who are your real friends that's well that's a good thing about stand-up is you don't need too many. You know, we all see each other here and there. Yeah.

We have an understanding. You know what, though? In a way, though, I kind of envy the city guys who had the beginnings in the city. And, yeah, we used to do spots. Like, when you watch fucking Seinfeld and George Wallace. But I was here, you know, like, yeah, after all the clubs at 2.30 in the morning, I'd be sitting at an all-night diner over here, the Kiev, with Jeff Ross, Sarah Silverman, Louie, you know, a couple other people eating fucking French fries and ice cream at 3 in the morning. Insane. And I have zero memories like that.

Because, like, when you're coming up on the road in the South, it's just homeschool. It's just you don't know who you're going to get this week and you might work with another headliner the next week but then as you get promoted but you get you get to know earthquake occasionally yeah every now and then you meet earthquake tommy davis again people slip you in but the problem with that is that the advantage to coming up on the road that i feel like I had over guys like you is that you get a preview of every possible ending to your career well you have to do the job like you know doing 15 minute sets you know for 12 people in the city or waiting for a scrap you know when you're out on the road and even if you're doing the opening slot even if doing 15 or 20 minutes like the premium is on doing the job not on like you know

well i'm gonna try this or do that no you if i don't do well they're gonna send a report back to comedy zone and i'm not gonna get fucking rebooked but i mean i met the successful comics the young up and comers who ended up leapfrogging me i met the alcoholics oh, the guys that are gone now because of suicide and bad eating habits. So when you get older, like when you hit the 20-year, when you hit that 15-year mile mark, you start thinking, well, what do I really want? You think back to all of those guys and you go, okay, well, I don't want that and I don't want that. I knew a guy that he didn't want to have his name in the paper or on the marquee because he was, you know, he owed child support. Yeah.

Yeah. There's guys that perform under fucking. They're just criminals. Yeah. I've, I've watched headliners children because they were in the middle of a custody battle and they didn't want to miss the weekend with the child or the money. Because if they miss the weekend, then they, some, whatever court order they lose and you don't see the kid ever again.

So I'm the fucking babysitter. I'm watching a six-year-old while the headliner's on stage. Or how about those guys who were like, remember all those guys that just didn't know how the business worked and they're like, yeah, they'll find me. You know, Letterman will find me.

I don't have to go up there. I didn't know either, but I remember there was a guy who really believed that eventually they'd come find him that letter you don't need to move to the coast no they'll come find me in those days you needed to man there was um it's just you know it really is a wild ride i think the thing that i probably learned the most from the road was just about losing expectations and just doing the job yeah just

just do the job and whatever happens happens get to the coast when you can yeah make connections and shit i probably stayed in alabama too long because when i graduated i left florida i went back home i started doing morning radio i didn't want you were in school in florida yeah i was in tallis a florida so did you like what what what sparked the comedy thing, though? Was that in college? Yeah, that was after the arrest. Oh, that's right. Okay. It was like the depression of thinking you're going to go to prison instead of probation.

But you never, but what, how'd you figure out, like, stand-up's a thing? That was early on. I was like 12, 13, when Comedy Central first signed on. You wanted to do it. They used to show stand-up, stand-up with Wally Collins. I know. I used to show stand-up stand-up with Wally Collins. I know. I used to host Short Attention Spent Theater. The last Short Attention Spent Theater.

It was you, it was Wally Collins, and it was A-List with A.J. Jamal. Those were like my three. Kite Linger. Yeah. She did it. Laurie. Yeah. Those were my staple shows.

And then once a year when HBO would do the free preview, and you could get everyone in the country had hbo for free for three days and i would watch carlin or sinbad or whoever like sinbad was kind of like oh really sinbad was yeah did you ever work with wally i used to work with wally just in new york doing spots but it's it's mind-blowing even now where's he at he's here he's here oh yeah he's still working man and it's like wow because you'll see like at some point comedy's that thing where like oh no you guys are you can go speak to him now you've earned the right you've been in the trenches long enough where you can go well i wouldn't have

fathomed yeah in 1997 that i would ever bump into fucking wally collins and now i'm like but yeah that's what that was the thought. But dude, you grew up in Birmingham on the black side of town. I didn't even know we had a comedy club. Is there one? Yeah. The Stardome. The Stardome has been there.

It's a legend. It's almost 30 years in the game. It books every A-list market you can name. They book the same comics. Because Bruce Ayers, the owner, was good to a lot of people early on in the 80s when the road was still the road yeah you have it'd be seinfeld opening for steve harvey like it was just insane fucking lineups but the idea of open mic or comedy even existing you didn't know yeah i didn't know like because it's on tv and you're in alabama that's the that's the world that you're not allowed to be a part of.

Because you're black and you're from Alabama. But you knew there were black comics. Yeah, you saw Def Jam. But again, that's over there. That's Hollywood. That's New York. You just go to church, boy, and figure out your career. And what do you want to be when you grow up?

