Aug. 10, 2024

Columbus Comedy Festival with Walker Evans

Show Notes
Transcript

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WEBVTT

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Kalaroga Shark Media.

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Hello Chi Meg with your daily comedy news this week.

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The first annual Columbus Comedy Festival takes place the fourteenth

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through the eighteenth, featuring over one hundred performers including national,

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regional and local comedians. Headliners include Jason Banks, Michael Ee,

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and black Tony Rock, Irene Ii fumu Abe, and a

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bunch of others. My guest today is Walker Evans. Walker

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is putting this thing together and as you're about to hear,

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dude knows his stuff. And this is no little comedy festival.

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This is not the as you'll hear me say during

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the interview, the Smallville Comedy Festival where we grab the

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locals from the chuckle Hut and called it comedy festival.

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This is a real deal. So we get into the

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business of it. And as you listen, you'll hear that

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Walker knows his comedy. So it's the Columbus Comedy Festival,

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kicking off on August fourteenth, five days, one hundred and

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fifty plus comics. Here's Walker. So I'm really curious on

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your background. I've definitely attended festivals. I've even put together

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a few events. It is no small task, whatsoever? What's

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your deal? How do you come to put together a

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comedy festival? And as we dive into the details of it,

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this is no small festival. I've looked at the sponsor list,

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the number of events, the level of comedians. This isn't

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you know. Hey, I'm friends with the guy at the club.

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We'll throw a two night event and call it a

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comedy festival. This is a real deal. So what's your story.

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Yeah, My wife and I have run a local news

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publication here in Columbus for the past twenty three years,

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started in two thousand and one called Columbus Underground, and

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about eleven twelve years ago, we decided to pivot into

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event production. Instead of doing like a paywall model that

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a lot of news organizations do, we throw events and

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so we can tell our readers, Hey, if you like journalism,

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if you like what you're doing, buy a ticket, come

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to an event, have a good time, and know that

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helps to fund local journalism here in Columbus. Some of

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our events are on the smaller side to three hundred people,

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but we've run a coffee festival since twenty sixteen that

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has grown. Last year, in the eighth year, it's sold

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out in advance with eighty five hundred people in attendance,

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so that event has grown into a pretty big undertaking

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putting this coffee festival together, So we do have experience

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with like larger scale of end production. We're aiming for

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ten thousand attendees this year in October. But we're also

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big fans of comedy and there isn't a festival in

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Columbus currently, so we're like, why don't we rally the

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troops and try and pull off one of these to

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a large scale?

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All right, so many questions, So let's start with the

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business sides. Presumably you have existing relationships with sponsors, You're

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known in the community, so it was a little easier

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to reach out as opposed to if I just showed

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up in small town, USA and I was like, Hey,

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it's the Smallville Comedy Festival. Who wants to sponsor it?

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Can I have a check? So I assume it was

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a little more straightforward because of your two decades.

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Yeah, yeah, we've built a pretty good reputation on being

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able to pull off the events that we say that

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we're going to produce. So we've got a little bit

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of history and again, twenty years yeah, connecting. Columbus is

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a really interesting city because it's a region of two

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million people, so we're a pretty big city. But it's

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pretty easy to get to know people here. You just

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reach out and say, hey, do you want to get coffee,

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and you can connect with people pretty pretty easily. There's

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not a lot of gatekeepers, so yeah, and I think

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people really like We love festivals. We have a whole

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summer lineup of the Arts Festival, the Asian Festival, the

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Red White and Boom. We have a huge Pride festival,

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so all some are long. People are looking for things

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to do. And because we're not replicating something else that's

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already here. There's six different Taco festivals. We're not like, hey,

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we're going to be Taco fest numbers step because we're

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doing something different. There isn't a comedy fest currently. There

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have been some in the past that have come and gone.

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People seem to be really excited about something new to

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add to the lineup.

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Who's uh, I don't necessarily need a specific name, but

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who's helping you with the booking? Because there are some

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big time comedians on this list. Again, this isn't the

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Smallville Comedy Festival. We'll just get the regulars from the

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Chuck ohad do you play there every Tuesday? You're bringing

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real names in, knowing something about the business. Again, no

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small feat and discussions and logistics going to that. So

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how are you tackling the bringing in the Mike Leean

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Blacks of the world.

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Yeah, so I guess to rewind to last year, like

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last October, when we were sort of noodling on this idea.

