EP 436: The State of My Stand Up Career

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Welcome to Episode 436 of The Clean Comedy Podcast! This week JD talks about his comedy career and the status of how he is doing. The road is eye opening and sometimes difficult. JD is questioning everything. 

Come see Zane and I! You can see all the tour dates at ZaneLamprey.com

Feel free to email me: jamesdcreviston at GMAIL.COM

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey, real quick, if you're a clean comedian or trying
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so stop guessing, start growing, go out there, be clean,

(00:21):
get some green. Hey, everybody, welcome to Clean Comedy Podcast.
It's JD. I'm back no seth today. Steth will be
joining me on the next episode it is. I'm recording
on Memorial Day weekend, Memorial a weekend, and so I
just kind of want to do a overview, an overview

(00:41):
of kind of what's been going on, what I see
in the future, what's happening with me, so everybody can
kind of get an idea. I have been touring with
Zane Lamprey. If you didn't know, if you didn't know
for some reason, I don't know how you didn't know,
But I'm touring with Zane Lamprey and doing shows all
over the country. We have done I think with him,
I have done like sixty shows or something so far,

(01:06):
and then I have stuff coming up and at the
end of the May, so this will be the week
that this comes out. We'll be heading to Crownpoint, Indiana,
Grand Rapids, Michigan, and Lombard, Illinois, which is around Chicago,
and then we'll be following that up in the beginning
of June. Starting June and fifth, will be in New
Jersey and Pennsylvania, and then June twelfth through fifteenth will

(01:27):
be in Texas and New Mexico. And then in the
end of June, which will be our last run until
our summer break, June twentieth through June twenty eighth will
be in Ohio and Indiana, mostly Ohio, and then one
stop in PA Pennsylvania, so we'll be doing that, and
then Zane has a couple of shows in SoCal I
will not be attending those ones, the July second one

(01:49):
or the July eleventh one. Those will be San Diego
and the Improvent Hollywood, and I might be on the
Venice one with him, I don't know right now, which
will be August third in Venice Beach, California, but I uh,
I would have been been touring with him and it
has been eye opening. You know, there's this romanticizing of

(02:12):
stand up comedy, uh that we as comedians get. And
I think, I don't know if I mentioned that I
read this book, but there's a book that I was
reading while I was on tour recently, which was by
comedian Gabriel Rutledge or Gay Rutledge. And so I'm gonna

(02:34):
find the name of it because I think it's really
it's really good. Let me see if I can find
it here. Anyways, it's a big, it's a big It's
a book about him being on the road. And I
think a lot of times I said, we romanticize going

(02:57):
on the road and what that actually means for us.
And he wrote this really good book about being on
the road. He wrote it basically was like almost like
a diary of him being on the road, of what
happened every day, what he did every day, how he felt,
how he was affected, all that kind of stuff. And honestly,

(03:17):
it was probably one of the best books I've read
in a long time. And it made me realize that
while I was on the road, stuff happens, right because
we were kind of shielded in this life that we're
doing stand up, but stuff is happening around, stuff is
happening back home with our families, with our friends, all

(03:39):
those kind of things, and it's definitely a difficult thing
to deal with. Sometimes Sometimes we get, at least just
speaking for me, and from what I read from Gabe's book,
we're getting, you know, a little upset, a little depressed,
a little frustrated, a little fearful, a little concerned, a
little just you know, freaking out that we are not

(04:05):
doing the right thing, or are we doing the right thing?
Or is this, uh, what's good for us? Is this
what's good for our family? Is what it's good for
our career? What are we doing the things that are
supposed to be doing, you know? And so it's a
really interesting thing when we start to look back at
what we're doing on the road and and kind of

(04:30):
gauge is this the life I want? Is this the
career I want? Is this the future I want? And
I think I talked about this on another podcast episode
that I wanted to and I've been really thinking about like,
what am I doing? What's my end goal with comedy?
You know? Is it's you know, because I think when

(04:50):
I started right I wanted to I wanted to be
a famous comedian. And I don't think any of us
when we start get get what we're doing. You know,
like we don't know what that actually means. We don't

(05:11):
know what that actually entails, and it's kind of weird.
So his book is called Happiness Isn't Funny, and so
it's literally like a diary of a year of him
being on the road, and there was a lot of
ups and downs. And I realized, as I've been doing this,

