Just a brief post to let you know that I am officially taking over the Knoxville Underground Comedy Show.  It's a relatively new open mic that has gotten off to a great start with plenty of room to grow, and I'm very happy to have been put in charge of it (the previous host's work schedule has gotten too overwhelming to allow him to continue hosting the show, so he gave it to me).

It runs every other Wednesday at Prince's Deli & Sports Bar in West Knoxville.  It's a show-up-go-up open mic, so all comedians are welcome, from touring pros to newbie first-timers.  Sign-ups are at 8:30PM, show's at 9PM.

The next show is this Wednesday (3/30), so bring y'asses and enjoy some of the best local comedy East Tennessee has to offer!

Until next time,

--Riley

The weekend was busy with a lot of driving and running around on my part, but I finally have the exciting conclusion of the FOX IN INDY series, along with a very brief FOX IN NASHVILLE entry!  Hooray!

Thursday was, by far, the weirdest day of the entire Indianapolis run.  It was St. Patrick's Day, although that didn't really have to do with any of the weirdness until technically very early Friday morning, when it was no longer actually St. Patrick's Day.  More on that later.

The first show of the night was the biggest gig in the run for me.  Earlier in the week, my friend Courtney Kay Meyers had gotten a gig featuring for another comic at a one-nighter at a bar across town.  She was able to finagle her way with the booker into letting me come along to emcee the show.  However, a couple of days before the show, the headliner had to cancel, so CKM and I decided to step up and do the gig two-man show style and split the money 50/50.  She would go up to get the crowd ready and introduce me onto the stage, I would do about 20-30 minutes to open and then bring Courtney back up, and she would close the show doing about 30-45 minutes.  That might be a little shorter than the traditional length for a regular comedy show--usually running anywhere from 90 minutes to 2 hours--but everyone involved agreed that with the St. Patrick's Day festivities in bloom, we didn't want to take too much time away from their celebrations.  Hell, we didn't even know how this gig was going to go. (And if we bombed, we sure as hell didn't wanna bomb for 30 minutes.)

Together, we did about an hourlong show.  I did somewhere in the realm of 20-25 minutes, and Courtney did about 35-40.  We both got $25 and a free meal out of it, which I was totally cool with.  Wasn't even expecting any paid gigs for the whole Indy trip, so to get one at all was just gravy.  However, the show itself was, as I stated before, just plain weird.

We arrived at the venue: a dinky sports bar on the outskirts of town, located near the speedway where they have auto races.  We were expecting to see hordes of rowdy St. Patty's Day partakers, but we walked in only to see about 20-30 older "bar regular" types playing cards and drinking (in a more sociable manner).  Half of them weren't even wearing green, if that tells you anything.  They were pure Indiana rednecks.  I know that seems odd--rednecks in the Midwest?  Yeah.  They exist.  They're really everywhere if you pay close enough attention.  The ones in the South just have the best PR (or would it be the worst?).

Here's what was weird about it: I killed.  I've never done that well in front of redneck crowds.  I don't identify with the redneck way of life, nor do I really want to, and my material isn't necessarily for the drunk redneck demographic.  Hell, I spent the whole week in Indy opening all my sets with a bit about being in college--and none of these guys were magna cum laude material, that's for sure.  But somehow I must have transcended those barriers, because I ended up having the best set of the week there.  I got a RIDICULOUS amount of applause breaks (when I say anywhere from 10-15 in a 20-25 minute set, I am NOT exaggerating), although I think some of them were more like applauding for a joke the same way you applaud a musician at the end of a song.  Which isn't quite the same as an applause break in stand-up, but still, they applauded, so I'm fuckin' counting that shit.

CKM sold a few of her t-shirts (I would like to have sold merch myself, but I need a polished act and some more bookings first), and we hung out a little bit and chatted it up with the locals and the townies for a bit before heading off to the final show of the Indy run: another music open mic.  This one was located in downtown Indianapolis.  A far cry from where we had just come from.

