- 2 weeks ago
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00:00Hey, Ryan, great to see you.
00:01You bet.
00:02Man, you've been making the rounds all over the place.
00:06Saw you last night on the Tonight Show.
00:07You got all sorts of things happening.
00:09And then I read your Wikipedia page, and I heard that you were hit by a bus.
00:13So do you ever talk about that in your show?
00:17Sorry, just kidding.
00:18I had to bust your chops on that.
00:20I mentioned it here and there once in a while.
00:24No, the new Netflix special is out.
00:26I watched it yesterday.
00:27Fantastic stuff.
00:28Where do you get your storytelling ability?
00:32Tell me, somebody that tells stories.
00:35You know, I don't know.
00:37It's one of those things.
00:38Even growing up very young, I would see these stand-ups on television.
00:41And I thought, I think that's something really interesting to me.
00:46I always had a difficult time one-on-one.
00:49But I always felt, I think, more comfortable than most in front of groups for whatever reason.
00:57That was like a thing that, that risk wasn't something that felt super scary to me.
01:05It felt exciting.
01:06And there are other risks that I look at and I go, I'm not interested in that.
01:10But that always felt like I had a comfort and an ability to just do that for whatever reason.
01:17So I think even from a young age, it was just a kind of a way that I felt like
01:22I could communicate.
01:23And I've gotten better one-on-one, but it's still a thing where, you know, especially growing up, that was
01:30hard for me.
01:32Well, when you're telling a story to a faceless audience of several hundred or thousand, it's probably a lot easier
01:38than one-on-one.
01:38Exactly. That's a hard, that's an interesting dynamic.
01:41I think that you either have our program that way or you're programmed to think this is a lot of
01:48people.
01:48And I'm, and I can't process how many people this is, but it turns into like an anonymous kind of
01:54faceless one entity to me.
01:56Yeah, exactly. You're right. A hundred percent on that one.
01:58You know, as I was watching your special yesterday and I saw you last night in the Tonight Show, Jerry
02:04Seinfeld kept coming into my mind.
02:07And I know you got shows coming up with him this year.
02:09Tell me about the influence that, that is, is he the most influential comic in your mind to you?
02:16Well, it's interesting. Not early in my career. I've been compared to him my whole career.
02:20I, I, I think maybe people hear in my voice a little bit, his tenor and a little bit of
02:28my natural rhythm, just the way I talk.
02:32So I've, I've been compared to him my whole career really in a way, but starting out, no, I was
02:39trying to be, it's interesting.
02:40You find your path. I, I, I mean, I grew up with his show. I revered him.
02:44I, I, I watched the show. I saw his lifestyle in New York and his comedic mind.
02:51I always, but I was trying to be in the very beginning, more absurdist one liner, like Mitch Hedberg was
02:57a really heavy influence to me.
02:59I would watch him when I first started on Letterman.
03:03And he was one of the first live shows that I ever saw Mitch Hedberg.
03:07And I just thought I loved the way his mind thinks.
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.
03:16And it's almost like your essence and your voice is decided for you.
03:20You don't really decide it as much.
03:22So I started there and eventually I became in this place where I am and I'm always evolving.
03:29But, you know, my relationship with Jerry, we have a similar, I don't know, we're, we're broad and observational.
03:37It's hard to put these categories on things, but, um, you know, I'm, I'm very grateful to be able to
03:43work.
03:44I've learned so much from him and taken so much from those touring dates that I get with him.
03:49So it's surreal to me, honestly, that I ended up here in New York from a small town in Idaho,
03:55uh, with this career.
03:57And, and, um, yeah, yeah, no, it's, it's pretty wild.
04:01Cause I grew up in a small town outside of Buffalo and I've been in Detroit for the last 30
04:04years, you know, at the, 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, the cadence and, and sometimes the smirks at the crowd and that kind of
04:18thing, you know, I'm not saying you do it on purpose.
04:20I'm just saying it's probably, it's built into you.
04:22And that's, that, that's where I thought you were, you know, you got that from.
04:24Yeah.
04:25I mean, I'm just, I, you know, we're all trying to be ourselves and that's, that's what you, that's what
04:30you got to do.
04:30But, you know, yeah, yeah.
04:33Well, I mean, you know, if you're going to be compared to somebody.
04:36Hey, I, I'm, you know, yeah, I love my time with him.
04:40I love working with him.
04:41It's like, we, I love talking comedy with him because it's just, we have these long conversations in depth and
04:50it's so fun.
