Ep. 2 – How Stand Ups Are Made - The Funny Life Podcast with William Lee Martin - The Funny Life with William Lee Martin

Episode Transcript
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(00:01):
This week, why would anyone trystand up? One thing? Does every
person need to become a comedian?And what is the first time over mic
really like? On this week's episodeof How to kind Of Succeed in Comedy
and Life. Well, welcome in, everybody. I am the host of

(00:24):
this fine podcast for broadcast. I'mweem Lee Martin, and welcome into the
Cowtown Drive in studios. And youknow, we had a heck of a
good time this last week. Ifyou've been following me on social media,
you know that it's been an eventfullast couple of days anyway, because I
had a Kolonosko fee everybody. That'sright. I got cleaned out and we'll

(00:47):
talk about that a little bit.Uh. I was also on tour in
Great No Graham, Berry and Georgetownsold out shows. Thank you to everybody.
We'll get into that. I gottour dates coming up though, if
you're looking to get some tickets,We've got tour dates coming up in Lowell,
Arkansas on March to twenty first throughthe twenty third, Tifton, Georgia

(01:10):
on the twenty ninth. My mother'sbirthday is the thirtieth on March, and
I'll be in Dothan, Alabama.We'll be in Baton Rouge, Louisi,
Louisiana on April the twelfth and thethirteenth the following day in Ocean Springs,
Mississippi. You can get all thosetickets at William leemartin dot com. That's
right, William leemartin dot com.And but welcome into how to kind of

(01:33):
Succeed in Comedy and Life. Andyou know we we were off to a
great start last week, and soeverybody kept their jobs. So with me
this week as always as my cohost and my tour manager. There she
is Hi Lesa Bruce and behind thecontrols is he's back. Ron Phillips.
Everybody, everybody's it, glutton forParmisrose. You guys look good now.

(01:59):
You know I feel pret good becauseI had the kolonoscopy yesterday. Clean down.
Now, have you uh partake inthe colonoscopy? No? I did?
The other option? Is there anotheroption? Is there another guard?
Oh? Okay, oh, butyou gotta Is that why you got to

(02:20):
reach down and you got to getsomething out of the ball? You don't
know, you don't have to reachdown and get anything. But there's no
scooping or nothing or no kind Yeah, I'm not even following. Okay,
I have no idea what so colarguard? Is that what it's called?
Yeah? Yeah, something like thatis my understanding that you gotta to phoo

(02:40):
and then you scoop a little bitin there and you send it off?
Is that? Yeah? Maybe?Kind Yeah, I would rather go with
my thing. I'm not. It'sso funny because you know, I have
five kids, but three of themare mine. But uh now I have
four grandsons and a granddaughter on theway, and I cannot stay and the

(03:00):
sight of poop at all. I'vechanged plenty of dippers in my lifetime,
but I am not changing uh diapersanymore. Any poopy diaper. I lose
it. I literally I couldnot seeme reaching that. No, so you
did that? Yes kind of?You are not you're not describing it right,

(03:21):
well, describing for us, becausethat's what I thought away. I
can't talk about it's weird. No, I don't know. You know how
a podcast works, but people geta welcome into Read our Mind podcast.
Well we just sit and stare atyou know, nobody said anything it's weird.
Okay, See how boring that was? Right? Right? No,

(03:42):
it's got a little basket you putover the seat and then you and then
you just scrape and put it inthis thing. You don't you're not cutting
up anything. You don't have totouch anything. You scrape it and put
the whole scraper down in this direThere's no way I could do that.
Well, I'm not. I'm notdoing a kolonosoe prep and I don't really

(04:02):
the prep. The prep is whatgets you. Of course Bill knows this.
I know it. The prep iswhat gets you because things will fly
out your backside that you don't evenknow we're in there. Yeah, I'm
not about all that. We'll seewhat with my prep. The first time
that I did this is my secondone, and they found the first time
they found it like a large potfull disclosure. So they had me come
back in a year. And thenmy guy that did it he retired,

(04:27):
so of course I waited five yearsto go back, and so I had
years was was I here? Wereyou here with me? So it's probably
just a year and a no,No, it's it's it's it's been a
little longer than that. Okay.But the first time I did it,
I drink all the solution thing,and everybody said, well, now they
got pills. And I did thepills and it made me more nauseous than