And do that. But this idea of dreaming beyond the horizon. Wasn't there. And your parents don't give you that because they got beat so bad that they couldn't get an education that the only thing they want you to get is an education right they're scared for you yeah yeah so you're in college in tallahassee so when do you first do it march of 99 i take a greyhound bus back to Birmingham and I do an open mic. How was it?

It was decent. It was decent. The only joke I remember is what do all these different colors on the weather map mean and how the fuck is purple colder than white? Who decided that purple was colder than white? Oh yeah, Prince did.

That's who. Yuck, yuck, yuck. You knew I had to tell you. You knew I need to make a joke. There was that. And then my roommate eats some of my food, but not all of it. If you're going to eat my food, eat all of it. I had a seven up.

He drank six of them. Now I'm sitting at home sipping a one up. Yeah. Yeah. 19. This is what i had all right yeah good working with yeah and then i started doing open mics around tallahassee after that and um i got lucky because keep in mind i'm still suspended during this time the girl that ran two of the people that ran the student activities board at florida state um this this woman named meg was also from birmingham and i went over there to see bobby lee bobby lee and

buzz sutherland and lavelle crawford all three of them were on the same show so the girl at florida state goes if you want i'll put you up and you can just pretend to be a florida state student so that's how i started opening for all of the monthly comics that came to do the NACA shows at Florida State oh that's good and then we formed a little comedy troupe around town we did shows at dive bars and all of that shit producing like your own comedy shows and that's how it goes and I worked that up to house MC at the comedy zone in town the little weekend room at the hotel that's the best the MC spot and you work shit out and so then after that I became comedy zones fallout guy for the gulf coast so anytime someone canceled you know yep from beaumont to jack feature yeah the i-10 beaumont whatever mc feature whatever

i'm the only guy geographically close enough to cover your fucked up sick like someone cancels at noon the show's at eight i'm the only person who could probably get there in time right so that's it so that's how the road started kind of right so you just built your time yeah and then by the time i got back in school i centered my class two years left in college and i've loaded all of my classes, full 15 credit hours, into Tuesdays through Thursdays. Thursday night, I take the Greyhound and go fucking do sets all weekend, wherever the fuck,

get back in town Monday night, work at Golden Corral, wash, rinse, repeat. What's Golden Corral? Golden Corral, the little buffet restaurant. Oh, right, yeah. And so, trust me, it's not just Pete.

You would walk in and go, who the fuck wants to stand food behind a sneeze guard kind of fucking savage yeah no i remember i remember cafeteria style yeah i always thought it was like i love buffets but i i get uh i get nervous around them because i just i actually have a panic thing with the face like well it's sort of like they can just still have the food that i you know yeah there so my mom i kept I was riding a Greyhound for like a year and a half

and one of my mom's students saw me sleeping in the bus station and told my mom. And so my mom. He's in trouble. Yeah, my mom, like they didn't know why.

It was like, why the fuck is your son? Because my mom knows nothing. Yeah. She knows none of this is happening. She knows none of this is happening.

And she put down on a car for me. She got me a Ford Focus, the first model year. It's a good car. 2000, 2001. I rode that bitch 300,000 miles in four years, bro. And that opened up everything. Because once I had the car, it just gives you more scheduling flexibility.

You can go further and shit like that. Ford Focus. And so that was that was probably the biggest help and then once i graduated i had already essentially i couldn't get a job in journalism because i was on probation yeah and i didn't have any fucking internships but i didn't have any internships because i was on the road every summer right but when i came out of school i was making about 25k on the road i was like well featuring yeah i was like well this is about what a print job would pay maybe less in some markets so i was like all

right fuck it i'll just do this and do morning radio and ended up at the same radio station that my dad used to take me to when i was five really and you were the funny guy yeah so i was the morning show who was the chuckle guy you and who else uh it was the buck wild morning show this guy buck wild not starring buck wild a different buck wild it was him this woman named africa and this guy b money and we were the morning show and i did morning radio for a couple years i loved it i didn't mind it i i had to do print phone calls because that's what the market demanded. Yeah. And it wasn't something I was crazy about, but it was something I was able to turn into

merch and monetize and be able to stretch my money a little bit. Did you get famous for the prank calls? Yeah. A little too famous. That's why I pulled most all of them. I think I remember something about that. Yeah. That used to be, this is pre-YouTube.

This is back when going viral was over email you would go viral over an email attachment yeah and like people would go man there's an email going around with your voice and there's 600 names on the email and but the pranks what they did was open up the midwest for me because i would take the prank calls and i will offer them for free to other morning shows and other markets and you owned them yeah the station they weren't paying me like the first two years i did radio they didn't pay me what was the internship yeah it's that it's slavery it's radio slavery and then when they started paying me they wouldn't give me over 29 hours so that they wouldn't have to give me benefits so the least you could do is let me own these fucking prank phone calls so they did yeah and so i took the

pranks i gave them the other morning shows and markets where i wasn't booked and then i would let them play for a couple months and then i would call the comedy club and that market and go bitch i'm on the radio you should book me and it worked yeah and that's how you got uh that's how i started market that's how i broadened the market before getting a lot. Because at the time, I was getting Comic View. I got Comic View once or twice. I got Premium Blend. But it wasn't enough.

