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00:00hey ryan great to see you you bet man you've been you've been making the making the rounds all over
00:05the place saw you last night on the tonight show you got all sorts of things happening
00:09and then i i read your wikipedia page and i heard that you were hit by a bus so do
00:13you ever talk
00:14about that in your show sorry just kidding i had to bust your chops on that i i mentioned it
00:21here
00:21and there uh no the uh the new netflix special is out i watched it yesterday fantastic stuff uh
00:28where do you get your your storytelling ability tell me somebody that tells stories i you know
00:35i don't know it's it's one of those things even growing up very young i would see these stand-ups
00:41on television and i thought i think that's something really interesting to me i always was
00:47had a difficult time one-on-one but i always felt i think more comfortable than most uh in front
00:55of
00:55groups for whatever reason that was like a thing that that risk wasn't something that felt
01:03super scary to me it felt exciting and there are other risks that i look at and i go i
01:08i'm not
01:09interested in that but that always felt like i had a comfort and an ability to just uh do that
01:16for
01:16whatever reason so i think even from a young age it was just a kind of a way that i
01:21felt like i could
01:23communicate and i've gotten better one-on-one but it's still a thing where you know uh especially
01:29growing up that was hard for me well when you're telling a story to a faceless audience of several
01:35hundred or thousand it's probably a lot easier than one-on-one exactly that's a hard that's an
01:40interesting dynamic i think that you either have our program that way or your program to think
01:46this is a lot of people and i'm and i can't process how many people this is but it turns
01:52into
01:52like an anonymous kind of faceless one entity to me yeah exactly you're right a hundred percent on that
01:58one you know as i was watching your uh special yesterday and i saw you last night in the tonight
02:02show um jerry seinfeld kept coming into my mind and i know you got shows coming up with him this
02:09year
02:09tell me about the influence that that is is he the most influential comic in in your mind to you
02:15well it's interesting not early in my career i i've been compared to him my whole career i i i
02:22think
02:22maybe people hear in my voice a little bit his tenor and a little bit of my natural rhythm
02:29yeah the way i talk um so i've been compared to him my whole career really in a way but
02:37starting out
02:38no i was trying to be it's interesting you find your path i i i mean i grew up with
02:43his show i
02:44revered him i i i watched the show i saw his lifestyle in new york and his comedic mind i
02:51always
02:52but i was trying to be in the very beginning more absurdist one-liner like mitch hedberg was a really
02:57heavy influence to me yeah i would watch him when i first started on uh letterman and he was one
03:03of
03:03the first live shows that i ever saw mitch hedberg and i just thought i loved the way his mind
03:10thinks
03:10and i was trying to be that because when you first start you don't know what you're doing and you
03:14experiment with something and it's almost like your essence and your voice is decided for you you don't
03:20really decide it as much so i started there and eventually i became this in this place where i am
03:28and
03:28i'm always evolving but you know my relationship with jerry we have a similar i don't know we're
03:36broad and observational it's hard to put these categories on things but um you know i'm i'm very
03:42grateful to be able to where i've learned so much from him and taken so much from those touring dates
03:48that i get with him so it's surreal to me honestly that i ended up here in new york from
03:54a small town in
03:55idaho uh with this career and and um yeah yeah no it's it's pretty wild because i grew up in
04:01a small
04:02town outside of buffalo and i've been in detroit for the last 30 years you know at this radio station
04:06but yeah when i when i when i saw you and i i bring up jerry what i like to
04:11think what i like what i
04:12the cadence and and and sometimes the the smirks at the crowd and okay that kind of thing you know
04:18i'm
04:19not saying you do it on purpose i'm just saying it's probably it's built into and that's that that's
04:22where i thought you were you know you got that from yeah i mean i'm just i you know we're
04:27all
04:27trying to be ourselves and that's that's what you that's what you got to do but you know yeah yeah
04:33well i mean you know if you're gonna be compared to somebody hey i i'm you know yeah i love
04:39my time
04:39with him i love working with him it's like we i love talking comedy with him because it's just
04:46we have these long conversations in depth and it's so fun and you can't have those with a lot
04:52of people so for whatever reason we get those and i'm very um that's i'm very grateful to have them
04:58so
04:58yeah now i was talking i was thinking about this on the way in today i do a lot of
05:03interviews mostly
05:03with rock stars and i do talk to some comedians here and there but i've never really talked to
05:07somebody that started out in idaho yeah there aren't a lot as far as i know it did was there
05:14comedy
05:14places back there like uh like you know zany's or whatever anything like that no i mean there's a
05:19comedy club in boise but actually salt lake city was closer to me but those are both four or five
05:24hour drives uh there was nothing like a comedy club anywhere near me i'm from a tiny town of about
05:30a
05:30thousand people uh in the corner of wyoming montana and idaho closer to yellowstone park uh than anything
05:38kind of metropolitan and um when i was young i you know i wanted to be a uh newspaper columnist
05:47dave berry was a big influence on me and the far side cartoons on the sunday paper and i so
05:54i had a
05:55i got a column in the county newspaper i just called them up and said can i have a column
05:59and
05:59and at that time in rural idaho as a kid they would just go yeah so i would write every
06:05week a column
06:06and that was my kind of comedic outlet but i was also watching these comedians on tv starting around
06:12i don't know 12 13 14 now what year what year are we talking about here well this was in
06:18the 90s i
06:19mean i don't know how old you are so late 90s yeah so um yeah uh you know i first
06:28got on stage in like
06:302000 i think 2001 right like december 2000 was like the first time but i did it a couple times
06:36before that but then didn't touch it again for years but i was very young and uh in college we
06:42produced our own comedy shows a few of us we had i was at a little community college in idaho
06:47uh half an hour away town of 30 000 people we had a little radio station and i was a