(04:49):
anything, and I will never dothose pills again. So for you some
people, they they said it doesn'taffect, but for me, it affected
me a lot. You take allthese horse peels about that big we get
right angle on there there they are, but you but you have to take
them pretty quick. Yeah, soyou have to do it within a thirty

(05:11):
minute period with sixteen ounce of water. So you drink it, drink and
drinking and then uh and and youknow the first time I did the solution,
I expected like as soon as Idrank it that I said near the
toil. I thought it was supposedto know. It was like twenty five
minutes later for me, and theneverything started, oh, twenty five minutes
as normal. I thought you weregoing to say hours, no, no,

(05:32):
But I expected it to be animmediate result. I literally I was
going to drink it and then whichyou know, like I was flushing,
like I was doing a drain,no thing. But eventually it doesn't.
But with that stuff with the pills, I didn't do great with the pills.
But then you got to get uplike eight hours before your your procedure,

(05:55):
and you got to do a secondround of twelve. And so you
do them all within thirty minutes,and then you wait an hour, and
then you got to drink another sixteenounce water, and then you gotta wait
thirty minutes, and you got todrink another sixteen ounce of water, and
then you poop water. You exactlywhat you do. So you would rather
do all of that than to bringa basket, scrape it, stick it

(06:17):
in a thing, and mil itall. I was done. I was
done in five minutes. You werea whole day thing. See. I've
always bragged that I had the gradesto be a doctor, and my best
friend's a doctor. I had thegrades to be a doctor, but I
don't have the stomach to be adoctor. I do not. I don't

(06:39):
like needles. It's so funny.You know, It's always bad when I
go even try to get blood workor something, because you know, I'm
a big dude. I'm two hundredand forty eight pounds and I six foot
two, and as soon as theypop out that needle, I'm I get
all flushed and I can't breathe.Yeah, So the guy was going to

(07:02):
go do my arm yesterday, andI'm like, just no, at least
I'm not sure. Sissy is theword I would use. No. Yeah,
for the podcast, she's being nicenow, Okay, hang on,
we'll just read her mind. Yeah. Yeah, see, I mean exactly
it worked for me. I cannever do that. I don't know.
So it's always been something. Sofor me. I've had two different things.

(07:27):
You know. I had the littlecancer spot removed off my left arm,
and that was just cutting into meand everything else. And they had
five needles to dead knit around thething. And then I had to cold
and oscary where I had to havethe IV. And then tomorrow I'm having
one other spot removed off my Uhwell, I no, it's my left
arm. Annou it's my right arm. And and so I'm going to get

(07:48):
used to these needles. I guessI have to. You know, I'm
fifty eight, and they say that, you know, you have to start
seeing these doctors and stuff. Butevery time I go to a doctor,
it seems like I'm sicker. Iknow, I walk in, Yeah,
you're not sick. Yeah. Soso I do bring this up because I
do want to tell you out there. Don't be afraid to get that colonospy.

(08:09):
It can literally save your life,whether or not you reach into a
bucket and get your own poop likegross hit there, still disgusting, or
if you do it the regular humanway on going and having somebody else look
up there, which makes more senseto me. I mean, yours was
a twenty four hour process, nowI'm out. Well, not only a
twenty four hour process, but healso used an eight millimeter camera to stick

(08:33):
up there, so and when Ilooked at him all I kept looking at
him to see the size of hishands. That's is it not the best
twenty minutes of sleep of your Yeah? You know what's great about that?
Profobol? You know whatever? Killthe fall? Is that what it is?
What's it called? I say,profofile? Yeah, that's what it
sounds like. So they literally go, you're, you know, gonna doze

(08:56):
off here in a second. I'mlike, I don't feel I literally go,
I don't fill up. And thenthe next thing I know, I
wake up and I'm actually in theroom that I started out in before they
wheeled me in there, and Ilooked around and go, are you all
going to take me? Back andshe's like, dude, you're already back,

(09:16):
And they said. The second wordsout of my mouth was have you
listened to my music? I'm alwayspromoting. I'm always promoted. There's nothing
wrong with the promotion. That isso funny. But we had a good
time on tour this last weekend too, And thank you to everybody that came
out and bought all those tickets.We sold out both the rooms in Granberry