(05:33):
there's been a lot of ups and downs. It's funny
because we think, like, oh, like if I told somebody,
when I tell people that I'm on tour that I'm
a comedian, I'm touring or do whatever, like, oh my gosh,
it must be so fun. But if I was single,
if I was single, I didn't have a family, I
didn't have kids, I didn't have like, uh, you know,
if I had like an apartment instead of a home,

(05:54):
I had no pets or whatever, I'd probably enjoy it
most of the time. There's always gonna be bad days
and good days. But I'm like, is there but having
a family, having kids, having pets, having a warm bed
and a comfortable home that I've been that I've been to.
Is you know it's crazy, so you know there's there

(06:20):
is something there where touring is more difficult than we realize.
I think a lot of times it's again romanticize as
is probably all fame, all all kinds of entertainment things,
or any kind of art thing. You know, it's like,
oh my gosh, it's so crazy you get to live
your dream or whatever. But as I think about it,

(06:42):
I think, well, is this is this really my dream?
Is this really what I want to do? I think
a lot of it is though, again romanticizing it, because
here's the thing. If every day I manage all the
stuff or Zane, I do the blog stuff, I do
the podcast stuff, I do social media, I edit videos,
I write projects for people and work on projects. I

(07:06):
try to do law school, which is not going well,
and I try to be creative in what I do
every day. And then again, I'm not getting the workout
the way that I want. I'm not eating the way
that I want. On the road, I'm not living the
way I want. I'm not compointing. I don't want this
to come off as I'm compointing about being on the road,
but I want people to realize the road is not

(07:28):
what you think it is. The road is not what
you imagine it really is. And even if you have
like the worst version of it, like you're living in
a dingy hotel and eating top ramen and you know,
but you're getting on stage every night and having great shows,
even that is not an accurate picture of it. Right.
It's just such a unique and interesting and weird concept.

(07:51):
And the thing is, I can't imagine traveling by myself
and doing this. But when you travel with somebody else,
at least there's someone there to commiserate with. Right when
there is a bad day, when there is a bad show,
when you have a bad set or they have a
bad set, or whatever it is, there's at least that.
But this experience has opened my eyes to what I

(08:12):
think I want to do. I produced a ton of
local shows right all over so cal that are within
a couple hours driving distance of me and my house.
So it's not hard for me. I'll go do a
show right back home. That's great. The travel where I'm
not home every night, where I'm not sleeping in my bed,
one I don't sleep well. Two, I just you know,

(08:34):
a hotel room is much lonelier when it's just you.
When it's just you in that hotel room, it's so lonely.
There's only so much TV where you go, watch so
much books, you can watch, so much media and content stuff.
You can watch so many videos, you can add it,
so much writing you do. There's only so much before
you go, oh, come on man, and then you're like, oh,

(08:55):
now I leave to go to the show. It's an
hour and a half two hour drive to go to
the show. We set up, you know, we set up
two hours before the shit, before the door's open. We
do the show, we break down, we're out of there,
you know, half an hour to forty five minutes after
the show is over. After we do merch sales a
lot of stuff, pack it up, loaded the car, then
drive another hour, two hours whatever back to the hotel.

(09:17):
Then we go to sleep. Then I get up in
the morning and do it all over again. That takes
a toll on you. In fact, it's crazy that since
the and I haven't told anybody this, since the twenty
eight day run on the East Coast, I had developed
some kind of weird rash on my leg. It's getting
better because I'm putting like advanced therapy lotion and stuff

(09:41):
on it. I even, this is crazy. I even went
to uh chatch GIBT because I couldn't find anything on
web MD. But I took a picture of it and
put it in CHATCHBT and was like what is this
and chet GBT was like, Oh, it's irritated skin. You
usually can be caused by stress or this or that
or whatever. And I was like, oh that makes sense,
like totally told makes sense, because yeah, it's it totally

(10:05):
makes sense. I was stressed out. That was a tough
trip for me. I was got semi depressed through part
of it. I had a very upsetting time. You know,
it was very frustrating. I remember calling my wife and
thinking like I was like, look, I don't I don't
want to stay here anymore. I want to go home,
you know, and I couldn't. I couldn't go home. It
was just, you know, no matter what I wanted to

