Dayton937

Things to do in Dayton | Restaurants, Theatre, Music and More

Rob Haney

The Power And Light Of Dow Thomas

By Leave a Comment

Dayton And The World Loses A Comedy Icon

 

Dow Thomas: Comedian & Musician 1953-2012

Sifting through scattered memories, most of which are second hand recollections that occurred before my time, I find myself overwhelmed by a life lived with a manic exuberance. I found out about comedian Dow Thomas’ passing from a friend and regular customer of Wiley’s Comedy Niteclub who called to inform me of the news. I stayed up until around 2:00am poring over the condolences that poured out from all over the country, cascading down from Dow’s Facebook page and other social media outlets. I looked through pictures that I had of Dow, read through transcripts from interviews I had done with him and reflected on conversations that we had had in the past. While many around me knew Dow longer and were closer friends than he and I were, Dow possessed the ability to make you feel that you were the only one in the room. Even during performances where there were a hundred or more people in the room, he made you feel as if you were within his inner circle, that this was an intimate gathering of friends and not just a group of people watching a performance. Even beyond his unerring talent and exuberant imagination, this was his true gift.

Born in Chillicothe and raised in the Akron/Cleveland area, Dow moved to the Dayton area in 1971 to attend Wright State as a theater major, a fitting field of study for someone who had been familiar with the stage for much of his youth. Even though Dow was not a native ofDayton, he embraced the area with the fervor that a lifelong resident should have.

“I didn’t originally come from Dayton. I just kind of adopted the city in 1971. I moved to the area to go to Wright State and I just stayed.” Dow said during one of our conversations. “I ended up living in downtown Dayton. I used to hang out at the Arcade a lot there. I’m a downtown kind of guy.”

Dow Thomas as Cléante in Molière’s Tartuffe

Dow was very active in the drama department while at Wright State, performing in several theater productions, such as Shakespear’s Romeo and Juliet and a pair of Molière’s plays; That Scoundrel Scapin and as Cléante in Tartuffe. In the latter drama, he caught the eye of a fellow student, Rob Haney, which signaled the beginning to a lifelong friendship.

As his hair grew, so did Dow’s creative yearnings. He began playing music around town, playing at venues that are but a mere memory to most Daytonians.

“I started my shows at the Upper Krust on North Main St. for ten dollars a day. I liked being up on North Main because I liked to go to shows and Gilly’s used to be up on North Main and there was also The Tropics and Suttmiller’s, which was fun for me to go see supper club type comedians like Jerry Van Dyke or Pete Barbutti and those kind of guys.”

Even though many venues and stages were opening themselves up to Dow’s music and acting, this was still not enough to contain Dow’s imaginative energies. He started sneaking his oddly skewed humor into his songs and banter with the audience.

A poster from 1972 for the Upper Krust

“I was actually doing comedy in 1972, but at that time there weren’t any comedy clubs, so I was just doing comedy along with music. I would get hired as a musician/entertainer and just add in the comedy in between songs.” Dow reflected. “I would always put on masks and stuff…I just can’t help myself from clowning around. I’d have the gig and eventually I had bands, but when I clowned around, everyone clowned around with me. What was always part of the show was me being stupid. It was what I said in between songs and me ruining songs, like singing like a dog and getting a ‘bark along’ going.”

In those days, you may have seen Dow tooling around town in his hearse, decked out like a Bohemian undertaker, black clad and sporting his ubiquitous top hat, running from gig to gig. He played with Astrid Socrates for seven years (creatively billed as Astrid & Dow) as well as drummer Doug Buchanan Tim McKenzie on lead guitar during yet another incarnation of his ingenuity. He was a featured act at The Trolley Stop, Clancy’s, the Iron Boar and Bogey’s.

Comics don’t need to spend actual time together to feel like brethren or family.  We are constantly accruing that common experience that instantly bonds us all separately and continually.  But, few of us are as pure, kind, original, and superbly funny as Uncle Dow.  I feel forever indebted to him for making it possible for me to ever start and I know that anyone who knew him feels like they, too are some of the luckiest people alive.  Uncle Dow made people laugh, but even more so he made them feel alive and always made them smile. ~Ryan Singer

“I’ll never forget the day Dow Thomas and my path crossed. I was part owner of a night club called Bogey’s onWatervliet Ave. in Dayton when Dow and Jeffro stopped in after buying guitar strings at Ace Music.” Mike Adams reminisced recently. “Things weren’t going very well at the bar and we couldn’t afford a barmaid or a cook so I was working. Dow Thomas ordered two drinks and asked for a menu and ordered a sandwich. Upon serving him he asked who owned the place and I confessed. He asked how things were going and I said not to well. He said he could tell. He asked if I had ever heard of Dow Thomas and I said yes but had never seen him and he told me I was talking to him. He offered to do a show one night a week for free as long as I didn’t interfere with him trying new material. I lost a lot of money owning that bar but memories like this makes the money seem irrelevant.”