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We brought together all of the local venue operators, promoters,

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different groups in town to say, hey, what if Columbus

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Underground runs the festival as a whole, But then each

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of the different venue partners can program their own events,

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do their things their own best way, and it's all

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under the umbrella the festival. So that allowed others to

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do their own things. And so, for example, the Attic,

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which is a local club, they're bringing in Jim Florentine.

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They have a pre existing relationship with him, so they're

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able to tap into him pretty easily. The Funny Bone,

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which is the big dog in town, got Tony Rock,

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so that's obviously a big name and they had their

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relationship there. But the events that we're programming, we just

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started reaching out to people to see who we could get,

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who's available, whose price range and budget we can work with.

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And there's been a couple of folks that you reach

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out to one agent or management or group and you

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get one person, They're like, oh, what about this person?

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This person they're on tour. Anyway, adding a Columbus date

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might be pretty easy. So some of it, like Mike

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William Black just came through talking with Curtis Flag in Chicago.

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I think I reached out to him originally about Kristen

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Toomey and He's like, here's the rest of the list

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that I represent, right, who can we plug it? And

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I'm like, yeah, I love my people Black, I love

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the States. I'm old enough to remember the state from

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the nineties on MTV, and so yeah, it ended up

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being just throw a.

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Lot with the wall and see what sticks. Approach.

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Let's talk about these specific lineups and catch a listeners

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up on it, and I will be doing raps about

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it on the particular individual days, but in multiple venues,

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multiple artists every night, can you just give us an

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overview of who's coming in what a typical breakdown is

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both headliners and I always advise the audience if you

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go to festivals, especially the really bigger name ones, I

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always say, don't go see Chris Rock. You can see

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Chris Rock on Netflix. Go see somebody who maybe you've

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never heard of, who's in up in comer. So just

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if you can give us an overview of what the

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next few days look.

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Like, Yeah, sure, I mean I would say, even like

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the bigger shows in the bigger rooms, the bigger headliners

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are still like emerging.

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Upcomer might not be.

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The best term for them, But people like Chloe Radcliffe

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who's been doing it for a while, building an audience,

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but still very much not an arena level comic, but

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headed on that trajectory. I would say her, Sumi Abe

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who's coming in on Friday, Sam Jay, who was recently

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on the roads to Tom Brady. Some of these folks,

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I think being able to come and see them in

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a little bit more of an intimate environment in a

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room that seats two hundred to four hundred people is

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going to be something special because those folks when they

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come back to town and play like the big arena

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in a couple of years, that's when the tickets are

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going to be a lot more expensive, and that sort

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of thing. But we have a lot of great regional comics,

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not just from Chicago, but Cleveland and Cincinnati. Ramon Revas

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is a big name in Cleveland that's coming down. Ran

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Barnaclough and Blake Hammond from Cincinnati are coming up.

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But a lot of great locals though too.

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Jason Banks is one of our big kind of hometown heroes,

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Simon Fraser, who's semi local. Yeah, there's gonna be a

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lot to choose from, and a lot no matter what

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your style of comedy is. We try to go for

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diversity and style of comedy as well.

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What comedy are you into? No, I hate comedy. I'm

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just doing this festival some question.

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Yeah, No, I like a variety of things. I would

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say I love a good weirdo. Okay, me too, yes, yes,

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so on. One person I'm very excited to see is

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Comrade Tripp.

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I'm not sure if you're familiar with them. He's based

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in Minneapolis.

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Definitely like an emerging talent, but he's very monotone and dry.

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His humor is very nihilistic, it's self deprecating. It's really

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funny if you like that style of comedy, a little

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emo phillips ish I would say a little Mitch hedbergish

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in terms of like tone. So folks like that I

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really enjoy quite a bit. But I'm really excited to

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see Pat Burscher. He's a Canadian comedian based in New York.

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He's had some really great viral clips that I've watched

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and fell in love with on the social media, so

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we'll be going to see a full set from him too.

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I think we're speaking the same language. There are different

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styles of comedy and there's the straightforward approach, and it

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was recently a notable Netflix special where the comic and

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question went straight down the middle, and that's fine, but

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I prefer personally to play on the edges as well.

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As I was prepping for this and clicking on Walker

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Evans and seeing what comes up, you got to see

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Mitch Hedberg. Now he's not someone I saw. Just to

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catch you up and the listeners, I started running Serious

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XM comedy. I think it was two thousand and four,

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so Mitch was around and hot. I've told the listeners

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a story before. We were doing a broadcast at the

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Javit Center at the New York Car Show. Jim Brewer

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was our afternoon drive host, and it's been twenty years.