04:50And you can't have those with a lot of people.
04:52So for whatever reason we get those and I'm very, um, that's, I'm very grateful to have them.
04:58So, yeah.
04:59Now I was talking, I was thinking about this on the way in today.
05:02I do a lot of interviews, mostly with rock stars.
05:04And I do talk to some comedians here and there, but I've never really talked to somebody that started out
05:08in Idaho.
05:10Yeah.
05:10There aren't a lot as far as I know.
05:13Was there comedy places back there?
05:15Like, uh, like, you know, Zany's or whatever, anything like that?
05:18No, I mean, there's a comedy club in Boise, but actually Salt Lake City was closer to me, but those
05:23are both four or five hour drives.
05:26Uh, there was nothing like a comedy club anywhere near me.
05:29I'm from a tiny town of about a thousand people, uh, in the corner of Wyoming, Montana, and Idaho, closer
05:35to Yellowstone Park, uh, than anything kind of metropolitan.
05:40And, um, when I was young, I, you know, I wanted to be a, a newspaper columnist.
05:47I, Dave Barry was a big influence on me and the far side cartoons on the Sunday paper.
05:53Uh, and I, so I had a, I got a column in the county newspaper.
05:57I just called them up and said, can I have a column?
05:59And, and at that time in rural Idaho, as a kid, they would just go, yeah.
06:04So I would write every week, a column.
06:07And that was my kind of comedic outlet.
06:08But I was also watching these comedians on TV starting around, I don't know, 12, 13, 14.
06:14Now, what year, what year are we talking about here?
06:17Well, this was in the nineties.
06:19I mean, I don't know how old you are.
06:21Late nineties.
06:22Yeah.
06:22So, um, yeah, uh, you know, I first got on stage in like 2000, I think 2001, right?
06:33Like December 2000 was like the first time, but I did it a couple of times before that, but then
06:37didn't touch it again for years.
06:39But I was very young and, uh, in college, we produced our own comedy shows.
06:44A few of us, we had, I was at a little community college in Idaho, uh, half an hour away,
06:50town of 30,000 people.
06:51And we had a little radio station and I was a broadcast major and, uh, we would do these remotes
06:58that we created as standup shows.
07:01And I did that a few times and that was the first time I ever did it.
07:05And I was like 18 and I did it a couple of times.
07:09And, um, so, you know, I always tell it's different now because we have online outlets, but at that time
07:16you just kind of created a way to do what you wanted to do where you were.
07:20And that's, those are the ways that I figured it out.
07:22And do you remember the first time you made a crowd laugh?
07:27I mean, yeah, it was probably in church growing up.
07:34I would give these talks in church and, um, I loved it because I, I knew that, you know, you
07:41were allowed to make a joke right up front.
07:44Like that's how everybody started their thing.
07:47And so I would spend all my preparation time on the beginning joke.
07:52And so it was like, I was kind of like, that's how I found a way to do it.
07:57Yeah.
07:57Right.
07:58Yeah.
07:58I guess it can be a little bit addicting when you start to make people laugh.
08:01You're like, Oh, I want to do that again.
08:03Yeah.
08:04Right, right, right, right, right.
08:05And then you go on the tonight show last night and I don't know your, your, your whole history, but
08:09how many, how many late night shows have you done?
08:12That was my third tonight show.
08:14I did Colbert.
08:15There, I think I did Conan two or three times maybe also.
08:20Yeah.
08:21Yeah.
08:21Cause you've been, you've been in this, in this game, I suppose, uh, in air quotes since like 2012 or
08:27so.
08:28Oh, I mean, I've been doing comedy full time since like 2005.
08:35Oh, okay.
08:35That long.
08:36Okay.
08:36Yeah.
08:37Yeah.
08:37But I mean, you know, full time, but you know, off the radar on the road, you know, doing one
08:44night or gigs and stuff like that.
08:46And trying to scrap along, I think my first late night set was 2008, I think was the first time
08:55I did a television.
08:56I think I did live at Gotham in 2008, maybe.
09:01And I did last comic standing that, that year too, somewhere around there.
09:05Now, did you watch your set from last night already or, or will you?
09:09I just, I just watched it just before we got on here.
09:12So I just watched it about 10 minutes ago.
09:14Give me your critique.
09:15What was it?
09:17I was, um, pleasantly surprised.
09:21I'm pretty hard on myself.
09:24I was, I liked that.