Dow also frequently played in a bar onPatterson Road called the Iron Boar and becoming steadfast friends with the owners, Dan and Jodi Lafferty.

“We used to do a Gong Show at the Iron Boar and it was fun because we’d have some guy come up and go, ‘I’m going to do my imitation of a lobster’ and we’d go, ‘Good!’  So he’d put claws on and hop around like a freak…it was just so stupid!” Dow began chuckling to himself on the phone before going on. “I used to do a thing called Punt The Fish and I’d yell out, ‘It’s time to…’ the audience would scream, ‘Punt the Fish!’ I had this rubber fish and audience members would come up and kick this fish and we’d measure it off with toilet paper and the one who kicked it the farthest won. One night I had this woman up on stage and she kicked the fish and it went into the propeller of the ceiling fan and came back and smacked me in the face. Everybody was just laughing and I stood up and screamed, ‘Disqualified!’ It was all just so stupid, but you’ll never be able to have a moment like that ever again.”

In ’91 when I took over Jokers Comedy Café, Dow was running the open mic night.  I’d never heard of Dow and looking at this man in a black trench coat and top hat, I have to admit my first impression was not great-   he’s gonna be dark and sarcastic and egotistical, I thought.  I could not have been more wrong!  Dow loved being on stage and his joy radiated through the crowd. He would have an audience pounding their table to Power & Light, and tossing paper plates across the room as he sang Sail Cats. ~Lisa Grigsby

The comedy began usurping the music and Dan Lafferty began booking ventriloquists, jugglers and other oddball acts to fill out the shows.

“I used to have people like Jay Haverstick, who owned Jay’s Seafood, he would come and see my shows. So would Mike Peters. They would be out late at night and they would just say, ‘Hey! Let’s go and see what crazy Dow is doing!’” Dow said during another conversation. He went on, describing another huge change that was bout to occur in his life. “But there wasn’t a comedy club, so I left forL.A.I gave them (the Lafferty’s) a one year’s notice (laughing) and said, ‘In a year, I’m going toL.A.’ and that’s when we turned it into a comedy club.”

Eventually, the Lafferty’s decided to change not only the whole format of the club to comedy, but the name itself. In an unexplainable instance where someone could legitimately name a comedy club Lafferty’s, Dan decided to use his nickname instead, dubbing the newly restructured club Wiley’s.

Dow, true to his word, eventually left forLa-LaLand, seeking his fame and fortune, both of which proved to be elusive in the land of silicone and sunshine. He found that the venues that were available to him were less than conducive to his creative talents. At one point, he found himself doing sets between bouts at a boxing match and, towards his triumphant return toDayton, he was unceremoniously replaced with disco music at a Newport Beachclub. Yet the comedy scene was heating up nationally and Dow was riding the cusp of this chaotic wave. The shows were not the structured tight sets that we witness now in the clubs, but were given to more improvisational melees and surprise guests.

“There were these guys like Rich Purpura, who was a comedy/magician, and Tim Walko, a guitarist, and they were both fromChicago. We’d do a show, just packing the place, but at the end, we’d just get up there and jam and kept the show going and clown around with each other.” Dow said. “By then, we were just trying to make each other laugh, and that’s what the audience liked. It was kind of like. It was kind of like having the Rat Pack or something. It was that kind of feel, where everybody’s in the groove. Back then I could have Emo Philips come in and do twenty minutes and then I’d get a chance to go to the bathroom. Then maybe Judy Tenuta would come in and do twenty to thirty minutes and then I’d get a chance to go to the bathroom. For me, I thought it should go on all night.”

Rob Haney

Another person that benefitted from the burgeoning comedy scene was Rob Haney, a newly touring comic and future owner of Wiley’s Comedy Niteclub.

“Rob Haney came up to me one time and said, ‘Can I get up and do some time? I just got back from The Comedy Store.’ He had just done some showcasing there…which surprised me because Rob was a bouncer in a bar I used to work at.” Dow recalled that, “When I first met him, he was a doorman at a place called The Bar inWest Carrollton. It was a rough little joint that ended up being Omar’s for a while. It was an old basement bar and the family that owned it was pretty rugged. I actually had guns pulled on me in that bar. I’ve seen him mace guys and throw guys out…he’s a pretty tough guy. He had like shoulder length hair at the time and pretty well built, so it was a different Rob Haney that came up to me with short hair and asked if he could do like twenty minutes and I said, ‘Sure!’ I let him up at the Trolley Stop and I had a gig there like six nights a week…it was crazy.”