Unfortunately, we arrived around 10:30PM, and there were already several musicians signed up on the list.  Each musician got roughly 20 minutes or so to play their songs, which meant that Courtney and I wouldn't be hitting the stage until at least 1-2AM Friday morning.  I was up for it, since I wasn't leaving until sometime Friday afternoon.

It was awful.  By the time we were about to perform, all the attentive audience members had been replaced with St. Patty's Day Party People dressed in various pigments of green.  Talking talking talking talking talking.  No care at all in what CKM and I had to say.  She went up first and got ignored for 15 minutes or so, and then brought me up.  I only lasted 8 minutes--but I was able to get laughs out of CKM, her boyfriend Sam, the sound guy, and one lonely dude sitting up front by himself by making fun of the fact that I was being ignored by the SPDPP crew. ("Thank you all for coming to the stand-up distraction part of the show.  We couldn't be ignored without you guys here, so thank you again for that.")

It was a slightly disappointing way to end my Indy run, yet weirdly appropriate.  Comedy is so rooted in complete and utter failure sometimes, you just can't escape it.

Friday afternoon, I made the lengthy drive back to Nashville for the weekend.  That night, I stopped by Wilhagan's to do a set.  It was great to see many of my friends in the Nashville comedy scene again, both new and old.  I'll be back in Nashville in May for the summer, so I'm looking forward to really hitting the home turf hard again soon.

So, overall, what did I accomplish during my trip to Indianapolis?  I learned how to build an extended set (doing two 20-25 minute sets forced me to sit down with my material and put it together in a fairly logical structure).  The fact that I successfully did two extended sets in town--and that both went really great in terms of crowd response and my ability to fill the time--gave me a HUGE confidence boost as a comic.  Putting together those long sets also helped me figure out how to build sets of various lengths (5, 10, 15, etc).  I also finally figured out my "tight five" that I can do just about anywhere at any time--which is long overdue for me because of my tendency to constantly turn over material--and although I don't know it like the back of my hand yet (does anyone REALLY know the back of their hand? why do we say that?), it'll get there soon and it'll be nice to have that at my disposal whenever needed.

I also learned how to finally fucking start using this website productively with the creation of this little blog series that you've been reading!  Thanks to everyone who kept up with me and my FOX IN INDY adventures over the last week or so!  I hope you enjoyed it and can't wait to do another running travel series like this again sometime!

(Oh, and CKM may have found my so-called comedy hook: "Riley Fox: The Brains of the South." I can dig that.)

Until next time,

--Riley

Well, it was bound to happen at some point.  The dreaded comedy b-word.

BOMBING.

It happens to everyone.  You can't avoid it.  Just have to endure it and move on with life.  However, there are some upsides to my particular bombing case: I was in a small bar on the outskirts of town, in front of a handful of comics and outskirts-of-towners.  So it's not like I bombed in front of a packed house at a heavyweight comedy club.  Also, I was breaking in a number of new jokes and random goofy things that have no real place in my other sets (e.g., "Why did the psychic chicken cross the road?  BECAUSE OF THE PROPHECY!"), I still got off a few solid laughs in my set, and still finished strong enough to bring up the headliner with some level of dignity.

That was at the open mic at The Goldmine, hosted by my friend Courtney Kay Meyers (ckmcomedy.com), which was my second show last night.  The headliner was Lance Weiss (lanceweiss.com), a comic from New York who was featuring at Morty's Comedy Joint over the weekend and dropping into the city a day early to pick up an extra paid gig in town.  He had some very funny stuff, and he also complimented the new material I was experimenting with in my set.  When you're an up-and-comer, anytime a working comic from New York says nice things about your shit, it's a pretty redeeming validation. (And it takes a lot of the sting of bombing away, too.)