(10:27):
do at that point, I had to fulfill my obligations,
because that's the kind of person I am. I'm going
to fulfill my obligations. But it was tough. It was
hard being away from home for that long. You know,
I had I had done six month appointments in the military.
The first one I had nobody at home. I didn't care.
The second one, I had just met my wife. She
was my wife yet, but I just met her. And

(10:47):
you know, that was tough. That was a tough deployment.
I mean, luckily we emailed and talked every day, or
talked pretty often, but emailed every day and it just
went by well. But this was a different animal. The
other thing is part of my job with wazaying for
these tours is doing lead ups to the show. So
that means like calling, sending posters, uh, getting information, uh,

(11:11):
doing all the logistical stuff, all that kind of stuff,
making sure they're posting on social media, following up on
ticket sales, getting all those numbers, helping people who have
ticket issues or whatever and stuff. All that kind of
stuff adds up. That's a lot of work, you know,
And so it's one of those things where where it's tough.

(11:34):
It's not it's not easy. It's not an easy thing
to do, and so you know, there's a lot more
levels to it then people think. And I think, and
this is just me saying this because I don't know yet.
I have a lot of things going on I'm very behind,
very behind on law school, and I'm going to use

(11:55):
this time during the summer to to actually try to
catch up or get ahead and do what I gotta do.
But it is not it's not easy right now. It's
very difficult for me to want to go back on
the road after after summer. It really is. It's one
of those things where I'm really thinking about it. I'm thinking,

(12:17):
do I do I go? Should I go? Is it
worth it for me to go? Is it gonna make
me HAPPI or is it gonna make me worse? What's
it going to do? And then the other thought is
if I don't go back on the road, if I
don't go back out, should I even continue doing comedy?
You know, that's that's a true thing, it's a real thing.
Should I put my effort into something else? I had

(12:41):
this thing for myself, which I know is stupid, where
I said, if I wasn't seeing traction in my career,
if I wasn't featuring or getting close to headlining by
forty five, I would quit stand up. Right now, I'm featuring,
I'm opening featuring basically on the road. I'm getting paid

(13:01):
to do stand up. I am growing what I do.
I'm getting better on stage, I'm getting better with my jokes,
I'm getting better with presents. So really I'm doing the
goal that I set out to do. But I think
a lot of times, and maybe this is just me,
we bite off more than we can chew. Does that

(13:21):
make sense? Our eyes are bigger than our stomach, And
I think I don't know, or at least I don't
know if I have the stomach to be a road comic.
That's a weird thing to say. It's a weird thing
probably for you guys to hear, for you to hear,
you know, but it's one of those things where it's like, man,
this is tough. And reading that book by Gabriel Rutledge,

(13:43):
I messaged him afterwards, said, dude, thank you for the book.
It's so good. I'm so glad I read it. It
really opened my eyes. I didn't know that other people
felt this way about being on the road. I feel
this way right now, you know. It was so eye
opening to know that I wasn't alone in those feelings
and that other people had felt that too. That I
was like, oh my gosh, thank you so much for

(14:04):
putting out this book. He's was so open with it.
I mean, the language and it just so you know,
is a little blue sometimes, but it's overall a great,
a great book. And it really opened my eyes to like, oh,
I'm not the only one, right, And I think sometimes
that's what we have to remember. We're not the only ones.

(14:24):
We're not the only ones every day doing this this thing.
We're not the only ones trying to live our craft.
You know. I just watched the Bob Dylan movie, uh,
Complete Unknown, and it wasn't easy for him, you know,
and he was like the big star pretty fast, you know.
And so it's one of those things where things come

(14:47):
at you and the road changes you, and the road
makes you really think about your life, really contemplate what
do you want? What's the things you really want out
of life? You know. And here's the thing. I thought
I wanted to be famous. I thought I wanted fame.
I thought I wanted all the things that come with fame, money,

(15:09):
you know, cars, people liking me, people wanted my autograph,
you know, all that kind of stuff. I realize I
don't want that. I don't think that's what I want,
and I don't think if I do want it I
don't think I want it from comedy. I think I
want it from something else, But I don't know what
that thing is, right. I have a couple of book

