It's Funny. It's Business. For Stand-Up, You Hit the Road

"The problem with success is it comes either when you are too young to appreciate it or you need a nap to enjoy it."" -- Lewis Black

You talk to most stand-up comedians here, and all they want to do is work. The level of fame reached by Dave Chappelle and Jerry Seinfeld seems next to impossible. Those heights of laffs are exotic and distant from Richmond, where, at the moment, only two venues are devoted to this peculiar art form. The road to a thriving career in stand-up comedy is ... the road.

Comedy isn't showing up once a week for an open mic at the local tavern. To get good, to meet booking agents and to get gigs, you haul yourself anywhere at almost anytime.

And, yes, there are nights, very dark nights, when the performer returns to the motel, sits on the edge of the bed after the adrenaline of the show has worn off, and creeping doubts turn to raging fears about the future. He realizes that months of his life have evaporated in the vacuum of ceaseless traveling, that the camaraderie of sharing rooms with smoking, drinking comics has worn a little thin, and that the elusive, big-club contract hasn't come yet. But then it's to bed and on to the next gig.


Not the Life of the Party: Nick Cantone

Nick Cantone looks like a slacker kid, the kind to whom everybody is "dude." The Richmonder attempted Virginia Commonwealth University and Piedmont College, but none of the classes, or the dead-end jobs, inspired him.

"It sounds ridiculous -- I never watched a stand-up comedian," he says. "In school, I was the guy that never talked. Comedians are basically two kinds of people: the guy who never says a word, or the guy who can't stop talking. And I was the one who just -- let me put it this way -- I was never the life of the party; and I guarantee you, I'm still not."


Onstage is different.

When Cantone went to see Lewis Black at a chemistry auditorium on the University of Virginia campus in 2000, he walked out knowing he wanted to become a comedian.
He dove in and got his comedic footing (and timing) under the mentorship of Tampa, Fla., comic Murv Seymour.

The two drove hours upon hours through Florida for five minutes of mic time in Orlando, Gainesville and St. Petersburg. "This went on, and I learned everything about comedy that way, because there was nothing else to do in that car but talk about the work. I'd get cranky about it. And Murv told me, looked me right in the eye, and said, ‘Nick, if you're not willing to drive five hours to do five minutes for free, you won't make it. This is what it's about.'"


Cantone acknowledges the stress of this time, but he learned a tremendous amount. "An overnight success in comedy means seven to 10 years of hard work," Cantone says. "Material isn't easy to come up with. Do you realize how difficult it is to construct a sentence so that when it ends, 300 people will laugh simultaneously?"

There are brushes with greatness and emotional, if not fiscal, payoffs. Among the headliners Cantone has opened for are Robert Klein ("A legend. He's done eight HBO specials."), Richard Lewis ("He's his own person ... But by the end of the week, we were hugging."); Bobcat Goldthwaite ("Nicest guy in show business. Hilarious. More than just that voice.")

And Lewis Black.

Cantone played with Black at the Funny Bone Club in Omaha, Neb., and it was incredible. In the greenroom, Cantone sat with Black and told the U.Va. auditorium story. "And when I was done, he looked me straight in the eye and said, ‘You're telling me I'm the reason you got into comedy?' and I said, ‘Yes, sir,' and he said," ‘I'm sooo sorry.'"

And Cantone laughs.


"It's Your Show:" Steve Moore

Steve Moore's June 1997 HBO special was titled "Drop Dead Gorgeous" and threaded together his amazing story, from growing up working-class and gay in Danville, to playing comedy clubs in Los Angeles, from a 15-year marriage to a lesbian who needed her green card, to contracting HIV and the remaking of his life, and an approach to comedy that acknowledges -- among other things -- that laughter is a way to rail against oblivion.

Moore, a VCU theater graduate whose brother and family live here, spiraled back to Richmond during the 1990s -- not to die, as some viewed the move from Hollywood, but to live and work.

He played piano at L.A.'s Laugh Factory, singing silly songs and telling jokes, before the headliners came on. "I played Led Zeppelin on the accordion, and I'd say, ‘Feel the energy,' and I had fun, but it didn't mean anything." He worked among struggling comics like Robin Williams, David Letterman and Jay Leno. He opened for Rodney Dangerfield and Joan Rivers and babysat Roseanne Barr's kids. He recalls Andy Kaufman, lost in alter ego character Tony Clifton. "The people were gone, the doors were locked and we were just there, and he was still Tony Clifton. Kind of odd."
Moore performed stand-up for 20 years, but onstage he violated one of comedy's axioms: Be yourself. He was gay, but wasn't comfortable using his sexuality as part of the routine. HIV changed that.