And I don't know if this. Yeah, but it wasn't enough for the bookers to respect me. Right. Because black bookers didn't. White bookers didn't respect Comic View because every black comic did Comic View. So that's basically. All you needed was six minutes. They were booking 100 comics a year literally so it wasn't a respect it wasn't a

exalted enough credit sure but then i did star search in 03 and i do um premium blend in 05 yeah that got me the okay maybe we'll okay'll, okay, you can feature, maybe you can hit line a little bit. What was the balance between white rooms and black rooms? In the beginning, 50-50. Later on, 80-20. Now, probably 70-30. Came back up a little. Yeah, but then there's also less black rooms now just you know just because of the the finances of of the

bit of the industry but i do black rooms i enjoy them i just don't get to go there as often as i want to well i would imagine that refining some of the stuff that you do in a broader audience it's probably better to do in the black rooms. Correct, but not until the jokes are ready. I go to a black – You don't want to go in half-baked. Well, what I figured out real quick is that when you're talking about black issues, black people look at you to a degree whether you like it or not. You're representing the race.

Yes. So if you're saying some shit that's sideways, I got to check you because there's people who don't know anything about us, and you're their first entry point into learning about us and our culture so be careful with what you say and how you say it and how you motherfucking frame it or else we're going to fucking boo you and or worse heckle heckle like when someone heckles your ideology i don't know what to do with that yeah and so what i figured out yeah yeah and so what i figured out that i was in st louis two weeks after ferguson first erupted like there was still smoke coming up in the air yeah and i was attempting to make a half-baked argument about policing,

and I have two cops in my family. I saw that bit. Okay. So when was Ferguson? Ten years ago? I just now got that bit to a point where I felt comfortable doing that on stage because I tried it so long ago, and whatever it was about the way I worded it or the way it came out it came

across as y'all got to give it up for the police ain't these police good I know two police and that's not what I was trying to say it was simply saying I've had dialogue with cops that are near and dear to me so there's a bit of a confliction Michael Che does it better because his brother's a cop and like he sees him a lot more often than I do. But at the time when I did that bit. There was no sense. No sympathy. No sympathy.

And nobody was trying to hear. And it's not let me hear it out. It's not let me build my case. It's fuck that. I don't want to hear shit about them. Yeah. So shut the fuck. So you just have to turn the page page you have to turn the page and change

topics because they're not wrong for feeling the way they feel right that's it but that's like an extreme example of you know being checked culturally i mean how what like because it seems to me that if you're in performing for a black audience and you get a boo or a heckle, it's instinctive. It's not an ideologically deep, necessarily deep reaction. Cops are cops, right? Correct. But what's smaller nuances that you feel you've had to sort of finesse? So I did Finding Your Roots. I did that too.

I don't think we're related. Did you like it? Did you like the experience? I did. I liked some of it, yeah. What I've been trying to process still is this idea that you find out these deep things about your family. that you find out these deep things about your family. Like there's a lot of things I found out on that show that in the moment I realized members of my family

have been lying to me my entire life about. And they dug up and found the truth. And so- But is that just because of family mythology or the lying intentionally? I think it's protecting yourself from trauma or thinking that I was too young to deal with the truth at the time.

Okay, so the case I've been trying to build, and it's going to take some time, but this is an example of what I'm talking about. When I was originally talking about this on stage, my father, because of, you know, dealt with a lot of women. Yeah. And we never talked about that. My dad died when I was 16. So there with a lot of women yeah and we never talked about that my dad died when i was 16 so there's a lot of questions i just wasn't old enough to realize i needed to ask yeah he had a bad he had a bad car accident he was hit by a car as a pedestrian when he was

a teenager and had to get hit replacement he walked with a pronounced limp the rest of his life the story as it was told to me on the show is that he got hit by a car going into the crosswalk to get to pick up a book for a girl who had just dissed him or he was still being a gentleman to a woman and he got hit by a car trying to be nice. So you can't tell me that doesn't inform to some degree what he thought of women the rest of his life from 13 years old till now but that moment is

boiled down in every conversation i'd had to oh you just got hit by a car like no there's way more there and even my dad himself would just blow it off as i got hit by a car and i think that our ancestors have a responsibility to share their traumas with their descendants. It would be helpful. Unfortunately, they do share them with no explanation. Or they just truncate it down to a sentence. Oh, that's your cousin from around the corner. No, it's not.

