I GO WHERE I’M ALLOWED AND TELL JOKES. Interview with CHARLEY McMULLEN

MP: What were your first steps in comedy?

CMc: In retrospect, my first step in comedy was to answer an ad in the paper for a KJ (karaoke host).

Up to that point, I would often go to karaoke for fun, and even filled it for a host one night, so I figured it would be a good way to pick up some extra cash at night.

I still host karaoke almost 10 years later. It taught me early on that once you gain an audience’s trust, you can take them wherever you want. A lot of KJs who ran the shows I had been going to make the mistake of trying to “outcool” an audience and put on some kind of ridiculous DJ Persona. I called bullshit on that right away. I have always tried to be myself whenever I’m in front of a crowd. An audience respects sincerity, even if it’s wrapped in a dick joke.

In 2007, I answered another ad in the paper, which was an audition for an improv troupe. I had joined Razor Wit -what started as an 11 person team, was later whittled down to 8, then 6, then 4, then two, then four again. The constant two were me and Paul Abeyta. He is still the best improv actor I’ve ever known. Eventually, we moved onto other shit, and mine was stand up.

I don’t know if I’d recommend my background to others necessarily, but karaoke and improv make great building blocks to be a comedian. It’s the practice you need to be a good emcee at a comedy show. That’s usually the first stage. Hit enough open mics at a comedy club and the owner might ask you to host a weekend; that’s 15 minutes at the top of the show, introduce the feature, comeback and give shout-outs to the wait staff, introduce the headliner, come back and say goodnight. Five sets over three days. An emcee is lucky to get $50 for hosting a whole weekend. Do enough weekends, do them well, and then get bumped to feature, then after a number of years, to headliner.

MP: What about your first performance?

CMc: My very first stand up performance was for a talent show in the sixth grade, if we’re going for total accuracy. I don’t remember much about that other than getting a stage boner and hiding it discreetly and successfully. What I consider my first official performance was at an open mic at a bar across the street from a call center where I worked. I don’t remember any of my jokes, other than something about Pope Benedict’s questionable past and another one about dwarves. That was in 2006. I had no idea how to prepare for that. I wrote jokes down word-for-word the way I planned to tell them on stage. I know now that that’s absurd and you should never be that rigid with yourself when you’re trying to get an audience to relate to you.

I didn’t do stand up again until 2010 when I would open the improv shows Razor Wit was doing. Another member of Razor Wit was James Amos, who had joined up after Paul and I had appeared in a community theatre production with him. In late 2010, Razor Wit had more-or-less disbanded and James and I started hitting the open mics in surrounding cities pretty regularly. That’s what I’ve been doing ever since.

MP: Let’s talk a little bit more about your first show. You’re behind the curtain, you’re waiting for your turn (correct me if it didn’t look like that at all). What do you feel?

CMc: The first Razor Wit show I opened for was in Pueblo, CO at a club called The Red Raven. It wasn’t “officially” a club because it didn’t “officially” have a “liquor license”, but somehow every audience that ever went to a show there was drunk as shit, making the very tall staircase entrance a true survival-of-the-fittest situation. There wasn’t a curtain because the space was just a ton of square footage and high ceilings, but nothing really built-in, so I was standing behind one of those Japanese screen room dividers before my first set. I was wearing a white shirt with a black suit and a black tie because that was usually how Razor Wit would dress on stage, so I was multiple kinds of uncomfortable.

I was told to do a 10 minute set. I was poring over my notebook, thinking of last minute changes in wording, worrying about how I look, worrying about how much of my shit will be too weird for people to get. I felt my blood pressure spike and forced myself to take deep breaths and hold it together despite how nervous I was. Pretty much all of the same things I still worry about every single time I go on stage.

At the risk of sounding like an asshole, I was pretty damn proud of myself afterward. Truthfully, the jokes in that set were pretty hit-and-miss, but I feel like I earned every laugh I got because it was so far removed from the vibe of the improv shows, where I had props and other peoples’ set-ups, and whatnot. Stand up just felt like such a pure way to make people laugh. It was just me, my material and them.

MP: So a joke misses. What do you do? Do you keep going with your routine or change it and improvise? You said you got nervous and that’s the part of performing before a live audience… but do you always manage to stay calm, or at least to make that impression?

CMc: I hope I manage to give that impression. I’m not calm at all when I’m onstage. I’ve probably done it a thousand times at this point, but I still get butterflies every time I go on stage. If a joke tanks, I mention it if I can think of something quick and funny. Once I poured a little bit of my bottled water on the floor in honor of a joke that just died. The worst thing you can do is tell an audience they didn’t get it. That just lame. One should always assume they got it and simply didn’t find it funny.

MP: What if you’re not in the mood? Have you ever been in a situation where you had to do a show but had a bad day and didn’t really want to smile and tell jokes? Can you just switch into the “funny” mode?

CMc: I think I actually lucked out a little in that respect because I’m frequently told by other comics I work with all the time that I’m funniest when I’m sad, angry or frustrated. A rotten mood has never hindered my ability or desire to do a set. Being an emcee, on the other hand, can absolutely suffer if you’re in a depressed mood and the audience is counting on you to re-energize them if someone bombs. Trying to manufacture that kind of energy is a necessary evil of being a professional. Again, I think the karaoke gig was good training for that.