(15:30):
outlines that I've done. I have a couple of screenplays
outlines and screenplays that I have, and so I think
that's probably where I'm going to put a lot of
my effort at the towards the end of the year.
I have other options of big, big things that happened
for me, uh in other facets of what I'm doing

(15:51):
that kind of blew up while I was gone in
a good way, not like it blew up like bad,
but like the recognition and people that are reaching out
to me about differ projects and different things is huge,
And so I'm like, Okay, well, maybe maybe that's good
for me. I mean, I just did a video game

(16:11):
a screenplay, and then another video game content piece, like
writing stuff for a video game. The other one was
outlining and kind of a short script for a like
a demo play through or video for the video game,
and paid good money five figures you know, I'm talking
ten fifteen dollars in that range for that stuff. And

(16:34):
so I know I have the skills do that. Now.
The next step of doing that is what do I do?
Do I work on my books? Do I work on
my screenplays? Do I work on trying to do stuff
that I can do from home that I can grow
the other thing I have and I want you, guys,
I mentioned this before, is I know how to book
and produce shows I have. If you haven't seen my

(16:55):
book on Amazon, how to Produce Comedy Shows for Fun
and Profit, go check that out. That's it on Amazon.
I think it's like five ninety nine, four ninety nine
and something like that. It's not very expensive, and it's
like the second edition. And the only reason I kept
that edition right now is because I have David Studebaker doing,

(17:17):
you know, doing the audiobook for it. So I think
that right there made me want to keep it up.
But I want to do and I want to do
another program. I want to do something different, you know,
for for business. I want to grow something. And I
think the next step of that is probably creating a

(17:38):
course so you guys can produce your own shows or
other people can produce their own shows. A way to
coach people through going on the road what they need
to do to go out, how to plan a tour
all those kind of things, because this is all stuff
that I've been learning and understanding and doing, and I
think that there is validity in producing this and helping
this for other people. So I think that that's where

(18:00):
I'm at. I don't I don't know if that means
I'm fully giving up comedy. I don't think I'm gonna
fully ever give up stand up. I might still just
do you know, weekend shows only or local shows only,
or when I'm out and about, like I'll be in
San Francisco, maybe trying to do some kind of local
show there, drop in Mike or something. I don't know,

(18:22):
But I don't know about going back on the road
come come August. That for me is still a tough one.
It's I have a lot of things happening and a
lot of trepidation and where how I move forward here?
And anybody who came out to see me, I truly
appreciate you, you know, Ben, Bob, A couple other people

(18:45):
came out and see me. I appreciate you guys coming
out to see me, supporting me, showing that I can
I can affect people, and people can come and be
a fan of me, and I appreciate that more than
more than I can ever rest to you. I remember
being so happy after you guys came and said hi
to me and said hey, I came to see you.

(19:07):
My heart was so warmed. But I'm scared. I guess
that's the truth. I'm scared that I'm not good enough
to be headlining anywhere. Does that make sense? I mean,
maybe it doesn't make sense. Maybe that's just the imposter
syndrome that creatives feel. Maybe that's just the you know,

(19:27):
the fear of putting myself out there. I don't know
if that's I don't know, though, I don't know if
that's actually true. I don't think it is. I don't
think it's it's totally fear of that or imposters syn there.
I think it's am I actually good enough? I mean,
maybe you guys, Bob Ben whoever came to see me,
Maybe you guys will tell me, am I good enough?

(19:48):
Do you think you could see me headlining at some point?
Or am I gonna be a feature for the next
two three five years? You know what I'm saying. I
hope not. I hope that I get good enough or
that I seem good enough to be able to carry
a crowd, carry a show headline, and that's something I
would like to do. But I don't know. With all
the things that I have on my plates, I don't

(20:09):
know what my next steps are. I think it's funny
because my wife, If any of you guys are Hamilton fans,
there is a song where his wife is singing to
him saying, why do you write like you're running out
of time? And my wife asked me the other day, like,
why do you act like this is it? Like this
is all the time? You have, all the opportunity you have.