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Jim was a little pissy that day because the night before,

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Mitch didn't show up for a show. We later found

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out the reason Mitch didn't show up for the show

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is because he had passed away. But he was booked

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on the show that day, so I never got to

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see him. I never got to meet him. I know

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his wife reasonably. Well. What was it like seeing Mitch

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Hedberg in concert?

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It was great. We were big fans.

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This was it the what was then the Cleveland Improv.

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I think it's rebranded to the Cleveland Funny Bone. But like,

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his level of fame and popularity had gotten to the

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point where he's on stage and he's trying to tell

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jokes and there are people in the crowd finishing the

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punchline because they had listened to his material, like they

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bought an album, and so you could see that like

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wearing on him and frustrating him. And at one point

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halfway did the show, he said something along the lines

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and I'm paraphrasing, but he's you know what, screw it,

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I'm going to do all new material. It's not as good,

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but at least you people won't be able to finish

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my punchlines because you've never heard it, and everything we

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cheered that, we'll like, yeah, let's hear some new stuff.

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So he was rolling with it, but you could tell

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like maybe the fame was getting to him. He wasn't

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able to cope with it in a way that other

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people do, so it was really of his past.

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It's really interesting to me to hear you tell that

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story unless you've listened to fifteen hundred episodes of Daily

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Comedy News and you were familiar with the story I'm

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about to tell. So when Mitch passed away, I'm not

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a vulture. I wanted to do something for Mitch on

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the radio station, but I'm not like, Hey, your husband

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passed away three hours ago, let's do a tribute show.

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So I like waited whatever amount of time, and I

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reached out to Lynn and I'm like, hey, we really

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want to do something. And she came in and shared

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with me that this is going somewhere that she had

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shared me that she hadn't really heard from anybody was

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excited about it. So she came in and I was

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sitting in one of the little edit boots with her,

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and she had some tapes of Mitch late in life sets,

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perhaps a show you were at, and she's playing them

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and they're really well recorded, and I'm like, you've got

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an album here, and I don't make comedy albums. Just

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as a fan, I want to hear it. And we

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connected her with Comedy Central and a guy named Jack

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Vaughn and that became the posthumous Mitch Hedberg album. But

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she had shared with me exactly what you said, that

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he was frustrated that his timing was getting off because

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he had to speed up and tell the punch before

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somebody in the audience got to the punchline, and he

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was really struggling with his cadence there. So it's fascinating

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to me as a fan to hear you tell that

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story that you experienced that.

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Yeah, Yeah, that was a really Despite the issues that

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he was dealing with on stage, it was a really

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fun show. He put on a great show and we

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couldn't have been more pleased to have the opportunity to

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see him. I will say too, we had a local

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comedian here at Columbus Pass relatively recently within the past

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month named John Summerville, who I didn't really know very well.

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He ran a lot of open mics like ten to

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fifteen years ago. So a lot of the folks who

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are coming up now really wanted to pay tribute to

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him because of what he helped build in the local

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scene here. And we noodled with the idea of doing

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something like in remembrance or making some sort of award

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in his name, maybe for comedian during the festival, but

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it feels a little too soon because it was so fresh,

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and so it's one of those things that we need

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to talk with his family and maybe see if there's

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something like next year, like some sort of legacy award

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or something, just to kind of keep his name in

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the spotlight.

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Yeah, I think your sensibility is in the right spot.

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There's always that careful walk of your heart wants to

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do to the right thing, but sometimes things are just

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better off if you take a beat, and I think

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legacy things like that are great. I was recently speaking

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to Jerniy Gunderson, who runs the National Comedy Center, about

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how comedians get forgotten. We were specifically talking about people

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like Richard Jenny or Robert Shimmel who were huge twenty

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five years ago and you don't hear their names now,

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and there's their material doesn't really surface. I guess Netflix

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really isn't going to put up a twenty five year

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old special, and the YouTube algorithm is more friendly towards

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newer things, so it's a shame. So anyway you can

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keep someone's name out there, I think that's really important.

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Yeah, we're doing something else now that you mentioned that,

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and I guess this will in the past at the

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time this is released. But this Friday we are screening

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the Aristocrats film from Henerie, I should say, from two

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thousand and five, which I'm like, man, it'd be great

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if it was the twentieth anniversary, but that would be

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next year. And you go back and watch the trailer

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and look at the list and how many people have

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passed that.

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Were in that.

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George Carlin was in that when that was recorded, but

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Bob Saggett has passed, Gilbert Godfrey has passed, Richard Lewis

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has passed. So I think it's going to be fun

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to watch this, especially with some comedians in town who

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are like in their twenties, so they've never even heard

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of this documentary, let alone seen it.