(09:37):
and Georgetown. And the lady thatgeneral manager and part owner Keishla there in
Granberry sent me on this nice messagethat said, and I played there several
times. She says, I don'tknow what it is, but you just
seemed to get better and better withyour show, like you really enjoy it.
And it's funny after twenty seven yearsof standouts, excellent. Yeah,

(09:58):
I really genuinely still love the entireprocess. I love the writing process.
I love going up on stage sometimeswithout the idea of exactly where the bit's
gonna go. And that's how Iwrite these days. And I just played
there in September, and what wasfunny? You know, I do a
set list. Here's a little fulldisclosure for all of you. I do

(10:20):
set list on my two monitor speakersthat are in front of me on stages
in these theaters, because I'm doingan hour and a half and so I
need to keep up with all thematerial, and so I pull out all
these stacks of them. I keepall of them, and I pull up
one that says Cranberry, and Iwas like, holy hell, I was

(10:41):
just here six months ago. There'snothing different in the set list, and
these people are gonna see me again, and I've got to bring them something.
So I rewrote the set list andstarted just jotting down stuff about you
know, me and Michelle that Ithought I could go with and getting older
and all these things that I've beentaught talking about but not trying on stage.

(11:01):
And I ended up doing like anhour and I don't know, forty
minutes or so. But because Ireally kind of wrote on stage these great
bits, you know, because oneof the bits about Michelle is that she
is ultimately too competitive to be agrandmother because if she plays like a game,

(11:22):
a board game with the grandsons,she's brutal. And everybody thinks she's
the sweetest, like and she is. She's one of the sweetest persons that
you'll ever be around and there's diceinvolved and then suddenly she comes staggerly with
a knife at you. You andso we talked about that kind of stuff.
But that's what I love about thisbusiness is that it is a writing

(11:46):
process and that's where it all starts. You know. So in this podcast,
you know, obviously we talked abouthow to kind of succeed and stand
up in life. And I thinkthe first thing, what was the first
thing in the first one, Well, I mean that's a question that I've
always had is why would anybody trystand up? What is do they have
to have a certain type of personalityto do that? Well, you know,

(12:09):
I think for the most people,they don't realize that. Most class
clowns in high school never become standup comedian, right, never become they
become the funniest person at the office. Sometimes they they that manifested itself in
other forms, but usually not standup. Stand up is different. Stand

(12:30):
up is the art of making peoplelaugh. Jerry Seinfeld had a great quote
about it. He said, towrite a bit, everybody's been funny at
a party, everybody's been funny aroundfriends. But to write a thing of
material and try it out on peoplethat have never seen you, have never
known you, and at work incity and city and city. That's like
going from earth to heaven, youknow, and it really is. And

(12:54):
I think the most amazing quote thatI ever heard about stand up is that
it was from Phillis Diller. NowI know Phillis Dillawer, and you know,
some of the people may be listeningmay not know Phillis Diller's work,
but you should google Phillis Diller.She was in a pioneer in all of
standing, and in the sixties andseventies when no female was really funny,

(13:18):
she was the funny. But shesaid that all comedians are made just like
the perfect pearls made. It requiresa little bit of irritation at precisely the
right moment. And that's exactly howstand up comics are made. Now for
me, for me, it wasgoing through really just a myriad of bad

(13:39):
choices on my part and a lotof bad luck with life and love and
the bars and everything else. Andat one point I ended up writing a
book called Life Eon Moon Now thatShe's gone and took the dog with her.
I wrote it while I was stillwriting advertising, and suddenly I had

(14:00):
what everybody said, red light standup. But you know what I don't
talk about. And I talk aboutsome of that on stage, but what
I don't talk about. I wouldn'thave become a comedian if there wasn't a
book out there by Less Brown calledLive Your Dreams. And if you ever
get a chance, pick up thisbook. It literally changed a poor kid's
life, and it really did forme. You know, when nobody would

(14:26):
really believe in anything I could do, even myself. You know, when
I was working at jobs that Iliterally hated every day. I mean I
got written up in advertising for beinglate like one hundred and nine times.
But the reason why I was lateone hundred and nine times is that I

(14:46):
had to drop off my kid atschool and the office started at eight thirty.
Now, the lady that wrote meup, she got in the office
every day at nine point fifteen becauseshe didn't drive. Her name was Charlott
Hines, right, And I waswriting advertising and she was the senior writer
in this advertising thing, and soshe would drop off her kid at school

(15:11):
and then she would take the bus. And the only reason why she knew
that I was eight or nine minuteslater. Two minutes later or minute late.
Is that she went through my timecard and she, when they did
my evaluation, wrote down the numberof times that I was late. And
because of that, I went froma six percent raise to a three percent
raise. And I hated every minuteof corporate life because of shit like that.