Another iconic staple of the Miami Valley that Dow had a huge role in was with his friend Dr. Creep (Barry Hobart) and Shock Theater. The inception of Shock Theater was supposed to be actually scary, as an accompaniment to the B-rated horror flicks that they screened, but the campy ineptness and irrepressible humor of Dr. Creep and the people that worked on the show quickly made the show a campy carnival for all of those late night viewers.

“I ended up getting on just about every television show in Dayton, but I got with Dr. Creep in the late seventies when it was called Saturday Night Dead because they had him on after Saturday Night Live, so it was kind of a neat spot.” Dow went on to say, “So I wrote The Ballad of Dr. Creep and went on there with my girlfriend at the time, Astrid Socrates and also with a bunch of my friends and we did skits.”

Barry Hobart (Dr. Creep) And Dow

“You know, what’s funny about that whole thing is that they became the number one, locally produced television show while I was writing for them. They would go, ‘Okay, we’re showing Dracula: Prince of Darkness’ and we made up the Bat Photo Studio and all of the prints would come out really dark, and customer’s would comment, ‘Wow! These prints are really dark!’ and I’d go, ‘Well, I am Dracula: Prints of Darkness! Sometimes I accidently cut their heads off!’ and I’d hold up a severed head. It was just stupid stuff like that.” With a tinge of regret, Dow added, “Of course, Joe Smith said, ‘No, you can’t do this and you can’t do that.’ He was an integral part of the studio there, so I got censored quite a bit and got into a little bit of trouble. I remember John Riggi and I getting yelled at because we changed the weather map one time. We got up there and started putting a bunch of tornados around Xenia…they were just little magnetized things back in those days. We were hippies in a studio that had rules.”

Dow played some forty different clubs in the MiamiValley the years that he was here and developed a huge fan base locally as well as in other cities that he performed in. In 1997, he moved to Florida with his wife Kay and they took up residence at some of the local clubs near their new home. Even after his departure, Dow was voted Dayton’s Best Comedian for two year’s running. He would still make frequent sojourns to Ohio, usually performing at Wiley’s one to two times a year, creating comedic chaos with his skewed humor and especially with his song Sailcats, in which he would cajole the audience into throwing paper plates in lieu of flattened kittens as the song implied. The staff would usually find the last paper plate stuck in the rafter shortly before Dow’s next scheduled appearance.

Dow Thomas At Dirty Little Secret Sanitarium Show

I contacted Dow in February of 2011 to ask if he would perform at my upcoming Dirty Little Secret Sanitarium show in May. He was eager to do the show because of the variety aspect of the event, but was reluctant in some ways, feeling that it would be a conflict of interests with his Wiley’s appearances. Rob Haney assured him that there would be no conflict and he agreed to do the show. That evening became an impromptu reunion of sorts in honor of Dr. Creep as not only had Dow worked closely with him, but so had some of the other performers slated for that evening. Thomas Nealeigh from FreakShow Deluxe had worked with Dr. Creep as had A. Ghastlee Ghoul. Our emcee for the evening was Dr. Creep’s protégé  Baron Von Pork Shop and some of the members of Team Void had recorded music for Shock Theater’s DVD’s. Dow had a blast at the show and had garnered yet a few more fans for his cult of comedy.

I contacted him again this past December to see if he wanted to be part of the Dirty Little Secrets Sick Of Santa Show and he readily agreed. We spent the rest of the conversation talking about old horror movies and other trivialities. On the night of the show, December 28th, 2011, his wife Kay showed up at the club saying that Dow was really sick and would be unable to perform. Seeing the look on her face and knowing Dow’s penchant for performing, I knew then that it was ore serious than she was letting on. The next evening, Dow arrived at Wiley’s to do his Thursday night set and we could all tell that something was wrong. The current owner, Rob Haney, and other staff and friends finally convinced Dow he needed to seek medical attention. He was admitted toMiamiValleyHospital and, two days later was released. He performed the New Year’s Eve show as well as the shows the following week.

His last show on January 7th, 2012 was astounding. Offstage, he seemed somewhat fragile, but as soon as he was on stage, that glimmer came into his eyes and the casual smirk shown across his face. He performed Sailcats and wheedled the audience into throwing the paper plates once again, daring any one of them to land one of them on his top hat. It was a picture perfect performance where someone actually landed a paper plate onto his top hat. The show ended with a standing ovation for our Uncle Dow, with audience members shouting out their approval and appreciation for Dow’s show.

