Episode 73

Second episode of the new year, Curt talks about Omaha, the new comedy club in Albuquerque, hanging with Ming Chen and working with Chris Kattan!

Episode Transcript

(00:07):
His name is a really funny guyand this is his podcast in the Rise
and Ride letter. Hey everybody,thanks for tuning in. It's in the
right podcast, episode number seventy three, and it is the second one of

(00:28):
the new year, so that'll befun. I haven't recorded one. I
was going to record one when Igot back from Omaha and ended up getting
sick, like right as soon asI got home. I flew home Sunday,
I went to see my nephews,got some pizza, came home,

(00:50):
got sick. I was sick fora little over a week. It seemed
like I had to miss a show. I had to miss one miner Madness
at the launch Pad, which Iwas really bummed about. One Liner Madness
is like a one liner contest.I did it last year also at the
launch Pad, and it was anawesome show. It's sad that I had

(01:12):
to miss it this year this year, but the shows in Omaha were great.
We did uh as me and mybuddy Tim gather. We did three
shows one Friday to Saturday. Theywere pretty packed all three of them,

(01:33):
and the crowds were great. Igotta see my cousin Jeremy, who haven't
seen him damn near thirty years sothat was cool. He looked at Omah
now with his wife and kids.But I hadn't seen him since I forget
what year we figured out it was, but it was Christmas years ago,

(01:56):
you know, iwa yet yea myaunt and uncle's house and but yeah,
I was. I think it wastwenty eight years ago or something like that.
So it was cool to see him. Got to catch up with him
a little bit, meet his wifeand stuff, so that was cool.
I don't really know anyone else knowim, so that was the only person

(02:21):
that I really knew. The openingact was great. Her name was Lauren
Vanna. She was really funny.She wanted contest, so she got a
host. It was her first timehosting. She did a really good job.
She had one fun this one funnyline that just cracked me up every

(02:43):
time. Like she had a lotof funny lines, but one of them
just like totally caught me off.Guarden made me laugh every time. But
yeah, overall, the shows arereally good. Three great shows. The
club was really nice my first timethere, so that was cool. Oh
funny Bone and h that white staffwas great, calling the owner super nice,

(03:09):
so that was cool. That wasjust a good weekend. And then
uh, like I said, Igot sick. And then uh, last
week, I gotta work, dida few different shows. I gotta work
the new Comedy Club. I'll talkabout that in a bit. And then
I worked at dry Heat Comedy Club. Uh so, dry Heat is a

(03:32):
club here in Albuquerque. It's downtown. It's been open for about a year
and a half. So I diddid a show there Thursday nights. My
friend Holly Holly Bird put that together. She was on Thanks Was she the
first episode? I did one ofthe first episodes, only the first episode,
I don't know, go back andlook, I don't remember, but

(03:57):
yeah, she put together a showThursday. And then her ten Drink Minimum
podcast was recording a live podcast afterwards, and they had Ming Chen on there
from Comic Book Men. He's alsoon Dogma Clerk's three, so it was
cool to meet him and hang outwith him and stuff. He had a
lot of cool Kevin Smith's stories anda bunch of comic con stories. He

(04:24):
travels around doing different comic cons prettymuch every week, so he's kind of
he's kind of like a comedian wherehe gets to travel every week and see
different places and stuff like that,so that's pretty cool. But yeah,
he was a super nice dude.I finally got to meet him. Holly
and the other guys from the tenDrink Minimum podcast, Christ and Smiley,

(04:46):
you've known him for a while.Yeah, we haven't seen or heard the
ten Drink Minimum podcast. Go checkthat out. They do live podcast every
Sunday and then they put it outon I think they have a website and
YouTube channel and all that stuff,so I've been on there a couple times,

(05:06):
so it's fun. They were passingout shots of malort at the at
the taping, and I did notpartake in that because I'm not a big
drinker. Number one and number two. I heard it tastes worse than cat
piss, so no, thank you. But yeah, it was a fun
night. We ended up going downto Founders and hanging out. Me and

(05:30):
Holly used to run the open MiCTFounders. It's a little speakeasy underneath this.
It's on the corner of this.Sorry got distracted a little bit.
I thought there was something on mycamera. It's a little the speakeasy.