That's his fucking brother. But you don't want to unpack the fact that granddaddy cheated. Right. Yeah. Because that's too much. So you don't share that shit. But what they do share you know on purpose is is the ability to deny they that whatever you however you're brought up

in the shadow of trauma or lies you got to unpack that shit for yourself because you're going to pick that up yeah but i'm trying to fucking help my son i got a five-year-old i'm trying to make sure he's straight so give me what you learned so maybe we can. So I can know what to avoid. But they never do that. And so that was the original ideology off stage. Black lady pulls me to the side and she goes, well, you know, did you ever consider all of the other outside trauma that they were dealing with as well? And she said they had baggage, but their bags were overpacked and they had no concept of therapy. At least you have that. At least you are aware of that. So you are in Baron Vaughn said this to me. This shit fucked me up. He said, we're the curse breakers. Anybody that's living now and is aware of therapy,

you have the opportunity to break any type of issues and mental to start the process of unpacking as a lineage and so make different choices on purpose correct and so when that woman said that to me off stage now i got to speak to that within a bit on stage that helps me that piece of feedback right you know i'm saying that type of shit yeah you know fucking helps yeah so it's good in that regard but for me doing black rooms are important because at the end of the day if black people ain't rocking with what i'm doing then i'm kind of wasting my time up there so you said that for a while you were going through a stanhope uh stanhope and mooney oh yeah that's right shout out to the homie henry coleman i didn't even know stanhope existed there was this google google used to have this comedy news group.

I think it was called alt.comedy.standup. And it was the comedian's message. It was our Twitter. It was a personal Twitter. Right. Just road comics. Yeah. And I can,

Henry Coleman sent me some Stan Hope on there. And just the way he builds this case, like a fucking, like he's cross examining a witness. Yeah. But society is on the witness stand. this case, like a fucking, like he's cross-examining a witness. Yeah. But society is on the witness stand. Right. And I was like, ooh, I like that.

That helped. But my face is too round. I started getting into the psychology of like joke, like the human body and what we respond to and color. And having a round face elicits feelings of positivity and so i can't be angry no one's going to buy me angry no matter what i really feel you base this on your face shape yes yes like like stupid shit like nodding yes while saying the mean thing smiling more like i learned that if i if i maintain a smile while saying wild shit yeah i could get away with it better yeah whereas the opposite if you look at someone like stanhope or mooney

especially mooney never smiles mooney might give you a smirk dick gregory will just give you a head turn and a wink that it's funny you mentioned him because you him. So I can't do what they do. Because people want you to make them feel good because of your face shape. Yeah. I mean, there's other shit, but yeah. I get it. I get it. The one thing I said to- I saw him chubby too, so I think that's like a little-

No, but I was talking to Brendan about it. I think that you present your personal issues and your perception of the struggle and your perception of of who you are as a black man in the world in a very earnest way in a frank way like i think that what you've arrived on whether despite whether you're analyzing your face shape or whether you can or can't be angry is i think that you are comfortable in yourself you know i that's what i see on stage is that like i see a guy who and even talking to you now whether it was from talking on radio or whether it was from doing all these different gigs you have a pace and a sense of groundedness that I think is authentic so despite all the intellectualizing

you know I don't think you could do it any other way you know I mean you may be angry but I don't think it's your nature to you know go pace the stage I can't. That's why I grew the goatee. That was like my act of rebellion. It was just, oh, I'm going to get a goatee. Now they'll know I mean business. Right. But I think that the material itself means business because it's provocative and you're not fronting in any way and you're not posturing. You're presenting this, you know, in a very funny way and the timing is very funny, but you bring up Dickuring. You're presenting this in a very funny way. And the timing is very funny. But you bring up Dick Gregory. I listened to him recently.

And I'm like, I don't know if I gave that guy a fair shake. What don't I know about Dick Gregory in relation to Lenny or any of these other guys that I've sort of put some time into? And that fucker meant business. He was not fucking around on stage. Not at all. It just happened to be funny. But very deliberate, though. Not unlike you. He's not putting bells and but it just happened to be funny but very deliberate though not not

unlike you he's not putting bells and whistles on the shit no he's letting the he's letting the ideas speak for themselves there was a story at the end of this last special that i went back and forth about taking out and i opted to leave in the one about my buddy that's in prison for murder and how i don't know i just i find it fun to try to present a different point of view on something or trying to find a way into a topic that's more personal than just going here's what we need to do about jail oh absolutely yeah yeah my childhood next door neighbor's in prison for murder he was the getaway driver in a robbery that turned into a murder he didn't know that yeah he was outside the building the whole time and so i know the victim's family and that's why when you know

both sides of the crime you know people on both sides of the crime and like trying to figure out you know on the one hand it's fucked up that he's in prison for life you know per people on both sides of the crime and like trying to figure out, you know, on the one hand, it's fucked up that he's in prison for life, you know, per my opinion. But then you talk to the victim's family and then you have to still wonder, well, is that fucked up? I don't know. I'm just not trying to be heavy handed in anything. But I do think that there is a conversation to be had about there's a lot of people trying to take agency and being offended and being mad on people's behalves without looking at what the victims deal with. And there's sometimes a district. And in that instance, I was guilty of disregarding the victim's family because I was so gung ho about trying to get his sentence short.