My first show last night was at Morty's Comedy Joint.  It's a very nice club with a more modern vibe.  I don't know the history of the club very well, but I think it's been around for just a few years or so.  By comparison, Crackers in Broadripple has been around for much longer, and when you walked in, you felt like you had entered a piece of comedy history.  You had to walk up several flights of stairs, and once you reached it, the place had the air of a very old-school comedy club--hell, the backdrop of the stage was a red neon sign in the shape of Charlie Chaplin's face.  I really dug it.
I love performing in old clubs that have a bit of established history.  It might sound silly, but it always comes back to that simple mindset of, "Oh, man, [insert famous and successful comic] performed here and I'm gonna stand on the same stage they did!" That feeling will never get old.  Walking around the building, just staring at all the old promotional headshots of comedians (and laughing at some of the ridiculous hairstyles and fashion choices) might be fun to do as an audience member.  But doing that as a comic gives you a more significant feeling.  You feel like you're a part of something.

But this is not at all suggesting that Morty's doesn't give you that feeling.  Morty's was the newer kid on the block, so the environment reflected that hip sensibility, along with a hint of classicism.  Upon entering, the walls were adorned with numerous framed classic comedy albums (and when I say albums, I mean actual vinyl records--Bob Newhart, Richard Pryor, George Carlin, the Smothers Brothers; you name it, they had it) and promotional posters for various stand-up comedy specials over the years (a highlight being a full-sized autographed poster for Carlin's Life Is Worth Losing HBO special hanging in the front lobby).  Newer clubs are also fun to perform in because they have no historical reputation to live up to, so there's a sense of unpredictability in the air.  It's new, it's exciting (and sometimes it's even a little weird)!  However, although Morty's was young on the scene, it was clear that they had just as high a reverence for the art of stand-up comedy as Crackers did.

And the show at Morty's was fun.  The crowd was a little scant and apprehensive at first, but they loosened up as the show progressed.  I saw several now-familiar faces from other shows earlier in the week, and it was great to see them again.  My time in Indy has been a lot of fun, and I've met a lot of very funny people out here.  A few new comedy-friends, if you will.  I'd love to return sometime to not only do more shows here, but also to hit up the scene in nearby Bloomington.  Hopefully, I'll get that chance at some point.

Tonight is my last night in town, and it's gonna be a barnburner: first, I'm co-headlining a show with Courtney Kay Meyers at Mike's Speedway Lounge (with appearances by some of Indy's best), and then popping in for an extended late-late-night set (12:30 AM!) at The Living Room Lounge's music open mic show.  It only seems fitting that I'm finishing my Indy run the same way I started it--at a music show.  It's also even more fitting that I started and finished my run here the same way I started performing stand-up for the first time: at music shows.  I like it when things come full circle like that.

I'll be on the road to Nashville tomorrow for the weekend, so I'm not sure when I'll have the final FOX IN INDY entry up.  It'll be after the shows tonight, or sometime after I get back to Nashville.  You'll know either way, so stay tuned.

Until next time,

--Riley

Yesterday was a fairly bigger day for me in Indy, at least compared to Monday.  I was scheduled to do two sets: one at Crackers Comedy Club in Broadripple, and then a drop-in set at Beer Sellar Castleton.  Unfortunately, I was unable to make it to the Beer Sellar Castleton show in time to perform a set.  I didn't want leave the Crackers show early out of disrespect to the other comics on the show, especially as an out-of-town visitor.  I try never to leave shows early unless I have a really valid reason for doing so--like leaving an open mic early to head over to another venue across town to prepare a show I'm producing, which I've done before.  But beyond logical things like that, I always do my best to stay for the whole show.  I just think it's good comedy etiquette.  If other comics had to sit there and listen to my shit, I have no problem with doing the same for them.

Sure, I could have picked up another set later on, and if I was at another local open mic then I might have felt more inclined to leave early because I'm in Indy solely for the stagetime.  However, my first show of the night was at a comedy club, and I'm not going to leave a comedy club until the show is over.  You know why?  Because hanging out at comedy clubs after the show is over is fuckin' fun (at least most of the time--if you had a shit set, you probably wouldn't feel like sticking around).  I can't think of many things more fun for me than to hang out at Zanies in Nashville after a show with other comics, servers, bartenders, staff, management--everybody.  Just sitting around the club after hours, drinking and smoking and shooting the shit.  It's fuckin' fun.  If you consider yourself a serious comic and you don't at least make an effort to hang out at your home club, you're doing comedy wrong.