(05:51):
You need a password to get in, is what I'm trying to say.
It's in the basement of a liquorstore. So that really distracted me.
I thought there was like a weirdhole on my camera. I don't know
why there would be a hole onthe camera anyway. So yeah, we
hung out of Founders and it waspretty cool. It was cool being back

(06:13):
there and been there since we stoppeddoing the open mic, so that was
fun. So on Friday and Saturday, I got to work at the new
comedy club in town. It's justa little outside of town at the Santa
Anna Casino. Stephen Michael Casada,who has been a good buddy of mine
for years, he opened a newclub at the casino. It's called Casada's

(06:35):
Comedy Club in Cantina, and heactually he called me, I think it
was in December, asked me ifI want to feature for Chris Catan.
It's like, hell, yeah,I loved you love Chris Catan. That
was funny because just like two nightsprior to that, I had watched Night

(06:59):
at the Roxbury with my cousin Devinup in Iowa. It's a pretty funny
movie and me, my me andmy sister always quote that and Corky Roumano.
So you I was super pumped towork with him. I was a
little nervous, you know, becauseyou never know, like how those people
are gonna be like famous people thatyou've never met. So a little nervous

(07:23):
going in. But I don't know. Once I got to the club,
that's fine. Uh The opening actwas Chris Otero, who's I hadn't seen
in years. He's a comic fromhere in Albuquerque, and he's awesome.
He's a super nice guy, veryfunny. He's gonna be on the podcast
here pretty soon. Uh so we'lltalk about We'll probably talk about Chris Catana

(07:47):
a bunch on there too. Soanyways, so that's a Friday Saturday.
We sold out two of the fourshows, one of them was really close
to being sold out, and thenFriday late shows about half full, maybe
maybe a third full, but capacityis three hundred, so it's a big

(08:09):
crowd either way. So it's nice. Yeah, the club itself, it's
really really beautiful club. You know, I first got there, they took
me back to the green room area. Chrystal Teroll is already there and you
know, I gotta catch up withhim a little bit. And green room

(08:30):
is really nice. You don't haveto see the audience at all before the
show, which is awesome. Youknow, some clubs don't even have a
green room and stuff, and youknow, they can kind of make it
tough, like if you know,if you're trying to work and then you
see someone you know and you knowthey start talking to you, it's kind
of throws you off of what youwant to do. So it's kind of

(08:54):
nice to have have a spot tojust kind of chill and you know,
have some water or whatever, andto go over your set list and stuff.
So all the shows are amazing.Friday early show was a little stressful.
Take a drink in my beverage realquick. So I knew going in

(09:24):
that I was featuring, and Iwasn't sure how much time I was doing.
So you usually find out when youget to the club, if you've
never worked there, how much timeyou're doing. A lot of clubs at
casinos will do a shorter show thana typical comedy club show. My guess
is because they want to get peopleout gambling and stuff. Could be wrong,

(09:45):
but you know, I've done theLave Factory in Reno in Vegas and
stuff like that, and their showsare typically seventy to seventy five minutes as
opposed to like an hour and ahalf show. So the so the lineup
of that night is going to beChris Ataro doing ten, me doing twenty,
Chris Catan doing forty. And soby the time show starts, Chris

(10:07):
Catan is not there yet. He'sin the building, the hotel is in
the building, so so I figured, all right, he'll be down there
by the time the show starts andeverything. So I just plan on doing
my normal twenty that I was planningon doing, and by the time I
go on stage, he's still notthere. So I'm kind of in the

(10:31):
back of my head, I'm like, I wonder if I'm going to have
to do more time, you know. But I'm doing my set and nobody's
like say anything because I told him, if you need me to stretch at
any time, you know, letme know somehow. And so I've got
about three minutes left in my setand I hear someone calling my name off

(10:54):
to the side of the stage andI look over. It's see Chris Otero
and he starts doing this, whichI think means wrap it up. So
I'm like, Okay, I'm justgonna do my normal time. So I
start, you know, I've gota couple of minutes left, So I
start doing some stuff to start closingit up, and then they in my

(11:20):
head, I'm like, does hemean stretch or wrap it up? So
I wanted to verify with him.I didn't want to get off stage and
you know, I have to comeback out or anything. So I kind
of like messed with the crowd.I was like because I kept looking over
and I was like, sorry,my coach is over here, and I
can't tell if he's telling me topunch or go for it. So I

(11:43):
look over and I'm like, whatare you trying to say? So he's
finally telling me that stretch and Iwas like, oh, okay, So
I tell the crowd. He's like, all right, we're going for it.
And then so I started doing somemore material and at that point I'm
like, well, how much amI gonna have to stretch? You know
what I mean? And it's kindof a like like, if you tell

(12:05):
me ahead of time to do anhour, I can do an hour,
no problem. But but when you'rein the moment, you've already done.
I think you're I've pretty much donemy twenty minutes set almost and so the
way I do my jokes, Ihave them like very set, like in
different chunks, and if I skipa joke, I kind of like just

(12:26):
forget about it, you know whatI mean. So it's really hard to
go back after I've already done thatchunk and kind of be like, well,
which ones did I do out ofthis? And some of them aren't
gonna make sense or they're not gonnahave a good flow to them because of
the way I write the jokes,like they all go together where they have

(12:46):
a nice flow, and if Imissed one or whatever, I don't know.
That's hard to explain. But anyway, so I'm out there, I
do like another ten that's going allright, you know, and then I
start doing a little crowd work andstuff to fill more time. And then
Chris calls out again and I lookover and he flashes that out of me.