He's been in jail 25, 20 years. Because for you, it's like, I know this guy, he didn't really do it. He just got caught up in the thing. blood's not on his hands correct so the empathy was relative to what you saw as a an injustice correct in terms of because when you talk about when you talk about real prison reform it's also sentencing reform as well prison reform has been shaped into this non-violent drug offender bullshit where it's just about marijuana and cannabis and i was locked up for weed yeah but there's people who got 20 years who shouldn't have got the five there's people who got 40 years who shouldn't have got the 20 right that's part

of the reform right but they did mean things so we don't we don't never talk about them because they're mean but violent offenders there has to be a conversation around their sentencing the same as people that are non-violent offenders but is it my place to lead that conversation or is it the victims the family of the victims yeah and that's all i'm trying to like decipher i don't know if i'm right on any of that shit but if you put yourself at the center of it at least you can you know and your process is what you're discussing then it's relatable and it's provocative in a way where people like i'd never thought about it and so when i present that bit when i was developing the hour and i started running that bit in black rooms

you have to remember how much violence has you know torn apart the black community and there are people in the audience who know that's my a guy i've known since the third grade and he went fuck him so that's a that's a heckle on the ideology you get what i'm saying that it's a heckle on your limited understanding of the situation or you have some kindred with the victim's family because you lost somebody to violence right but that's the part of the equation that you're not you weren't taken into consideration correct and so it's respecting you learn how to be respectful of things that are very delicate discussions and then you have to take it and get on mainstream tv and see if this

makes i love it i love your stuff i love the the way you execute you know because i don't know where it's necessarily going but it's you know it it creates a whole there's like a there's a journalistic you sit you say the thing and then you build up the back. You know what I mean? That's journal. Yeah, that's right. I would agree with that. All those bits are making me just as a as a as a comedy fan, as a comic, you'll rethink my own material and also like see things like I've never seen him before. Have you? I'll say this. I'm tired.

From a joke ideation standpoint, like I did three specials in the last five years yeah which is probably a little right a little much but probably should have done two but my father fuck it i'll take the money i can come up with some more which one which one do you think is the the weakest the middle one no one loves you yeah the first one father figure think is the weakest? The middle one, No One Loves You. The first one, Father Figure, that was the one. And this new one's great. The middle one was okay. I could tell the middle one, like how much time you took at the top.

Yeah, stretch that dope. Stretch it out, baby. It was fine, but also if you watch the middle special, you can see there's some continuations of bits from the first special, and that shit should have been in the first special um but now i kind of want to start this inward journey bro like all of this shit with my finding your roots really fucked me up man and just about that about your your dad or what they found out the the fucking name of the white people that own my people, their descendants.

I know where they live physically today in this country. I could go and knock on their front door. What would you say? I don't know. And that's the journey. And then I have to get on stage and report it. You kind of addressed some of that in the ancestors versus the forefathers bit. Correct.

Yeah. And so it's like this idea of someone's already done a special where they track down the white people they own their people i need to watch it but i'm sure it's like one big like sitcom very special episode hug moment but you just have to have your experience if you're gonna go do it you're gonna go do it there's that you know there's there's a woman i think she's in jamaica i need to find why Why? Who I might be related to. Oh, really? Supposedly.

So if I am, she needs to get that book. Now, that's the cool thing about finding heroes. They give you that book with all of your fucking, the lineage of everything. He traced us all the way back to the slave ships. They found documents and everything. One of my my four time removed grandfather was purchased for, I think, two hundred dollars. I have a hundred dollars in my backpack for an emergency in case I lose my wallet. Yeah. No matter where I am, a hundred dollars could get me somewhere to solve the problem. Right. So there's this inward journey of also imagine your father.

there's this inward journey of also imagine your father, imagine a parent dying. And then 20 years later, you have a redefined definition of what your relationship was with them because you had a child and having a child exposed all of the things that they didn't do, but you weren't thinking about those things because you never had to provide those things for the next living bloodline for yourself. Or you also find out how much you would like that parent,

which is fucking scary. Yeah, it scary that's why i never had him and so now i have this child and i have to figure out how to help him avoid the pitfalls while figuring out at the same time what the fuck the pitfalls are well that's interesting i think that it's all like i've been working on this bit about about parenting is essentially gaslighting I've been working on this bit about parenting is essentially gaslighting. It's out there. I'm telling you, it's out there. The danger.

But also, it's just sort of like you don't know them. How are you going to know your parents? You know, when they're bringing you up, you only know that relationship. Like you make these assumptions about your parents because you think you know them. But how the fuck are we going to know them? They have their whole lives. They're just supposed to be our parent. I just called my two.