Crackers was another great opportunity to see some of the local Indy talent, like Lazy Daze.  However, unlike Lazy Daze's more no-pressure workshop atmosphere, this is where I got to see some of the Indianapolis comics--a few of whom I'd seen the night before at Lazy Daze--go up in front of a great, lively crowd in a full-time comedy club and kick some ass.  It's a vastly different dynamic.  To me, when you're starting out, open mics are where you experiment, polish, and work out the kinks in material; clubs are where you take that refined material and showcase yourself with it.  I saw several guys hit the stage at that club last night carrying their notebooks with them. Not their setlist--enormous five-subject spiral notebooks (like they had just come from class), that they would lay on the stool next to them and occasionally turn towards to flip pages during their sets.

Say whatever you will about how this reflects on me, but I have never gone onstage at a comedy club with my actual notebook in hand.  I may write my setlist on an index card, or go the sneaky route and jot it down on a napkin under my drink, but I think if you're going to perform at a comedy club--even on open mic night--you need to be prepared enough that you don't need your entire damn notebook onstage with you.  Ideally, you should be prepared enough that you don't need to have your setlist out while you're onstage--but that's a matter of personal preference.  You don't have to be super-polished and have everything memorized: that's what a setlist is for, and I have no problem with people who do that.  I'm not a hardcore advocate one way or the other (because sometimes I go with a setlist, other times without).  But bringing your entire notebook onstage is where I draw the line, because it looks lazy and just screams, "I am not at all prepared for this." At a coffeehouse or bar open mic, you can bring your entire goddamn filing cabinet onstage with you.  I don't care.  But at a club, at least give off the impression that you give a shit.  But then again, who am I to judge?  Everyone has their own different process for developing and polishing material.

That said--with my editorial out of the way--I did enjoy the show I saw at Crackers last night.  There were several very funny comics who I hadn't seen at Lazy Daze the night before, and whose names escape me (I really wish I had written them down).  That club is also a partner of RooftopComedy.com, which is a website that video records shows virtually every night at various comedy clubs around the country, and posts clips of stand-up comedians' sets on their site.  I'm not sure if they were recording last night, but if anything from my set made the cut for their site, I'll be sure to link it here so you can check it out.

Today is another big day.  Doing a set at Morty's Comedy Joint (which should not be canceled, unlike the other one earlier in the week), and then a late spot at Courtney Meyers' show at The Goldmine.  Hopefully I'll be able to make it to her show in time to get a spot--I still haven't yet been able to do the two-show-in-a-night routine since I've been here, despite having a couple of missed opportunities.

ALSO: If you'd like to keep up with my Indy adventures in convenient, bite-sized, 140-character chunks in real-time, you can follow my Twitter page @ http://twitter.com/riley_fox

Until next time,

--Riley

Yesterday was more of a low-key day in Indy.  Only had one set scheduled at the Lazy Daze Coffee House open mic, which turned out to be a good deal of fun.  The show was held in a very small, intimate side room full of comfy couches and chairs, which only served to further the irony of a coffeehouse with the name, "Lazy Daze." But I dig small, intimate venues, and this was a pleasure to play.  It was also great to witness a display of some of the local open mic talent here in Indianapolis.  When I made the decision to visit Indy, I didn't want to JUST hit the clubs, because in some cities, clubs--although great--don't always give a full representation of what the local comedy scene is like.  Plus, even if you're doing a show at a club with other local area comics, everyone is putting on their A-game and doing their solid showcase sets.  Which is also fun in itself, but as a comedy fan, I also like seeing the process of experimentation and workshopping that happens when comics are playing with new material.

Which is why Lazy Daze was a fun show.  I got to see comics of various experience levels, from guys who had been doing it for a couple years and had a certain amount of polish, to total newbies who'd barely been at it for a month or so and were still struggling.  I didn't do as much experimenting with new material as I would have liked, as I was doing a dry-run of some club sets I have in the next couple of days, but it was great to watch other people--people whom I have no preconceived notions of, and who have no preconceived notions of me--grind their comedic axes to varying effect.  Whether they killed or bombed, it was refreshing to see another city's collective comic "sensibility."