(13:09):
He's like, all right, Ido ten more, and I was
like, oh shit, okay,So so at this point, you know,
I kind of I've done thirty andthen I don't know, when you're
on stage, you just sometimes youforget your material, especially like I said,
where I have it chunked together whereyou know, this joke goes with

(13:30):
this joke, this joke goes withthis joke, and I've got a call
back for this, this whatever.So it's hard to piece it all together,
like I don't know, especially whenyou're going in the mindset of only
doing twenty. It's twenty. Itis easy. They could do twenty,
no problem. So I was like, I know, there are a couple

(13:52):
of times where I got, Ijust got. I was like, man,
I can't think of any of myjokes right now, and I've got
tons, but I stuck. SoI do a little crowd work, which
was okay, but I don't know, forced crowd work is never never fun
or usually not funny. I endedup getting some funny lines out of it

(14:13):
and stuff like that, but youknow, I think some people in the
crowd knew. I was just kindof stolen and trying to remember some of
my my jokes. So anyways,I get to like the forty minute mark
finally, and I finally I remembersome of my more solid jokes that I
hadn't done. I started getting ina nice, pretty nice flow, you

(14:35):
know, and and then I hearChris and he's like telling me to wrap
it up. So I'm like,all right, sweet. So I closed
really strong, but there was like, you know, there's a part of
the show that didn't go very well, not to me anyway, like momentum
wise, you know, I meancomedians when i'malking about when you've got like

(15:01):
a good momentum going and then justkind of dies down. You got to
pick him back up. And sothe momentum wasn't there the entire time.
But like, had I been ableto plan for doing forty minutes, would
have been way different. But Ishould have been prepared anyway. Anyway,
So I do the forty I getoff stage and Chris Catan standing right there

(15:24):
and he's like, hey man,very funny, and he shook my hand
and stuff and it seemed like asuper nice guy. And he goes on
stage, and so we get towatch him from the green room. There's
a TV in there. You couldwatch the show from there, which is
nice. You can't really tell ifhe's doing well or not because you can't
really hear the audience, but youknow, he just kind of sit back

(15:46):
there and get a watch and justchill, kind of go over your stuff
in your head. So it's cool. And you know, the people at
the casino are like souper, aresuper nice. Like the whole staff there,
the manager, the director of marketingwas there. He was he was
great. Security guards were all supercool. But be after that show,

(16:15):
you know, Chris, Chris justgoes back and sits in the green room.
I don't think he really interacts muchwith the crowd afterwards. But after
that show, I sold. Isold the most shirts I've ever sold at
one show. I don't know,I don't remember how many I sold,
But it was cool. It wasa good feeling. It was cool to

(16:38):
have that many people at a showin Albuquerq, Like it felt like I
felt like the old days performing atLaughs, which was cool, you know,
like you know, I was justan MC back then, but it
was cool to you know, standout there in the lobby after the show
and shake people's hands and you know, just a couple hundred people like just

(16:59):
you know, giving you props andshit like that and stuff. You know,
I gave away a lot of stickersand things like that and a lot
of I met a lot of coolpeople over the four shows, and his
most most merchandise have sold that duringthe weekend ever, so that was really
cool. So all the other showswent great. I just you know,

(17:19):
had to do twenty every time andfelt bad for Chris because he had a
h he had a bad travel day. He was he got delayed, got
stuck at the Denver A report fora while, and didn't get to eat
for most of the day, sohe had to eat before he came on
stage, so he ate a littlebit of a burger before he came out.