09:25I was a little more relaxed and I felt like I smiled more and I was in, I looked like
09:30I was enjoying it more and I was enjoying it more.
09:33I'm always worried about my look.
09:34I have a difficult time finding a suit that fits.
09:37And I think a suit is the right look for me, but I can never figure it out.
09:41It's always this like insane journey to get a suit made.
09:45And this was the first time getting a suit off the rack.
09:48And it was like, I had to get it tailored and I'm like, how do I look?
09:51Should I have buttoned it?
09:53You know, like the crazy things you go through.
09:56So I felt like it was okay.
09:59And, um, I liked the material, uh, the closing line.
10:03I actually changed slightly and I'd never even said it that way before until, which is very rare and risky.
10:10But I knew on the tonight show, you say goodnight, you're going to get a big, and I knew that
10:14there were laughs leading all the way up to that.
10:17But so I felt pretty good about it.
10:19I tried to get a call back to make it a button.
10:21This late, late night is like a lost art.
10:24It's like putting together those five minute sets is much more difficult than doing a half hour.
10:29Maybe even more, you know, it's like you have to define who you are.
10:35You can't do one topic really because it's so risky.
10:38Maybe if you're not buying into it, then you're stuck there.
10:42And so you got to like, you know, I, I cut up about three or four chunks.
10:47You know, that whole thing is probably like 15 minutes of material that I compacted.
10:54So I think I was pretty happy with it.
10:56I think maybe my first tonight show set was the best written.
11:02I think this tonight show set was my best performance, maybe.
11:06Yeah.
11:07People probably won't understand this, but you and I will.
11:10Sometimes when you're in the moment, you're thinking that things are going bad or not great.
11:15And then you watch it back and you go, that wasn't too bad.
11:18Yeah, it's OK.
11:19And we're hardest on ourselves.
11:23And I, you know, the note, what I what I try to instill in myself is that you do the
11:29best you can.
11:30You put it out there and then you can't control it.
11:32And so control the controllables.
11:33I'm all done.
11:34I did everything that I could.
11:36And now what's next?
11:38And that's the creative process.
11:40You know, what's next?
11:41And get excited about the process and about the discovery of the new thing.
11:45And that's how you get joy out of this.
11:48It's like if you're looking for the thing that you produce to give you the joy, it's fleeting and you
11:55crash.
11:56The joy has to come in the creation.
11:59And so now I'm in that cycle of the discovery.
12:01And I like that part.
12:03So, well, you're going to be here in Detroit on February 13th.
12:06No time like the middle of June to promote that show.
12:10But last question for you.
12:11So normally, like I said, normally I'm interviewing rock stars.
12:14A lot of times these guys drop records and, you know, whatever.
12:16So I asked them, I go, what is it like to drop a record?
12:19So what is it like to drop a Netflix special?
12:21What's that feeling like?
12:23Well, this is my second one.
12:26And it's interesting, you know, in the streaming world.
12:29It's you put it out there and it kind of has a life of its own.
12:32And you see what happens, you know, and it kind of goes the direction who finds it.
12:38People find it and comedy is really interesting because, you know, a band, I think, based on what I know,
12:47a musician puts out an album and then they tour that album.
12:52A comedian puts out a special.
12:54Yeah.
12:54And then they tour off of that special, but they need new material immediately.
12:58So it's this demand.
13:00You have to ride the promotion and the wave to sell the tickets for the tour.
13:05But you need to have new material for the tour.
13:09So it's very odd.
13:11I'm putting out a tour.
13:12You know, we're announcing a lot of tour dates.
13:14I'm naming the tour.
13:16I don't know exactly yet what the content is.
13:19I have a brief, but, you know, I'm working on this stuff all summer, diving deep, trying to really get
13:25it done so that fall comes and I've got like, you know, these dates.
13:30I have I have stuff.
13:31So that's the process.
13:33It's a little different.
13:35And and I don't know.
13:37Netflix takes time.
13:38You just kind of put it out there and go.
13:40We'll see what what people think.
13:42Well, I'll tell you what.
13:42The Netflix special is fantastic.
13:44I thought it was clever.
13:45You're in New York City.
13:46Don't get hit by a bus today.
13:48OK, thank you.
13:49I'll take that advice.
13:50There's your callbacks.
13:52Yeah, yes.
13:53I love that.
13:54Hey, Ryan, thank you so much for the time.
13:55We'll see you here in Detroit in February and bundle up when you come in.
13:58Oh, I love being there.
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