I have two younger half brothers. Yeah. And their mom was who my dad spent most of his time with. Yeah. Before, you know, those two people passed away. And I'm 43. And I just now for the first time called them and asked them. I just said, what was a night like at the house?

What was it like just being around? Walk me through a regular evening with our father. And what they described is some shit I've never experienced with that man. And that's fucking mind-blowing. And it's not even on some anger shit at him. It's, okay, knowing that, what do I need to teach this boy? Yeah. So he grows up decent.

And what do I need to pass to other people? Because the cool thing about that show and learning your lineage and where you come from, there is something empowering in that. And I feel like everybody on my dad's side of the family deserves to have that same information. Huh.

So I got to get it to him and so that's going to be my journey this year i don't even think i'm going to do a lot of stand-up this year bro because i don't feel inspired to just get on stage and bitch again about what critical race theory that's the new thing so i'll write some bits about critical race theory if you want people to approve it when you're adding shit to the history books you don't call it critical race theory you call it dvd extras everybody loves dvd and it gets a laugh sure and but in my head i'm like what's that got to do with me i don't want to do the level of research required to do the joke at the level that i would want to i would rather be doing something else right now well i mean i think

the personal journey is it's interesting because my old man was leading a double life as well like he had bought the woman a house he had you know he was like he ended up with that woman right and now he's got dementia and we're all just so no matter what my mother's feelings were about that woman or what my feelings were about him now it's just sort of like she just i just hope he can she carries him over the finish line i don't want to do you know bro i mean i found out that my grandmother's father lived two blocks over my grandmother was the um was the byproduct of an affair and she ended up married but you know how did that affect things also learning my dad lost his dad when he was four and there was more of the male head of household in his life and then the leg shit happens and you ain't got no man in the house to give you confidence what did that do what did what happened like yeah what are the psychological repercussions

you know how does this how does this define the guy and i have to go and really dig that's a good but you can't do that while working out 15 minute spots around new york trying to figure out what the next fucking COVID vaccine joke is you're going to do when you get to Toledo. You're right. So you just don't go to Toledo. So what do you get? Well, have you, do you write it?

Are you a guy who writes shit down? Like, I mean, like this experience, your thoughts. I'm starting to. In like a long form way, you know, like journal the shit. Well, the special got done Halloween. Yeah. journal this shit well the special got done halloween yeah and then i started working on network scripts and now i'm just getting to a point where i'm done with all of that tv development shit and now i can just sit and think and you know thankfully i got a podcast so from a

money standpoint it covers stepping away from the road for a bit so i'm still can provide so i don't have the stress of oh shit how do i feed the boy what what's the name of the podcast uh it's roy's job fair and i do the beyond the scenes podcast for daily show but my personal podcast it's just employment and jokes we just talk to people in careers and tell us what you stole tell us how this job is beneficial you know uplifting and demonic at the same time but like i don't know where to start i just write down okay let me i had the conversation with my brothers last night i was on the phone with both of them just last night just last night i had the conversation with both of them it was like an hour each and so now i can take what they told me and lay that up against um lay that up against my upbringing which the

only time we really sat and had dinner was sunday breakfast when we all read the paper and then we'll watch cbs sunday mornings as a family the three of us that's the only time we had what you might consider a regular family dynamic and you by talking to them you realize like they had a fun father kind of father like i can see on their facebook like you know they'll post pictures of this is from 1993 when my daddy took us to the paper. And I can look at the date and tell you whether or not the fucking lights was on at our house. So, you know, like shit like that. But then I'm not mad because then when I also look back at his time with their mother, it's also the one time that I feel like I saw true love.

their mother it's also the one time that i feel like i saw true love like the idea of love and this selflessness for another person and with the other woman correct but i didn't comprehend that until a year ago so so now you got to battle how you were denied but also empathetically it was beautiful happy for him so it was bad for my mom, who's still married to him, but it was beautiful. It was beautiful for him because he loved her and they loved each other. And that's not bad. How are you with your relationship?

It's fine. I think that that's kind of a different thing too because when you look at what love was then, it was you got to make it work and do whatever you can to make it work. Whereas now it's OK, you have your career, you have your thing. And together we're raising the child. And every now and then we check in and be together and then we'll go and work our career. Like it's not as come home Sunday every night.

Yeah, but it's not it's not that cut and dry. No, not in the least but i think that you still got to carry each other when the other one's like broken down yeah that part of it can be hard sometimes yeah you know like there's it's just an interesting thing though when you look at this idea of family and what happiness is because also the thing that really sucks when you're in a relation when you're a child in a relationship with the with the dad is cheating you're forced to kind of choose like i was old enough to have to choose sides like i was like 12 13 you know what i'm saying yeah where all right i'm with my mama right so you come home and meet my mama you

meet my mama so the perception of his woman becomes that of a villain sure because right you're coming between my daddy and my mama so fuck her yeah and then you get old and realize ah he loves her then my folks was just happy yeah they was just happy and it was some difficult hard shit to fucking navigate yeah i feel that with uh with my father too so you know you just have to make sure that and in that i feel like that's probably that my aunt jp and my aunt rick my uncle rick because they almost like fuck all that they were like the couple and my mom's side was always like at family function sneaking off and fucking so i true love from them yeah passion right i think i learned passion

well i think like integrating all these stories and and you know and finding answers for yourself around the psychological uh ramifications of it generationally you know will fill you out you know your heart fill your heart up a little more and you know you can figure out where to come from i mean it's a great story you could do a whole show like that. Yeah, that's what I can. Right. Chris Rock and Neil Brennan. Yeah. Said something similar.