Today, he performs for AIDS benefits and special events. He tapes promotions for gay-related television programming in New York City. Here, he's teaching the principles of stand-up comedy.

"It's not like you're portraying a character -- there's no fourth wall," Moore says. "A lot of actors find stand-up difficult. I tell my students, there's nothing that's not been talked about. You need to address what you love, fear, your parents, what molded you. It's almost like therapy, sharing intimate details. Even the most painful thing can be turned into a bit. People ask, ‘How can you tell jokes about AIDS?' Well, I have it. If you can do an impression or sing, or if there's any talent you can do, do it, because it's your show. Baby, it's you."


Moore warns students about the frustrations and genuine heartbreaks of the field, though he is careful not to lapse into bitterness. The point is not to be 50 years old, wake up, and realize you never stepped to the microphone and took the risk.

He, after all, is quite alive and working and enjoying himself, though taking an array of medications that he receives for reduced rates from a downtown clinic. "I've declared myself indigent," he says, referring to how he pays for the treatment. "I'd be a big star now, but I can't afford it."


He tends bar at the Fielden's nightclub where, at times, he gets recognized. "Somebody always says, ‘I thought you were dead!' And I say, ‘Well, I'm not. That'll be eight dollars, please.'"


Comedy is the Awful Truth: Nancy Frowert

Nancy Frowert echoes Moore's philosophy about keeping her stand-up act true to herself. "You can't lie your way through comedy," says the 9:55 Comedy Club ensemble member. "People don't like to be lied to, especially if they're paying for it. I do make up stories that are so bizarre they know it's a joke, but you need to say it like you mean it."


When you get to the core of a comic's story, quite often what's there is genuine and downright sad, but it's the truth, and that drew Frowert to the form.

"I like comedians that show some humility onstage -- people who don't try to be something they're not."

The 9-year-old 9:55 Club, co-founded by entertainer Ray Bullock, started at the former Chetti's Cow and Clam restaurant in Shockoe Bottom.

"The name is from how Chetti, the owner, liked to watch [the Comedy Central animated comedy] South Park," Bullock explains. "We couldn't start the comedy until the end credits ran."


The club is now at Easy Street in the Fan where the Sunday show starts at 9 p.m. Frowert was the group's booking agent for two years.

Frowert grew up in Northern Virginia, majored in theater at Longwood College, and after her 2000 move to Richmond, she started stand-up.

She admits to shyness and how, when she's with friends, she can't think of quick, clever remarks. Stand-up affords her the luxury of preparation and speaking her mind-- and being funny. She grew up with three brothers that, she says, toughened her to some forms of humor. "But I am a woman in a male-oriented business, and sometimes the content of their material can get old. I mean, how much can you talk about your penis?"

Frowert has done stand-up in places where the audience was shocked to see a woman onstage and their surprised reaction helped her act.

"I get [booked at] these random events, and nobody expects comedy, and I show up, and they're saying, ‘What are we doing? I thought it was just one more class and we were out of here. There's comedy?' So this is what I find myself walking into."

Like the librarian convention where there wasn't even a mic. Her mother was there among 100 librarians. They'd just auctioned off books. "The winner got the MLS desk set, and they were high on Coke and potato chips. But it was fine. It's the only show of mine my mom has ever seen."

Or, the corporate Christmas party where she'd be paid only if she performed with a Bill Clinton impersonator. "And this Bill Clinton impersonator kept interrupting me, and I finally had to say, ‘I gotta go.' So all you can hope for is to get paid. And yes, I got paid."

The 9:55 troupe gave her a sense of belonging and accomplishment. At one point, 9:55 was booking talent for three different venues here. She ran into some sexism from out-of-town acts, and, because she was booking, received exposure to bigger market manipulation.

"Because I was in a position of authority," Frowert says, "I got a glimpse of how it is. The night a comic from D.C. found out I wasn't booking for 9:55, he said, ‘I don't need to be nice to you anymore.' And he wasn't kidding, and he wasn't nice, either."

The business of comedy, in which the comic is a one-man band, writer, performer, actor, publicist, promoter and even occasional technician, encourages self-aggrandizement. If you're not funny, though, you don't work.

Still, getting to that place in comedy where bookings aren't always a struggle requires not energy alone, but near-unreasoning ambition. Frowert says she doesn't possess that I'm-better-than-you attitude. Her day job, which she enjoys, is as a commercial legal assistant in corporate securities.