After the show, Dow was surrounded by family and friends, well wishers and fans. It was the way of Dow: that feeling that you just needed to be near him and everything would be alright. You would be safely ensconced in his world.

Shortly after returning to Akron, Dow was hospitalized. He died January 18th, 2012. The outpouring of condolences and memories was immediate and Dow’s Facebook page became a makeshift memorial for a legion of stunned fans and friends to share their grief as well as their memories.

I think now of the boarded up Upper Crust, the warped wooden floors of the Trolley Stop, the comfortably worn carpet of the Wiley’s stage and I can hear the clank of glasses against the cascading laughter and see Dow with a mischievous gleam in his eyes as he dons a mask and unleashes a dialogue of absurdity in the voice of Lon Chaney. I can see him on stage doing what he did best: fashioning a world without limits, pushing the envelope until it bent and combining chords to nonsensical songs that bring laughter to all who are compelled to bang their glasses on the table and sing along. I see him smile down from the stage wearing a paper plate atop his felted hat, an improvised halo for our imaginative jester.

Read my previous article from 12/2010 – “Dow-Town Dayton”

Dow-Town Dayton

By 5 Comments

Dow Thomas And The Cult Of Comedy

Part horror show hippy, part amusing musician, part imaginative genius. Dow Thomas is truly one of the Dayton originals, having performed comedy locally before there was even a venue dedicated to the genre. He has stepped so far outside of the box, finding himself still in the forefront of comedic inspiration, twisting the mundane into a bizarrely fascinating funhouse that moves so quickly, it’s hard for the average person to keep up. From playing Led Zeppelin’s Whole Lotta Love on the banjo to a stirring rendition of Sailcats, which prompts a Rocky Horror-esque melee of paper plate flinging, Dow Thomas is one of the most original and entertaining comedians around.

I was recently able to talk to Dow from his Florida home as he readied himself for his trek North to Dayton. I asked him to describe his unique brand of humor…because I sure as hell couldn’t.

“What I do is I write stupid songs…a lot of stupid songs…and that makes stupid routines that you’re not going to hear them from anybody else because they’re mine.” Dow went on to describe his dedication to creeping his material fresh, “If you write new routines and jokes all the time, they are going to be thirty seconds at the most. You can’t get up there and be Bill Cosby anymore. People have short attention spans, so what I do is write a strings of songs or jokes.”

In the late seventies, Dow showed up on a local television show that aired at various times on Channel 22 which was then titled Saturday Night Dead, a play on words to contrast the show’s spot directly following Saturday Night Live. It featured B-rated horror films and boasted one of the most good-humored hosts by the name of Barry Hobart who played the part of Dr. Creep. Dow, along with his girlfriend at the time, Astrid Socrates, played an original song titled The Ballad of Dr. Creep, which signaled one of the funniest collaborations, along with a host of other comedians, a puppeteer, John Riggi (who went on to write for 30 Rock) and a flamingly gay Frankenstein. Dow has never given up his penchant for the peculiar, having appeared in several movies, most within the genre of the B-rated horror flick. Dow spoke briefly about his most recent foray into film.

“It’s called The Psycho Dish. The director actually has gotten me in a part of another film he’s getting the rights to which is a Civil War movie. They want me to play a legless, one armed guy in a wheelchair. It’s called Bats Out Of Hell. I’ve got a couple of irons in the fire with the acting thing, but they’re all going to be independent films, and you never know where that’s going to go.” In relating what type of roles he has played in the past, a common theme begins to emerge. “I played the Devil in a movie and I played…it’s always like I’m playing some grave robber or something like that. People actually call me up and say, ‘Somebody said that you be great at playing the creepy old man downstairs.’ For me, it just keeps your chops up when you try to do everything.”

Our conversation meandered on for over an hour. Dow related stories about the roots of Dayton’s comedy scene which, at that time, was virtually nonexistent, at least from our modern perspective.

“I didn’t originally come from Dayton. I just kind of adopted the city in 1971. I moved to the area to go to Wright State and I just stayed and I ended up living in downtown Dayton. I started my shows at the Upper Krust on North Main Street for ten dollars a day.” Dow went on reminiscing, saying, “I liked being up on North Main because I liked to go to shows and Gilly’s used to be up on North Main. There was also The Tropics and Suttmiller’s, which was fun for me to go see supper club type comedians like Jerry Van Dyke or Pete Barbutti and those kind of guys.”