Figuring out some sort of, and Birbiglia too. Yeah. Just some sort of one man show. They're going to get you over there at the Cherry Lane Theater? I don't know. I don't know.

But Chris Rock will say some shit to you and it's just so matter of fact. Why haven't you done that already? Yeah, it makes me nervous. Every time I see him, just when he says, like, how you doing? I'm like, good. Keep moving. No, but he means it.

I know, I know, I know. He's very intense, that guy. I saw him the other night at the comedy store. It's always very difficult for me to know how long to linger and talk with a certain level of person i've never been a hanger i will always nod and speak but i never settle in like even when i've seen guys at the cellar if they're over there at the table if there's somebody above my pay grade i don't sit like like george wallace i consider a legitimate great friend.

And I could call him anytime. He's always been. Yeah. But if he's sitting there with Seinfeld and fucking Larry David, I'm not going to sit down. How is it over there now? I heard it's like a little weird. What, the cellar? Yeah. It's fine to me.

But then I also don't really hang. I have more fun hanging with the young comics. Yeah. They fucking keep you abreast of what the fuck's going on. Yeah. I made that mistake for 10 years in the South, listening to the vets who all invested in shit. That's going to be gone by the time you need to get on letterman young blood.

Yeah. And then I did, but it was too late. And all it did was get me like three extra cities. I didn't get a sitcom from Letterman. I'm not shitting on it. It was just 2006 ain't 1996. No,

I know. I, but I, but you got to do that of course yeah of course and now like what are the younger guys saying you gotta do tiktok you're doing tiktok yeah but in 06 i should have been chasing myspace and youtube and i would have been fucking there you see you fucking you scowl at that shit but imagine being first to youtube myspace it was already too late and youtube i don't know what the hell's going on

you gotta put a whole production staff and dude my prank calls were rampant on youtube in the early aughts and i didn't even put them there right the streets put them there and i should have taken that as a hint that i should have been putting all my shit under one arm what do you do now with youtube not much yeah i'll post the podcast here and there i might put like that's what i will do with stand up this year i'll post like a couple of just one-off clips and short why not three four minute club sets just on your own yeah i'm not in a rush to build another hour and i'm not in a rush to build five minutes for late night that is going to get fucking i can't remember the last time i did five minutes in late night when did i do five 2014 i did seth seth had

me on and he did stand up yeah he's had me on he's had me on for panels since i usually do panel it's fun it's more fun but it'd be kind of interesting just to challenge myself to figure out a five minute but you know what once i got older and i really understood the tv game yeah i didn't take i don't take offense to anything anymore man because i look at a guy like my dog tommy john again yeah oh yeah we did letterman like the first year at the same time or something and then he did it like consistently for like every eight months for like on some like pete holmes conan level freaking like ryan hamilton on leno like just and i look at this material and i go oh that works it's the same reason i never got asked back for chelsea lately where i look back on

it and i go to sit at the table yeah so I did Chelsea I did that like twice and I'm like I can't do this but see I did it this is early before anybody blew up off

Chelsea but it was the it thing to do in LA right and I did it two or three times and the third time

I did it and this goes back to the Mooney angry Stanhope shit yeah my whole shtick at the time was trying to be

gripey grumpy cantankerous and i wasn't pulling it off and i get on the show i don't know it must have been like the third time i did the show and i specifically remember the story was about sylvester stallone getting silicone injections or steroids. And I remember mumbling, who cares? But before I could get to the, I don't know if it was how I said it. Hey, honest guy. Yeah. I don't know, but who cares? And Chelsea Handler turned to me and she said, I'll tell you who cares.

The millions of people who watch this television program every night for fun stories like this and she turned back around and i look at lani love and lani looked at me like oh you fucked up and i was edited out of the episode never asked back and i was like a fucker and then like the next year everybody's on tour making millions from chelsea and i'm like oh god damn it roy you're fucked up but when i look back in hindsight the style of comedy for that show i just pulled the wrong tool out the tool belt if you're a producer you can't again and it's black guy angry face you can't be angry black yeah but also you got pop culture it doesn't but it's more of a lesson about it's not about tools it's a lesson about what you

want to do and what you're good at in the sense that you know when you get those shows you got to sit at home they give you the stories yeah so you got to sit there and go like what what's my angle and yeah but what i'm saying is that i could do that now like i could sit like if i wanted it's like doing daytime television no i know i know you're gonna ask me relationship questions okay and you're gonna ask yeah you're gonna ask me about pets and food and shit you're not gonna ask me about critical race theory when I'm doing Tamron Hall right I know the game now

I didn't know the game I get it but you also know whether you want to play it or not like I turn down more shit than I than anything like I'm just like do I need to do that I don't need to do that because what's it gonna get you now that I'm older and I understand. Yeah.