(17:42):
And Yeah, overall a super niceguy. I gotta hang out with
him in the green room for alittle bit. You know, there's one
point where it's just me and him, and I got to chat with him
for I don't know, probably aboutten minutes or so, and I told
him that me and my sister alwaysquote Corky Romano the cocaine scene where he

(18:07):
has to go. It's like alittle press conference for second graders or something,
and he's all coked up because hegot in a he got a weird
little argument with the dog. Youknow, they're fighting over the cocaine and
spills everywhere. So he's all cokedup. And so he was telling me
that a lot of people when hewrote that into the movie. A lot

(18:29):
of people told him to cut cutthat scene from the movie, and I'm
so glad. I thought it wasfunny. Question you do you know I
should buy a boat? So anyway, yeah, super nice guy. My
parents came to the show's Saturday earlyshow, which was fun. It's probably

(18:53):
my least favorite show of the week, even though it was really good.
It was it was like an oldercrowd, so you know, some of
the jokes didn't hit as well.The late show Saturday was awesome. That
was probably my favorite show of theweek. I used to close out on
uh. I always love closing outon a Saturday late show. It's really
good, you know. I alwayslike to. I do some of my

(19:15):
dirtier stuff late show Saturday, anda lot of my friends came out to
the shows and stuff like that.I gotta hang out and Betty of mine
is actually a bartender at the Loungeat the Casino, so I gotta go
hang out with him. I havea drink and stuff. Yeah. Overall,

(19:36):
great, great weekend of shows,really cool club. If you get
a chance to check it out,go check it out. They've got awesome
comics coming. I'm not sure whenI'll be back there, but yeah,
there's all itchy anyways. Yeah,so that was fun working with Chris Cantan.

(20:00):
I haven't done a show since then, so don't really have anything else
to update. I did just booka hometown gig. I'll read off my
tour dates here though real quick.You can check out Funny Fletcher dot com.
Click on schedule and you'll see allthe tour dates on there, and

(20:21):
all the links to the tickets areon there as well. So here we
go. February third, Albuquerque UnhingedBrewery. That is this Saturday. I
think it's a free show, sodo any tickets for that. February ninth
and tenth, they'll be in ColoradoSprings at Looney's Looney's Comedy Corner. The

(20:42):
ninth I'll be featuring for Tim Gaither, and then the tenth we are filming
for Open Bar Comedy. We're doingopen Bar Comedy specials. It's me,
Tim Gaither, Gretchen Hess. We'reall doing thirty minute sets, two shows
that night. That's for Open BarComedy. Check that out on YouTube.

(21:06):
February fourteenth and fifteenth, they'll bein the Boulder, Colorado at License Number
one. Those are Valentine's shows,so I'll probably do all my relationship material
and stuff like that. February sixteenth, seventeenth, doing five shows at the
Denver Comedy Lounge, doing two onFriday, three on Saturday, March first,

(21:30):
I'll be in Santa Fe. Idon't really have a lot of details
on that one yet, but that'llbe on the website when I do March
thirteenth, Akama, New Mexico headliningthe sky City Casino March fourteenth, and
Mescalero, New Mexico headlining the Endof the Mountain Gods March sixteenth, Rio

(21:53):
Rancho Turtle Mountain. Yeah, andI'd be actually hosting that show, so
Eddie Stevens can headline. He runsthat show and he hosts every time,
so I told him if he everwants to headline his own show to let
me know and I'll host it.So we're doing that in March March sixteenth,
and then from my IOWA friends andfamily April twenty sixth, twenty seventh,

(22:15):
be at the Des Moines Funny Bonewith my buddy Tim Gather. Tickets
around sale for that. Right now, I'm trying to line up another summer
tour in Iowa. Right now,I've got July twenty seventh, that's in
my hometown, claring in Iowa,and that's going to be at Chappie's on
Maine. That's July twenty seventh.That's gonna be a free show, so

(22:37):
get there. I don't know whatthe capacity is on that bad boy,
so hopefully we can pack that shitout. Should be able to. And
then of course October twenty first throughtwenty sixth, I will be in Calgary
at the Comedy Cave headline And that'sanother cool thing about that Clarion gig,
I just my buddy's bowling for youknow, Jared does the intro music for

(23:02):
me. They just released their tourdates for the summer, a couple of
weeks of tour dates, and they'regonna be in Des Moines July twenty third,
so I gotta go see them inDes Moines when I'm up there.
So pretty stoked for that. I'malso going to their thirty year anniversary show

(23:22):
in Dallas. It's not technically Dallastsand Lava Cantina in the Colony is what
the city's called, which is asuper super cool venue. I went to
their anniversary show there a few yearsago. You could see the poster back
there. See that poster back there, it's an autographed one. Pretty cool.

(23:44):
That was a cool show. Anyway, I'm sick of talking. Come
see a show. Thanks for listeningand stuff like that, like my YouTube
channel, follow me on social mediasand things. Yeah. Yeah, thanks

(24:06):
to Jared Reddick for the intro musicand uh John Singleton from Anesthesia for the
outro music. And we will seeyou next week when I have I will
actually have a guest on here,Jose Miestes. So next week Jose Miestis
will be on, So check thatout. Talk to you later, everybody. Bye,