(15:35):
Right, yeah, the world anda lot of people would deal with
that every day. That that Ididn't do well with. You know,
first of all, I like beingthe boss, but you got to earn
your way to the boss, rightAnd uh so many kids now when they
graduate, they expect to be tosee and yeah right away, and you

(15:56):
got to pay your dues. ButI was absolute miserable with all the corporate
world. I was also lost withanything that made sense in my life.
I knew that, uh, Ilove stand up. I was watching a
ton of stand up, and backthen they they also had a lot of
great shows about how to become astand up, how to do stand up,

(16:18):
And then there were shows like eveningat the Improv and all these things
where you saw everybody from you know, Ron White to all these guys are
now you know, household names,and some of them never went anywhere at
all. But I was watching allthat stand up and uh, the one
that really pushed it over the edgefor me, y'all was uh and and
it just breaks my heart because everybodyknows him the way that they know him

(16:41):
now. But if it wasn't forBill Cosby, I would not be in
stand up. Oh man. Ilove Bill Cosby back in the day.
So yeah, it does me too, you know. It's uh, people
won't ever realize what kind of standup albums that he did. That his
special in nineteen eighty five or so, Bill Cosby himself, He's got on

(17:04):
the brown suit and the ties kickedover to the side, and that is
pounds per pound, the best hourand a half of stand up. I
probably watched that forty times in mylife. Yeah. Well, you know
my dad, who laughed at nothingright ever in life. He rented Bill

(17:27):
Cosby himself from Blockbuster on VHS andhe paid late fees on it every time,
and he would rent it about everycouple of months and just set and
laugh at the same routine. AndI was like, you know, if
that could make him laugh, itkind of set that thing, you know.
And I didn't talk in public either, So because of these early life

(17:51):
truck there, and those are myreal teeth. Violate people. I get
people still to this day put uglystuff on YouTube like, oh look at
one guy wrote the other day thatI had teeth like the Dog and Family
guy. Yeah, it's pretty youknow, it's it's pretty brutal, kind
of mean stuff to it, becausethat that goes right to your core as

(18:14):
a kid, you know. Sothose, yeah, those are those insecurities
that I don't think you ever getpast when you're But I used to talk.
I used to talk with my handover my mouth. It was like
this all the time. I inspeech class in college, I threw up
and even think I was going tobe a stand up comedian was out of
the realm of it. So Ithink, uh, I think tragedy.

(18:36):
You know, comedy is they saytragedy times time or plus time, timetime
or plus time, but either wayit means that you can take something tragic
and eventually if you make fun ofit, then that's usually where most comedy
comedy comes from. Now, mycomedy later on life has come from points
of love that I can understand people. But in the beginning, you know,

(19:00):
at the beginning of my act wasall about divorce, and breakup and
going to try to find love ina supermarket? What you were going through?
Yeah, my mother, you knowI was single after I got divorced
and stuff. My mother, youknow, she can give me advice.
Like what you do is you Shehad a heavy Southern accent, Texas accent,

(19:22):
and she go, what you dois you go down to the supermarket
and what you say is you justwalk up to somebody why some pretty girls
putting something in their thing, andsay, you know, I use that
product too, and that starts upthe conversation. So out of that bit,
I worked out this whole thing aboutuh, because I went to the
grocery store and it took I can'tremember the entire bit, but I'm a

(19:45):
butcher, but it's my own bitanyway, But I talked about that.
I go to the grocery store anduh, I'm walking around and I said,
pro tip, make sure you don'tput ice cream in your cart if
you're going to stay there for awhile, because you'll have a trail going
down every one of the aisles.But I finally walked up to this pretty
girl after I've been there for fouror five hours, and she's putting something

(20:07):
in her thing, and I go, you know, I use that product
all the time, and unfortunately wewere in the female hygiene product Aisle.
I just put that box of stuffin my basket and got the hell out
of there. I still remember thispart of it. But the ones I
bought had wings, yeah, andthey're great for if you use them in