"Right now, in this week, I'm not actively pursuing work," she says, "but certainly I'd never turn down work."


Bringing the Funny: Odyssey Michaels

For full-time performer Odyssey Michaels 9:55 is his comic gymnasium. He goes to present new material in an atmosphere that encourages expression and experimentation. He refines and polishes until he's ready for Short Pump's Funny Bone Club.

"I take a packaged, wrapped product to the club," says Michaels. "It's not a place to be guessing about what you're doing. You take The Funny to these people."
The 9:55 is where the comedians indulge in their art. Audiences pay to enter Funny Bone, it's their night out, and they expect professionals.

Michaels' comic odyssey (rimshot!) began when, as a bored high school student in 1990, he opened a newspaper to the classified ads, closed his eyes and dropped his finger on the open mic night announcement for the Comedy Connection in Greenbelt, Md. There he received his first huge laugh from an idea that formed in his own head. He'd found his calling.

It was the first of many gigs and a significant learning curve.

The landscape was different in the early '90s. Def Jam comedy, loud and vulgar, was the vogue among young African-American comics. "There were black rooms, and there were white rooms," Michaels says. "If you were a black comic in a white room, you had to have some crossover appeal. I'm not a Def Jam comic. I was never a thug. I didn't cuss. I didn't talk about sex a lot."

Yet he got gigs.

He performed at night, then got up early each day to help his father in his family's home-improvement business.

Michaels was young and, until then, led a sheltered life. The night world and its temptations were foreign to him. He didn't know how to make a living through comedy. "Plus, it's the entertainment business," Michaels says, chuckling. "It's shady, it's shady. And I think my parents knew I didn't understand that, which is why I'm glad they forced me to keep working."


He quit performing in 1995 to install countertops full time and moved to Richmond. Then, in 2004, he was asked to emcee a children's talent show at First Baptist Church Centralia. Michaels watched 8-year-old Roger Studevant tell little silly jokes in his stand-up debut.

Michaels remembers, "The look on his face -- he was glowing, and I could tell he was happy. In him, I saw how I first felt when I got into comedy. At that moment I decided I could do this again."

What followed was a pent-up fury of funny. He became a regular of 9:55 and Funny Bone. "I'd just go to Funny Bone, and if a comic was sick, I'd go on, or if a comic was just bombing, I went on."

Since comic success is about more than the laughs, Michaels has dedicated himself to the business side, building a Web site to include an ongoing diary of his adventures and making videotapes of his routine. He's also collaborating with fellow 9:55ers Bullock and Glenn Robertson on a film about making it in stand-up comedy. For now, though, he's mainly a road comedian, touring the nation and representing Richmond. Michaels has opened for Brett Butler, George Wallace and Bernie Mac.

The road is tough, and its opportunities are limited, but there's no other route if you are living in a small market like Richmond. Michaels is well aware of this.

"I just want to work," Michaels says. "I want to be the best that I can. I'm not married, no kids. I'm in the best situation that a comic could be in. I want to tour clubs, get into the college circuit. I know the risk, which is scary, that three years from now, people'll be looking around, ‘What happened to Odyssey Michaels?' Maybe I'll be sitting there doing my routine to that guy who reads books at Broad and Belvidere."


Stay Out of Bedford: Mike Ward

Since graduating from the University of Richmond in 2001, Mike Ward has gone in and out of comedy.

He's been on the road, and he's played bars and clubs. "People don't know there's this group of anonymous people making their living as comics," he says, "and they're living out of a van and staying in hotel rooms with six other comedians who drink and smoke and smell. And they're out there, every day and night, trying to get to the gig."

There was the time Ward went through his routine standing next to a life-size cardboard cutout of Dale Earnhardt because when he asked the bar manager if he could move it, he was told, "No. Dale stays." And there was the time in Bedford County when nothing was working. "So this lady in the back puffing on her Marlboro Red and drinking her Budweiser Ice yelled at me, ‘Stay out of Bedford County! Stay out!'"

Ward tried comedy full time in 2004. He performed on Washington, D.C., stages but was living in his parents' basement. "I mean, there are so many comics, and there's this stereotype of them living in the basement of their mom's house, and it was real [for me] in D.C." He, like many Richmond comedians, also would stop in by the 9:55 Comedy Club, to try out new material.

Not long ago, Ward, an editor at Richmond.com, performed at the roast of a fellow comic in Atlanta. Shaking his head, he says, "I'm tempted to call my booking agent, just to see, to try again for some weekend things. But if I do, I wouldn't tell anybody."