06:53broadcast major
06:54and uh we would do these remotes that we created as stand-up shows and i did that a few
07:02times and
07:03that was the first time i ever did it and i was like 18 and i did it a couple
07:07times and um so you know
07:10i always tell it's different now because we have online outlets but at that time you just kind of
07:17created a way to do what you wanted to do where you were and that's those are the ways that
07:21i figured
07:22it out and do you remember the first time you made a crowd laugh
07:27i mean yeah it was probably in church growing up i would give these talks in church and um i
07:38loved it
07:38because i i knew that you know you were allowed to make a joke right up front like that's how
07:45everybody started their thing and so i would spend all my preparation time on the beginning joke
07:51and so it was like i was kind of like that's how i found a way to do it yeah
07:57right yeah i guess it
07:58can be a little bit addicting when you start to make people laugh you're like oh i want to do
08:02that
08:02again yeah right right right right and then you go on the tonight show last night and i don't know
08:08your your whole history but how many how many late night shows have you done that was my third
08:13tonight show i did colbert i think i did conan two or three times maybe also yeah yeah because
08:21you've been you've been in this in this game i suppose uh in air quotes since like 2012 or so
08:27i mean i've been doing comedy full time since like 2005 oh okay that long okay yeah yeah but i
08:37mean you
08:38know full time but you know off the radar on the road you know doing one nighter gigs and stuff
08:45like
08:45that and trying to scrap along i think my first late night set was 2008 i think was the first
08:55time
08:55i did a television i think i did live at gotham in 2008 maybe and i did last comic standing
09:03that
09:03that year too somewhere around there yeah did you watch your set from last night already or or will
09:09you i just watched it just before we got on here so i just watched it about 10 minutes ago
09:14give me
09:15your critique what was it i was um pleasantly surprised i'm pretty hard on myself i was i
09:24liked that i was a little more relaxed and i felt like i smiled more and i was in i
09:30looked like i was
09:30enjoying it more and i was enjoying it more i'm always worried about my look i i have a difficult
09:35time finding a suit that fits and i think a suit is the right look for me but i can
09:40never figure it out
09:41it's always this like insane journey to get a suit made and this was the first time getting a suit
09:47off
09:47the rack and it was like i had to get it tailored and i'm like how do i look should
09:51i have buttoned it
09:52you know like the crazy things you go through so i felt like it was okay and um i liked
10:00the material
10:01uh the closing line i actually changed slightly and i've never even said it that way before until which
10:08is very rare and risky but i knew on the tonight show you say good night you're going to get
10:13a big
10:14and i knew that there were laughs leading all the way up to that so i felt pretty good about
10:18it i tried
10:19to get a call back to make it a button this late late night is like a lost art it's
10:24like putting
10:25together those five minute sets is much more difficult than doing a half hour maybe even more
10:30you know it's like you have to define who you are you can't do one topic really because it's so
10:38risky
10:38if you're not buying into it then you're stuck there and so you gotta like you know i i cut
10:45up about
10:45three or four chunks you know that whole thing is probably like 15 minutes of material that i
10:52compacted so i think i was pretty happy with it i i think maybe my first tonight show set
10:59was the best written i think this tonight show set was my best performance maybe yeah people
11:07probably won't understand this uh but you and i will sometimes when you're in the moment you're
11:12thinking that things are going bad or not great and then you watch it back and you go that wasn't
11:17too
11:17bad yeah it's okay and and we're we're hardest on ourselves yeah and i you know the note what i
11:24what i try to instill in myself is that you do the best you can you put it out there
11:30and then you
11:31can't control it and so control the controllables i'm all done i did everything that i could and now
11:37what's next and that's the creative process you know what's next and get excited about the process
11:42and about the discovery of the new thing and that's how you get joy out of this is like if
11:49you're
11:49looking for the thing that you produce to give you the joy it's fleeting and you crash the joy has
11:57to
11:57come in the creation and so now i'm in that cycle of the discovery and i i like that part
12:03so well
12:03you're going to be here in detroit on february 13th no time like the middle of june to promote that
12:08show
12:08uh but um last question for you so normally like i said i'm normally i'm interviewing rock stars a lot
12:14of times these guys drop records and you know whatever so what uh i asked them i go what is
12:18it
12:18like to drop a record so what is it like to drop a netflix special what's that feeling like well
12:23this
12:23is my second one and it's interesting you know in the streaming world it's it's you put it out there
12:30and it kind of has a life of its own and you see what happens you know and it kind
12:36of goes the
12:37direction who finds it people find it and comedy is really interesting because you know a band i think
12:45based on what i know a musician puts out an album and then they tour that album a comedian puts
12:53out a
12:53special yeah and then they tour off of that special but they need new material immediately so it's this
12:59demand you have to ride the promotion and the and the wave to sell the tickets for the tour
13:05but you need to have new material for the tour so it's very odd i'm putting out a tour you
13:13know
13:13we're announcing a lot of tour dates i'm naming the tour i don't know exactly yet what the content is
13:19i have a brief but i you know i'm working on this stuff all summer diving deep trying to really
13:25get it
13:25done so that fall comes and i've got like you know these dates i have i have stuff so that's
13:33the
13:33process it's a little different and uh and i don't know netflix takes time you just kind of put it
13:39out
13:39there and go we'll see what what people think well i'll tell you what the netflix special is fantastic
13:44i thought it was clever um you're in new york city don't get hit by a bus today okay thank
13:48you i'll take
13:49that advice there's there's your callbacks yeah yes i love that hey ryan thank you so much for the
13:55time we'll see you here in detroit in february and bundle up when you come in oh i love being
13:59there
13:59you
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