(20:27):
the shop because they soaked up everything. So that was that was my first
kind of act stuff. But uh, you know you go from that to
uh literally writing and rewriting, andthat's what That's what all writing is is
rewriting, really, whether it bea novel or screenwriting or or even now,

(20:48):
uh you know, work writing isrewriting. So many people will send
an email without ever reading it backto them. So yeah, and how
many out of our little panel here, how many of us have sent an
email that you regretted pretty quickly?I probably have. I have a rule

(21:12):
that if I'm the less fingers thatI'm using to type, the less likely
I need to be sending this yeah, because if I'm down to these yeah
yeah, I need to press ah, trap don't yeah, don't put who

(21:33):
is going to yet? Always fillout your the body first, because then
if something happens and you accidentally sendit and you're going to regret it.
There's nobody to send it to,so I don't have that ability. Though
most of the time I just sendit straight away. I get to do
She's been part of some of thosewrong No, I mean I've done it

(21:55):
too. People talk about, youknow, you should write the email and
then put it in the draft folderand wait a little while, and then
I'm like, nope, I gotto get this point across rights. Yeah.
So uh, for for me,uh, stand up really started with
that process of going through all thisloss of uh losing really my entire life.

(22:17):
And I only got into stand upbecause uh, after I started going
through the divorce, I started writingabout all of it. But I had
three friends of mine that all killedthemselves. What yeah, yeah, one
guy, uh, just right afterwe graduated. He was uh freshman year
in college, and I don't knowwhat happened, but he was a very

(22:40):
popular guy. And then uh andthen a guy that I tried to help
get his life back squared again.Uh. I got him a job at
this call center for ups, andbut he was dating a cop and and
then uh uh they were breaking upand like dumb guys, do you know,
uh did something to himself. Andthen and then my my cousin,

(23:03):
Michael dal was the other guy.He had gone through a really uh second
bad breakup and it was over akid, you know, with his kid
was going to be moved away fora second time, like his first kid
was moved a second kid. Andand then when I went to a divorce,
it just kind of poured out ofme all these funny and again tragedy

(23:26):
plus life and time. Uh itcomes to a comedy and and that's where
the funny he really came from.And it and and it's and it's also
hard, you know. There therewere times like my first album it's called
How's your Mama? And that wasgonna be my catchphrase, how's your Mama?
Because because that is a that isa greeting in Texas for sure,

(23:48):
deeper south you go, the moreyou add words to it, how's your
mama and them and that kind ofstuff, But in Texas it's how's your
mama? Right, So I hadthis whole thing and it really kind of
exploded my career. You know.I had a T shirt that went and
the catchphrase, and that's back whencatchphrases were big and everything was going.
And then my mother passed away,and for the next two or three years,

(24:10):
I still had to do House yourMama, And every time I said
it on stage, it was likea knife went straight through my heart,
you know, like I had torelive this process every night. And then
you end up, you know,drinking too much because well it's ass whole
party, let's not let's not makeit all sound sad, but you know

(24:30):
you're already drinking, you're in abar, and then these these horrible things
and insecurities and all these things.So you got to be careful and stand
up too, because the always I'malways amazed when people will see famous people
and they're like, why did theydo drugs? If they had all the
money in the world, all thething in front of them, and then

(24:52):
they threw it all the way fromthe thing there's you know, just because
people know you doesn't help your insecurities. If anything, they amplified. Right,
Yeah, I can see that forsure. What was the next thing
that we had on I know,a list. I had a couple of
questions, Oh yeah, yeah,we got about five or so minutes.
Oh gosh, this was from themailbag. It said, somebody asked,

(25:15):
how long does it take you tolock in on a bit and perfect it
on stage? It just that's agreat question. It just depends on the
bit. Like everybody knows the Pushybit right right, And I had Pushy
the eighty percent of the bit writtenjust in my head. Suddenly every line
was in there. It was perfectand how it all flowed together in the

(25:38):
entire pun of the bit. Butthe Grandpa part is the only part of
that story that's made up on theWalking Stick, because the truth of it
is my grandfather was he was moredirtier than what the bit was. And
the advice that the old man gaveme was I tried to do it on