In the seventies, comedy was not the mainstream draw that it would soon become in the eighties, so Dow would camouflage his true comedic intentions under the cover of his music. He would get hired in as a musician and then add in little comedy bits here and there until they became his entire set. Back in those days, a set might be five hours, not the tight twenty or the solid hour that has become an industry standard. Dow found himself at many local bars, like The Bar, Clancy’s and the Iron Boar, which was to become legendary Wiley’s Comedy Niteclub.

“We used to do a Gong Show at the Iron Boar and it was fun because we’d have some guy come up and go, ‘I’m going to do my imitation of a lobster’ and we’d go, ‘Good!’ So he’d put claws on and hop around like a freak…it was just so stupid! I used to do a thing called Punt The Fish and I’d yell out, ‘It’s time to…’ the audience would scream, ‘Punt the Fish!’ I had this rubber fish and audience members would come up and kick this fish and we’d measure it off with toilet paper and the one who kicked it the farthest won.” Dow went on to tell about, “One night, I had this woman up on stage and she kicked the fish and it went into the propeller of the ceiling fan and came back and smacked me in the face. Everybody was just laughing and I stood up and screamed, ‘Disqualified!’ It was all just so stupid, but you’ll never be able to have a moment like that ever again.”

Hearing the stories about the way things used to be, it made the current state of comedy seem somewhat stale and staid. It just seemd like there used to be so much more than the emcee, the feature act, the headliner and then, “Thanks a lot! Don’t forget to tip the wait staff!”

“Right!”Dow agreed, before going into another story about the way things were. “There were these guys, Rich Purpura, who was a comedy/magician, and Tim Walko, a guitarist, and they were both from Chicago. We’d do a show, just packing the place, but at the end, we’d just get up there and jam and kept the show going and clown around with each other. By then, we were just trying to make each other laugh, and that’s what the audience liked. It was kind of like. It was kind of like having the Rat Pack or something. It was that kind of feel, where everybody’s in the groove.”

In speaking about the origins of Wiley’s, I asked Dow how he came to have such a following there (that is still quite fervent even to this day), but also how he came to meet the current owner of Wiley’s, comedian Rob Haney.

“Rob came up to me one time and said, ‘Can I get up and do some time? I just got back from The Comedy Store.’ He had just done some showcasing there…which surprised me because Rob was a bouncer in a bar I used to work at…”

I was quick to learn that almost every story that Dow told led into another story, with sequels and prequels thrown in just to keep things interesting. Backtracking, I finally found out about the first time he had met Rob Haney.

“When I first met him, he was a doorman at a place called The Bar in West Carrollton. It was a rough little joint that ended up being Omar’s for a while and then Fricker’s. It was an old basement bar and the family that owned it was pretty rugged. I actually had guns pulled on me in that bar. It was rough and there were a lot of biker guys in there, but I was playing in there for a while.” Dow said, before getting back on tack. “Rob and I started talking at the bar and then, all of a sudden, he realized that when he was at Wright State he had seen me in a theater production and we talked about that for a while. Anyway, at that time, Rob had like shoulder length hair, so it was a different Rob Haney that came up to me some time later with short hair and asked if he could do like a twenty minute set. I said, ‘Sure!’ I let him up onstage at the Trolley Stop…”

And the rest, as they say, is history. Dow appears at Wiley’s two times a year, bringing with him his bag of masks, his banjo, a balanced mix of new material and old favorites. If you have never seen Dow onstage, do yourself a favor and check him out this week at Wiley’s. He will be appearing Thursday, December 16th at 8:00 pm, Friday December 17th at 9:00 pm, Saturday December 18th at 8:00 pm and 10:30 pm and Sunday December 19th at 8:00 pm. Tickets range from $5 to $12. For more information or to make reservations, call (937) 224-JOKE or go online to www.wileyscomedyclub.com.

Jimmy Pardo: The Jazz Zinger

By 2 Comments

From Comedy Clubs To Conan, This Comedian Is Never Not Funny

After studying for a year at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in Pasadena, California, Jimmy Pardo decided to go back to his home state of Illinois and entered the comedy scene during the halcyon days of the eighties. Coming up through the ranks, Jimmy went on to become a headliner, appearing in his own Comedy Central half-hour special and making guest appearances on television shows like That Seventies Show and Becker. Always casting a nervous eye on the future, Jimmy has taken a practical approach to his career, creating opportunities for himself instead of waiting for that ephemeral big break. By doing so, Jimmy has created several shows of his own, such as Running Your Trap, You Bet Your Life and a very successful one man show, understatedly titled Attention Must Be Paid: The Jimmy Pardo Story. Not satisfied with becoming stale or behind the times, Pardo hosts a critically acclaimed and wildly successful podcast, Never Not Funny, which is an unscripted talk with various guests from the world of comedy as well as Pardo’s unique humor.