Because you get mad as a comic when you don't get booked on something and someone else gets it. And I go, no, I know my style and I know what I want to do. It's like a phantom limb. You know, there's still some part of me that's like, fuck that guy. I'm like, what do you mean? You've got everything you want. Yeah. Yeah, but that guy.

Yeah, it's like, no, you have to leave that alone. I know. So, yeah, it's a situation I played wrong. And it's like no you have to leave that alone i know yeah it's a situation i played wrong and it's like okay good story yeah i figured she looked me dead in the eyes bro she was not fucking around she's scary she was not fucking around i've seen her since and it's fine it's like this isn't some beef story but like on that day yeah and early on when she was still just building her brand yeah i'm gonna come on my show and shit on the subjects yeah yeah it was me lani love and juliana rantic

they introduced the panel it's raw and then you don't see me again so they go we'll be right back and they cut to the wide shot and you see me just clapping and i haven't said a fucking thing the whole time that's beautiful that's the best all right buddy man well good man thank you for having me brother it was great talking to you yeah man what's that thing again sure what was that thing i read about like you got to like because i brought up I read about? Like you got to, because I brought up Dick Gregory and you got to meet him, right? Yeah, Selma at the Bridge Crossing, the Bloody Sunday Memorial that they do every year.

Because I interviewed him many years ago on Air America briefly, but I don't know that I had him in a context that would have enabled me to appreciate him at that time. But it sounds like from the little bit I read about your experience with him that you were able to really kind of get some wisdom. Yeah, that, I opened for him, I'm not really open,

I just emceed a luncheon that he was speaking at. Yeah. He's the only comedian that I've seen just rip from a podium as if there's no podium. Like, podium laughs, you can get laughs podium laughs and he's like he's 100 years old right he was yeah he was very frail he was knocking 80 if not there at the time and then he did the this is vintage on you he did the vince vaughn comedy festival this is before it was the nashville yeah whatever the nashville festival is yeah i was originally vince yeah yeah i was there the wild west felt yeah wild west festival yeah um and i opened for him as zanies and just straight

wisdom dog oh yeah just straight wisdom goes on stage with all these tattered notes and shit and shuffles through and like that's kind of it's not even a set list it's just oh yes here's an article yeah let's talk about this yeah wait it's just fucking ipod shuffle of just thoughts and perspectives on things and funny yeah they asked me dick why you always on the road and i told him because the struggle ain't at my house just remember it man well thank you brother good talking to you man Just remember it, man. Well, thank you, brother.

Good talking to you. Yeah, man. There you go. That's the story. Roy Wood Jr., great. Great guy, great comic. The podcast, it's called Roy's Job Fair. He's got a few stand-up specials. Father Figure, No One Loves You,

and his most recent is Imperfect Messenger. If you want to watch any of those specials all three they are on paramount plus catch them on the daily show weeknights at 11 on comedy central one of my sensors went silly the other night and the alarm went off at 4 30 in the morning and i was up i was ready to go heard that alarm pulled out of a dream, realized I was alone, turned to somebody that wasn't there to say, don't worry, I got this. Then I had to say it to myself, ran downstairs, got right into it. What's going on out there?

Nobody out there. It would have been very hard to get into that door. I fixed it. Here's some guitar. guitar solo Thank you. boomer lives monkey and lafonda cat angels everywhere yeah Boomer lives. Monkey and Lafonda. Cat angels everywhere. Yeah, man. Hi, it's Terry O'Reilly, host of Under the Influence.

Recently, we created an episode on cannabis marketing. With cannabis legalization, it's a brand new challenging marketing category. And I want to let you know we've produced a special bonus podcast episode where I talk to an actual cannabis producer. I wanted to know how a producer becomes licensed, how a cannabis company competes with big corporations, how a cannabis company markets its products in such a highly regulated category, and what the term dignified consumption actually means. I think you'll find the answers interesting and surprising. Hear it now on Under the Influence with Terry O'Reilly. This bonus episode is brought to you by the Ontario Cannabis Store and ACAS Creative.

It's a night for the whole family. Be a part of Kids Night when the Toronto Rock take on the Colorado Mammoth at a special 5 p.m. start time on Saturday, March 9th at First Ontario Centre in Hamilton. The first 5,000 fans in attendance will get a Dan Dawson bobblehead courtesy of Backley Construction. Punch your ticket to Kids Night on Saturday, March 9th at 5pm in Rock City at torontorock.com.