(26:00):
stage, but it was a lotthe real life part of the story was
a lot dirtier in real life,and he died when I was six.
But I'll just tell you since it'sthe podcast. So my grandfather used to
take me to a beer Warning usedtake me to a beer joint in for
Worth. He would tell my momthat he was taking me to the park,

(26:22):
and instead he would take me tothis beer joint over on twenty eighth
Street and it would be totally dark. I don't know if you remember the
bars of the seventies, but therewere no lights in a bar, no
windows, no light coming into thebar. And this would be like two
thirty in the afternoon and I'm inthere. I'm making a nickel every time
I'm light and somebody cigar cigarette rightrun around. And we used to run

(26:45):
in there, and he'd walk inand hit both the barstools and go,
let me have two beers and makemine the root beer this time. And
I thought it was the funniest littlejoke. But he was dying of cancer
and kept even telling this story.He's dying of cancer, and he tells
my mother. He's like, hey, uh, I'm taking him to the

(27:06):
thing and uh. So we getover to the bar that's supposed to be
going to the bar, and thenwe're there and he's like, hey boy,
and he talk to you, anduh, I don't remember the story.
My parents used to tell this storybetter than I do. But he
says, I'm not gonna be withyou the whole time. He says,
don't ever lie to the woman thatyou love. Don't every boy, don't
lie to the woman that you love. I've never lied to your grandma.

(27:30):
But when I did, he said, I went home when I don't look
at me. I went home andI ate that thing like I owed it
money. That's what I got.That's what he said. Wow, the
word about a cat? Right?So I get home. I get home

(27:56):
right and and uh, it's mymom goest just to make sure. Craka,
my mom. I'm six years old. And I get home. You
know, I don't I don't knowwhat it means because it gets weird.
This word gets weird. I gethome, I get home, and uh,

(28:17):
my mom goes, how was thepark? And I started to cry.
I started to crying. She goes, so what's wrong? And I
said, oh no, Bill said, I gotta eat you like, oh
you money, and I gotta dosomething weird with the cat. That's so.

(28:41):
Yeah. So when I wrote thebit, you know, obviously I
tried it like that. I triedto tell the truth on the whole one
hundred percent of the bit. Andit was just too it was it was
too much. It was just toomuch, especially since I had gone clean
with the stuff and this was notan inn window, this was in your
face. Oh you waited till youwent clean before you decided to do this

(29:02):
exactly what so, so, I, uh, yeah, that's that's so.
It took a long time for thatbit to evolve, but now it's
this pretty little bit and it's mydad Granddad's walking stick, which is still
an innu window but it to findthat note probably took me nine months to
find that note on the end ofit. And now the bid has twenty

(29:25):
million views. Yeah, wow,cool, you got another question? Yeah,
well, I got a few,but we're running out of time.
Let's see. Do you think it'strue that comedians off stage are generally loaners
and quiet for the most part.I don't think the loaner is the right
word. I think quiet. Anyany business that you're in, it's a
business, and at some point itis a business, and comedy is a

(29:48):
serious business too. A lot ofpeople don't realize that. Yeah, that's
why when I'm off stage, somany people are like, oh, he
didn't see it's so funny off stage. It's because it's hard to come up
with lines at work every time,and those class clowns are who you're thinking
of when you think of comedians.And yeah, good questions, but yeah,

(30:11):
I wanted to read I wanted toread this little thing. It was
really sweet that somebody sent into us. Teresa. She said, I had
a blast at your Georgetown show lastnight. My eighty one year old mom,
myself, and my twenty one yearold daughter last so much. My
face and stomach are sore this morning. So happy you added a stop near
Austin and all new material. Keepup the good work. I thought that

(30:32):
was so sweet. Wow, thatis sweet. You know that's that's that
is cool when an eighty one andtwenty one year older right, forty something,
elah, three generations, generations cometo it. I thought that was
really nice. And that's that's thebeauty of working the show like I work
at now. Yeah, so Ican do any window. We don't have
to talk about cats stuff like that. I didn't talk about it as my

(30:55):
granddaddy. You talked me that.So, Rondie, you got a question
for me thing? Or is that? Well? Yeah, I was gonna
ask about open mics, just becauseyou know, I've been to comedy clubs
where it's an open mic night.You get some people up there who should
not be behind the microphone. ButI mean, what does it take?
What does it feel like when youdo your first open mic. Well,
I want to do a whole episodemaybe in a few episodes on on open