What follows is an (almost) unedited transcript of my most recent interview with the acerbically witty comedian as he was in transit to the world’s best day job…

J.T.: How are you doing?
Jimmy: Good! Jimmy Pardo calling…but obviously you know that.

J.T.: See? I was editing pictures from a pole fitness class. That’s where you rate with me. ‘Pictures of hot, nubile women exercising on stripper poles…what? Jimmy Pardo is on the phone? Well, let me just put these away then!’
Jimmy: Well good for you! And those are ladies you know, right?

J.T.: Yeah.
Jimmy: That makes it hotter, doesn’t it?

J.T.: Yeah, it has that ‘girl next door’ quality to it.
Jimmy: Yeah! Right! I like it. I love the idea of it.

J.T.: Well, how is everything in your world?
Jimmy: Everything is good. As we speak, I am driving to go to work with Conan.

J.T.: That was going to be my first question. I was wondering where that was going to lead because you were there right when the Jay Leno hammer fell.
Jimmy: I was. I was there for the whole seven months of the Tonight Show with Conan O’Brien and, luckily, I got picked up to go to work again. Today is our first test show and, as I said, I’m heading there right now.

J.T.: That is just ultra-cool.
Jimmy: Yeah! I’m really excited about it. I don’t…and if I’m repeating myself, I apologize… this is a great group of people to work with and Conan is just a terrific guy and I’m honored to be part of such a terrific team. I know that sounds like a press release, but I mean it.

J.T.: Oh, well yeah. You know, the way that Conan has handled this whole situation, from beginning to end, has just been classy and funny at the same time. I think that it has boosted his image in a  lot of people’s eyes.
Jimmy: It really has. It’s made him sort of like this underdog/folk hero too. People are like, here’s this guy who, for no reason, got shit on, basically. He was putting on and doing a great show, he was being funny and he was getting the ratings in the demographics that they had told him that they had wanted him to do, and then they went, ‘Yeah, you know what? That’s not what we want after all *click*’ It’s just ridiculous.

J.T.: Yeah, and things went the other way for Leno as well.
Jimmy: Oh, absolutely.

J.T.: On many different levels.
Jimmy: You know, (Leno) didn’t come off well in any of those interviews that he gave, during and post, in my opinion.

J.T.: Well, switching gears, Never Not Funny is doing really well…
Jimmy: We are doing very well and I’m proud to be a part of that as well. I’ve never been prouder of anything than I am about the podcast.

J.T.: Well, I read a while back that it even got a write up in GQ Magazine…
Jimmy: Yeah! They were nice enough to mention us as their Number One Relatively Obscure Thing To be Paid Attention To and hopefully that got us a few more listeners.

J.T.: Well, that’s kind of a left handed compliment, isn’t it?
Jimmy: (Laughing) Yeah, right! Well, you know how everything needs to be snarky, right?

J.T.: Yeah, but it’s like, ‘Should I say thank you or smack the fuck out of someone?’
Jimmy: Yeah, well, you read Entertainment Weekly and everything has to be some backhanded compliment. It just can’t be, ‘Hey! This is great!’ Everything just has to have that subtext of snarkiness to it.

J.T.: Right! You know, when people have asked me to describe your show, I always say…and you might disagree with this…but there seems to be different styles of stage presence and types of delivery, so I put it into musical terms which is to say that there are those whose performance is more like grunge and some that are more like classical jazz. I’ve always describe your act as being like watching classical jazz. It’s almost got that Catskills quality to it.
Jimmy: I don’t, uh…I don’t disagree with anything you have said. In fact, I’m very flattered when people refer to my delivery as jazz because I do think it has some of those elements, if you are trying to compare it to music because it’s got that rhythm and it can take off into another rhythm. No, I one hundred percent agree with you and I appreciate the compliment and I take it as such.

J.T.: Well, how would you describe your act to someone who hasn’t seen you perform?
Jimmy: You know what? I’ve been trying to figure that out for twenty years. How do you put into words the nonsense I do? You know, I used to call it ‘high energy sarcasm,’ or somebody once described it as that in a review of my show and, at the time, I thought it summed up what I do. I still think it does, but when people think of sarcasm, they picture some dour guy, like a guy that just stands there and is mean, bitter and angry…and that is certainly not what I am. But when they said ‘high energy sarcasm’ I thought, ‘Well, that makes sense because I’m also not Dane Cook or Steve Byrne, who are both fine comics. I’m not one of these guys that shits on those guys. But, they are these high energy kind of guys, but they aren’t really sarcastic. So, for me, high energy sarcasm worked, but I do so much improvisation on stage these days that if there was a way to figure out something like, ‘high energy improvisational sarcasm’…but boy, doesn’t that sound like a shit show? (laughing) I don’t know. I really don’t know how to describe it.