I haven't been to enough different cities to really test this theory, but I've been to several, so I can kinda pin it down: I think every city with some sort of semi-respectable local comedy scene has its own collective comic sensibility.  That is to say that in each city, there are a number of running themes, topics, or styles that are touched upon by many of the local comics.  It doesn't mean it's hack or played out, or that the scene is therefore homogenous, necessarily--in fact, it seems to come out of a place that is organic and authentic, which makes it interesting and engaging, and sort of gives that city its own comedic identity.  Going off my experience at Lazy Daze, most of the comics tended to talk about relationships, dating, jobs, etc.  Most of the comics also went for a more conversational, storytelling type of delivery.  That may seem conventional, but Indianapolis is in the middle of the so-called "heartland" of America.  That's life in the Midwest.

By contrast, Asheville, NC, has a much more abstract and cerebral comic sensibility.  The comics there have more of a quirky observational tone, and sometimes go for more obscure references.  Asheville is known for being a very creatively-minded city, and that reflects itself in the comedy scene there.  Again, this isn't to say that it's hack, or that EVERY comic in these cities has these respective traits, but it is overall indicative of the kind of comedy that prevails in these communities.  And it's always interesting to watch.

Tonight, I have two sets scheduled: one at Crackers Comedy Club in Broadripple, and then a drop-in later at Beer Sellar Castleton.  Really looking forward to both of these shows, and I'll have a full report in the next day or two!

Until next time,

--Riley

This is my daily (or semi-daily) recap of my adventures in Indianapolis.  I've been here since Saturday evening.  This week is my spring break from school, and I've been itching to get out of town for a while to do some shows.  So I got in touch with Courtney Kay Meyers (who can be found online at ckmcomedy.com), who is an old friend of mine--we actually started doing comedy in Nashville within mere weeks of each other.  She's since moved to Indianapolis and knows the scene very well, so she gave me all the info on the shows around town.  I sent around a few emails, and got me 8 sets in a 5-day stretch.

I got in Saturday evening.  Took some time to unwind from the long drive, and then Courtney and I hit up Morty's Comedy Joint to check out the club and watch the show.  I was scheduled to perform there the following night, so I thought it'd be a good opportunity to see the room and meet some of the folks in the club.  After the shows, we turned in fairly early--a 6-hour drive will do that to you.

Today--Sunday--I was scheduled to do two sets: one at Morty's and another drop-in set later on at a music open mic at a bar called Locals Only (where, coincidentally enough, I was neither music nor local).  Before that, I found out that by mere coincidence, fellow Nashville comic Chad Riden (found online at ChadRiden.com) was in a neighboring city the night before on a road gig, so he and I met up in the Broadripple area to hang out and shoot the shit on his way home.  Later on, I headed over to Morty's for my first show of the Indianapolis run.  I had gotten the gig somewhat last-minute--maybe just a couple days' advance notice.  Fine by me.  If I'm in town and a club wants to throw me a gig, I'm not gonna turn it down.

Unfortunately, the gig ended up getting canceled due to only four comics and zero audience members showing up.  Little bit of a bummer, as I was hoping to make my Indy debut in a nice club in the area.  However, I'm scheduled to do another set there on Wednesday, so it wasn't hugely disappointing in the end.  Later, Courtney and I went to Locals Only to drop some jokes amidst odd country and folk songs.

By the time I went up, there were about seven people in the audience.  But they were into it, and I ended up doing a solid 20 minutes--including a couple of new jokes that I threw in just for the hell of it.  That certainly made up for the canceled club gig earlier in the evening, and also made more sense for me on a karmic level.  The first time I ever performed stand-up was at a music show, so it's only appropriate that my first time performing stand-up in a new city was also at a music show.

Tonight, I'm just doing an open mic at a local coffeehouse.  Looking forward to seeing some of the local talent here, and I'll have a report for you guys sometime tomorrow.

Until next time,

--Riley