(31:19):
Mic, But I will say youthe first time I ever did the open
mic, it's it's it's a nerveracking thing that people just don't imagine.
Now, Ron, have you evertried to stand up at all? And
Lisa, we know you. Peoplewill be looking at me that No,
it's Uh. What it takes isone, you got to have confidence,

(31:44):
okay, just to get up infront of people with the lights on.
Uh. Two, a little tequiladoesn't hurt, you know, for that
first time to do that for sure. Yeah. And then three is that
it can be an amazing experience forthe first time or it can be a
bomb. But it doesn't matter ifif you bomb the first time or if

(32:05):
you bomb later, You're going tobomb. That's the beauty of this business
is that it is like any otherbusiness, it's a series of failures until
you finally find your voice on stage. The one thing that I didn't expect
at all was that it took metwenty five years to find exactly who I
was on stage. And I've beenheadlining since year two of stand up Comedy

(32:31):
because I went in as a businessSo I went from open mic to opener
to feature act a headliner within atwo year period, which is instead of
the thirteen year you were told told. I'd been told that it was going
to take thirteen years, and Iwent two years into it, But it
took me twenty five years to findmy actual voice on stage. So my

(32:52):
biggest advice, and we're going totalk a lot about open MIC's and other
ones, like I said, butmy biggest advice if you're going to try
stand up, if you always wantedto try stand up, try it.
There's open mics everywhere. What thehell does it hurt you? Right?
You try to write you three goodminutes. Try to work clean, you
know, especially in the beginning,you can work dirty, or it's easier

(33:14):
to dirty up a bit. Butdon't die with regrets of I always I
I have people tell me all thetime, I I've always wanted to try
stand up. I'm like, whydon't you try? Well, it's not
like it's not like they're going toget pitchforks in in in uh in torches
and run you out of town.But they might, and then you'll be

(33:36):
left at and then your feelings willbe hurt and maybe so left at not
in a good way, not ina good way, not like that,
but that or boot boot off stage, that's what I'm thinking. But but
uh, it will get into boom. People have boomed you off stage because
it's happened to everybody. So uh, I haven't been booed off stage,

(33:59):
but I've been booed why I'm onstage. I just refuse to leave the
security. Then the restraining order comes. But this this is a part of
a kind of succeed in life partthough. You know, there's too many
things that we say we want todo and then never do. You know,
one of the things that I alwaysfind is that when I drive down

(34:19):
the highway and I see an oldcar setting out in the field at a
farm or out in the driveway forsomebody, and all that does is remind
me of a failure that somebody,somebody had a plan that they were going
to drag that car to the houseand they were going to redo the damn
thing. And then you spend yourwhole life every time, at some point
it goes from being the project toa reminder of your failures. And because

(34:44):
every day you pull up me likeI should have worked on that. I
should have worked on that. Atsome point, you need to get rid
of that thing. So they needto get up and go do some stand
up or whatever it is that youkeep saying you're going to do in life,
because we're not guaranteed tomorrow, andyou better go try it because you
will live with that regret through eternity. That's my whole thing. So anyway,

(35:05):
hey, we got you through yourwalk. It's been a little over
thirty minutes. We're going to tryto keep these things at thirty minutes.
I think we're close as close aswe can. Where can everybody find you?
You can find me at William Leemartindot com right there. We're also
on Instagram, we're on Facebook,we're on the TikTok while the American government
still allows the TikTok, and we'realso on I know they're so afraid of

(35:30):
TikTok. And we're on YouTube witha lot of new stuff, and that's
where you can find this. Youcan also find our podcast at Slash Broadcast
at William Lee Martin dot com.And then the tour schedule again coming up.
We got Lowell, Arkansas, Tipton, Georgia, Golden Alabama, Baton
Rouge, Louisiana, and Ocean Springs, Mississippi. All those tickets at William

(35:50):
Leemartin dot com so on behalf ofrelease, and Ron Phillips and myself go
out there and try to be kindof successful, y'all,

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Ep. 2 – How Stand Ups Are Made - The Funny Life Podcast with William Lee Martin

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Ep. 2 – How Stand Ups Are Made - The Funny Life Podcast with William Lee Martin