J.T.: That’s what I mean. I have a hard time describing your show because you can go from an egocentric dictator at one point directly into some self deprecating rant about yourself.
Jimmy: It’s, uh…you know what? I mean, that’s exactly it too.

J.T.: Maybe highly energetic schizophrenia.
Jimmy: You know, I want to say that somebody used that term to describe my show once before too. A woman in Ann Arbor called me that. But, I don’t disagree with that either. You’re right…I mean the egocentric dictator is kind of rough…but yeah, I turn it around and then I’m the stooge, which I think is necessary because if you’re just up there yelling, you’re just an a-hole, don’t you think? I mean, you have to turn it on yourself at some point. I think some of these young comics don’t realize that part of it. I apologize J.T., but at zero with this question. It’s odd to try and describe what it is that I do. It’s just funny and…I don’t know. I’m a failure. (laughs)

J.T.: Let’s talk about the Never Not Funny podcasts for a minute then. What do you have coming up with that? Any interesting interviews slated?
Jimmy: You know, we have Scott Aukerman makes his return (October 27th) and next week my beautiful wife Danielle Koenig will be on the show. We’re coming to the end of this season, and we’ve had a lot of new guests this season and added some new faces to the show and I already have a lot of new faces lined up for season eight, but I don’t want to give those away because it won’t be a surprise when we do it.

J.T.: That and you’ll jinx yourself and they’ll pull out at the last minute the moment you utter their names.
Jimmy: Oh, of course. The minute you printed their name, that guy would cancel. We also have the Podcast-o-thon coming up the day after Thanksgiving. This year we’re going to go for twelve hours where last year we only went for nine. We raised over twenty-one thousand bucks last year. We’re hoping to best that, but I don’t see that being possible, but I would should love it if it happened. Starting today, as a matter of fact, we began to book the people for that event. I sent out a bunch of invitations to appear for it and hopefully soon they will start to come back to me, so there will be that as well as well as the regulars from the show and we will have a great twelve hour marathon.

J.T.: What is the charity that you are raising money for?
Jimmy: It goes to Smile Train. That’s the charity that goes to Third World countries and fixes cleft palates.

J.T.: Oh yeah!
Jimmy: Yeah, you’ve probably seen the ads like in the back of Parade Magazine.

J.T.: Yeah, some of the most horrific pictures in those ads.
Jimmy: They really are. I picked up Parade Magazine and I saw this ad and it says, ‘Each surgery only costs $250.’ So, I immediately donated…not because I’m this big money guy…I don’t have money to donate, but I was so moved by those horrific pictures that I thought, ‘Jesus Christ! For $250 bucks you can fix this kid’s face? Why not donate?’ Then when it came time last year for the end of the season, we said, ‘Hey, let’s do a marathon podcast just for the fun of it!’ and then I thought, ‘You know what? Let’s do it for this charity.’ So, when we raised this much money…I never…I never felt like I had done something better for the world in my life than giving this much money to save this many kids. It really felt great and hopefully we can do the same this year.

J.T.: Well, I sincerely hope it does as well. With the podcasts getting more popular, are people seeking you out asking to be a guest instead of visa versa?
Jimmy: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah! People…uh…not so much calling, but if I’m like out at a show, (comedians) are like, ‘Yeah, I’d sure like to show up on that podcast!’ Nine times out of ten, I go, ‘Yeah!’ and walk away and hope they never bring it up again. With the one out of ten, I’ll go back to my co-host producer Matt (Belknap) and tell him, ‘Hey! Kevin Pollak wants to do our show!’ and so it’s like, ‘Great! Let’s book him!’ and we definitely get him on as quickly as we can. But, with all of the requests, sadly, there’s a reason you haven’t been asked my friend. By the way, some of those are really funny people, but not funny in conversation. You know, I used to hear Steve Dahl and Garry Meier do radio out of Chicago and they interviewed Jerry Seinfeld who, at the time my…you know…and man, he was awful!

J.T.: Oh yeah, I’ve seen a ton of interviews where you would have gotten better reactions out of coma patients.
Jimmy: Don’t you think?

J.T.: Yeah, he always just gave really short, deadpan answers.
Jimmy: Just horrible! Not even funny! You’re not promoting your show! You just…showed up! So, again, it’s not an insult to these people when I don’t want to have them on, it’s just I know that they are not going to be right for that format.