(20:32):
And I don't think I'm buy Hamilton now, I'm gonna
die or anything like that. That's not what it is.
I just I have expectations for myself, expectations that I
put on myself to be the best version of myself
that I possibly can be, and you know, and just
be a good comedian, but also be a good provider

(20:55):
and a good father and a good husband. And I
think those things way on me when I'm on the road,
you know, I know that that is the biggest part
that's weighing on me right now. That's the part where
I go I don't know if I should stay on
the road. I have big things happening for me. I

(21:17):
have big pieces that I want to move forward on.
You know, I'm going to law school. I'm gonna be
a lawyer at some point, or I'm gonna at least go,
you know, to take the bar and hopefully pass and
be able to be a lawyer. And then what do
I do? Do I still do comedy? Why I do law?
Is that even feasible? Do I do lawyer comedy? You know,
and tour and do for law things, which I think

(21:39):
is a great idea, honestly, But it's like, what is
my what is my endgame? I thought my endgame was Honestly,
I thought my end game was get good enough to
get a drive bar special, get the drive Bar special,
tour churches, corporate events, do all that stuff, maybe some
clubs here and there, and kind of make my living
that way. Now I go, well, I would like to

(22:05):
record a special. That part I would like to have.
I would like to have that. So someday when I'm old,
people go, oh, you have a comedy special. That's awesome.
You know, list is your comedy special? You're funny or
you were funny or whatever. Own a you're a lawyer too,
that's amazing, or you're this, you're that. I think it's
the many lives factor, where you want to do all
the things you can do in your one life, live

(22:29):
as many lifetimes as you can. Right. I was in
the military, I was a fire arms instructor. I've been
an investment banker. I've been a customer service rep and
the you know in the startup space, helping with startups.
I've been VPS of companies like you know, doing that stuff.

(22:49):
I got investments and stuff. I've done, uh, screenwriting. I
worked with professional comedians as as a joke writer, think
of like hacks or whatever. I've had stuff produced out there.
You know, my name is on stuff that has been
produced by people. And now stand up comedian. I would
love to have a professional standing comedian, you know. I

(23:10):
would love to have a special. And I think that's
probably the thing. I'm not Josh Johnson where I can
do an hour special every month or something. But I
think there's something there that I want to accomplish, and
I'm hoping that I can figure out what to do
because I'm very I don't want to say confused, but
I'm very unsure of where I should what I should

(23:31):
be doing? And I don't know where to go, But
I'm gonna be honest with you. And see, that's the
whole point of this podcast, is being honest with you
about what's happening in comedy. What's what do you do
in your career? How is it really being a professional comedian? Right?
I started this when I wasn't a professional comedian, When
I was a guy starting out doing open mics, trying
to get booked in LA, trying to get on shows,

(23:51):
trying to get five minutes, five minutes somewhere. Now I'm
two in the country, getting paid every night, doing shows
in front of packed elses for tons of people, making
them laugh, having people come out and pay to see
me and see Zane but see me too, which I'm
grateful for and it's amazing. And I don't but I

(24:13):
don't know what my future is. And I guess maybe
that's the thing. Maybe shoot me an email, shoot me
a message, let me know what do you think my
future should be? If you're looking at from an outsider,
because sometimes it's a different perspective, is what you need?
What should what should I do? What should I be pursuing?
Are my clips that I'm putting up any good? Are
you seeing them and going, Oh, he's great, he's a
good comedian. He's you know, he's gonna be a great

(24:35):
comedian one day, or he's gonna if he keeps going,
he's gonna be amazing. I don't know, But hopefully you
guys got something out of this. Hopefully it wasn't just
me rambling and being weird and kind of telling you.
But I want you to understand, the road is not
what it seems. The road is is a fickle, fickle thing.
It's tough selling tickets, doing promotion, driving forever, eating food

(25:00):
that you're like and I should not be eating this
that kind of stuff. It takes a toll on you,
takes a toll on your mind, takes a toll on
your body, takes a toll on your relationships. And as
much as I appreciate this opportunity, I don't know if
it's the opportunity for me. So hopefully that helps you guys.
Hopefully it makes sense to you. I would love to

(25:20):
hear feedback. I would love for you to email me
or shoot me a message to let me know. I
appreciate everyone for listening. Thank you, so much. Have a
good one. Well, I'll set the we'll be back on
the next episode, and I'll talk to you soon. Bye.