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But my wife and I saw it in the theater and.

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The one theater in town that would play it because

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AMC wouldn't play it back in two thousand and five.

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So I think that's gonna be really fun just to

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watch some of these comedy legends like really go off

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the rails. Have you seen that Cash?

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Well?

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Absolutely, You've got my brain thinking now that it has

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been a minute since it came out and there's this

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whole generation. I wonder what a Shane Gillis or a

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Sam Morrell or somebody like that would do with the aristocrats.

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I'd love to see an dated version of something like that.

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Yeah.

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Yeah, So we're partnering with the local theater here at

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the Gateway Film Center. They're going to do a screening

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and we have a couple of local comedians who do

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like some sketch kind of stuff, like some short films.

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We'll tie in some local little bits before that as well.

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So it should be a lot of fun a way

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to kick off the festival.

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That's awesome, all right, more with Walker Evans in a second.

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It's the Columbus Comedy Festival kicking off August fourteenth. How

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are you staffing? Having ran a very small event, I

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know it's hard when you're not in the room and

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worrying about what's happening in the other room and the

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three things that are going to go wrong, and your

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phone's going to light up because somebody's cranky about something.

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What do I do here? How are you staffed up

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for this one?

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Yeah?

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So we have a full time events director, Daniel Hagworth,

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who works for us with Columbus hunder Grounds, so she'll

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be in charge of a lot of that stuff. We'll

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have people at each of the venues that we're operating

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to make sure that volunteers are checking people in, directing

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people to where they need to sit, pointing out where

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the bar is, that sort of stuff.

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We've got a pretty good group I think about thirty five.

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Volunteers that'll help reset the rooms, clean up trash, do

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the legwork of that sort of stuff. But then with

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each of the shows, we'll have a show runner assigned

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to make sure that the comedians are checking in when

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they need to, the lights go down, when the lights

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need to go down, the audio comes on, and that

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sort of stuff. And then a lot of just background

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logistics type of stuff. We have someone in charge of

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like ground transportation to make sure that the headliners have

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a ride to and from the airport, hotel, venues and

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stuff like that. So it's a pretty big undertaking, and

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there is stress knowing that I'm not going to be

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in every place all at once, and I want to

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make sure everything goes as best as it can. We're

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good at delegating and trusting and people to make sure

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that everyone has a good time.

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Are you feeling good going in?

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Look?

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I'm looking at the sponsors White Castle. How did you

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pull White Castle?

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They're based here in Columbus, so I've known the VP

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of marketing there for a good long time. It's a

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great I think it's easy to make fun of sometimes

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it's like the drunken late night food. But it's still

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a family owned business after one hundred years of operations.

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So it's a really good, like fourth generation local company,

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and they really care about the local community a whole lot. Yeah,

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just tapping it into those resources and leveraging them. But overall,

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I mean feel good. You know, there's always like the

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nervousness speak out from an event. I feel a little

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better knowing that it's completely indoors, so whether it's too

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hot or rainy or anything won't really affect it. With

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our coffee festival. It's an outdoor event, so we always

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start checking the weather, hitting refresh onweather dot com and

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praying that it doesn't rain. But no, I think we

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feel pretty good. People seem to be really excited. We've

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got some local media coverage on it, and the buzz

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has been pretty positive.

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Good. Nervous energy is always a good thing. I've been

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doing this in some form since ninety two, and I

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still get that nervous energy before a live show, before

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a big show. I think it's a good thing. I'm

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thinking now what my brain two went to is what

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it was at Serius XM. We did comic Con radio

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a few times, so that's part of my insight into

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knowing what goes on behind the scenes. So we would

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show up there and have to put together an entire

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radio station from scratch when the door's open, so we

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would do if Comic San Diego Comic Con was Thursday

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to Sunday, we'd land and not have anything and have

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to be on the air by six pm Eastern, which

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was three pacifics So the doors didn't open un till

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noon Pacific. So somebody go record a panel, and somebody

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go talk to some fans and get some audio, and

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I'd send it back to New York and till my

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number two, who would stay back in New York to

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run the show. Okay, I've got six minutes of us

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talking to fans, and we'll have a panel in eight minutes.

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But I don't have it yet, but be ready, here

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comes a file, upload it and he would just handle

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everything back and then I guess this is your role

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for next week. I would try and stay calm in

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the middle and never let him see a sweat and

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I'd have a million questions in my mind, but just

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