J.T.: I’ve always thought that about some of these morning radio shows. There are some absolutely hysterical people that have been on there, but the format kills them.
Jimmy: Right!

J.T.: Ron Shock is a perfect example because he is a brilliantly funny man, but his long drawling type of storytelling does not survive on that ADHD programming format. I mean, before he is 1/16th through a story, someone has already interrupted him and derailed the whole thing…
Jimmy: Exactly! Boy! You’re not kidding either. You’re just derailed and, like in Ron’s case, with that Southern drawl, how do you go back like, ‘Anyhow, what Ah wuz sayin’ wuz…’ It would make you sound like a dick, so you drop it and you’re done. So, instead of coming off with this really funny story, people listening are like, ‘Well, that made no sense! Thank God someone interrupted it!’ Yeah, I agree with you. I one hundred percent agree.

J.T.: By the same token, there are people that are absolutely hysterical on radio, and you would think that their stage show would utilize that improvisation, but after four or five years, it’s the same routine.
Jimmy: (laughing) Right!

J.T.: Well, that’s like that air bass thing you do on Bob and Tom. At least since their program has been picked up for television broadcast by WGN, you can get the more subtle nuances of the air bass performance.
Jimmy: Definitely. You know, as much as I want exposure, the downside is that anytime I go to a Bob and Tom market, there’s always at least one guy that yells out, ‘Air bass!’ It’s like, ‘Okay, there’s no music playing sir. It doesn’t apply to what we are doing currently.’ And by the way, and you know this: They don’t yell out when it’s quiet…they yell it out one word before the punchline. ‘Air bass!’ Yeah, thanks.

J.T.: Well, have you picked up any other air instruments like the accordion?
Jimmy: I have not. I stick strictly with the bass. You know, when you perfect an instrument like that, you don’t want to take away from its uniqueness. How’s that for a ridiculous answer (laughing).

J.T.: What you should do is if someone yells out for air bass, you should just stop what you’re doing and do like a three minute solo without any music or noise whatsoever and then, when you’re done, remind everyone to thank the gentleman after the show for suggesting that encore performance.
Jimmy: Right! I mean, obviously I do other nonsense, like I tap dance for no reason…you know, I’m doing this Cajun character who just shows up out of nowhere now, for no reason.

J.T.: (laughing) I haven’t seen that yet.
Jimmy: Oh, it is the dumbest thing you will see in your entire life. I’m not going to lie to you: I’ve never, in my entire career in comedy, I’ve never heard an audience laugh harder than when I do this dumb Cajun guy. It doesn’t last more than two minutes, because it can’t because it is so ridiculous, but when I do it, I still get spit-takes. I mean, Jesus Christ, I’ve worked my ass off for twenty years and, as it turns out, I do this dumb Cajun guy and he gets the biggest laugh. Fair enough.

J.T.: You caught the Larry the Cable Guy syndrome.
Jimmy: Yeah, right. But I never go more than two minutes because I don’t want to be that guy…you know, with all of his billions of dollars. I don’t want that. No.

J.T.: That’s funny because I just watched the roast of Larry the Cable Guy and Greg Giraldo just tore into him.
Jimmy: He was great, Greg. Everybody says Jeff Ross, they call him the ‘master of the roast,’ but I think Greg was. Don’t you think?

J.T.: Greg’s stuff was brilliant.
Jimmy: Nobody was writing sharper material than Greg.

J.T.: Oh, I mean, Greg Giraldo doing the Flavor Flav roast with, ‘You look like Idi Amin after a three year crack binge on the sun!’ That is an elegant reference.
Jimmy: (laughing) Gorgeous!

J.T.: I got to meet Greg once when he middled for Colin Quinn. I was very surprised. He was a very subdued guy off stage.
Jimmy: You know, it surprised me to. I met him a couple of times at the Montreal Comedy Festival and he’s one of those guys that, like when you see him, with what he does on stage, which is so quick and sarcastic, but off stage, it’s like, ‘Hey man, I’m Greg.’ And it’s like, ‘Oh! Oh good! We’re just people.’

J.T.: If you ever get a chance to, look up Greg’s interview in Psychology Today…it definitely gives some insight into what happened.
Jimmy: Okay. I will definitely look that up when I get home tonight.

J.T.: So, your role on Conan: are you doing the warm up only or are you going to be getting into the writing as well?
Jimmy: You know, I’ll still be just the opening act, but I’m hoping to get in some more sketches this go-round. I did a few for the Tonight Show (with Conan O’Brien) that, due to time constraints, never aired. I am hoping to get in some more sketches and to be a little more involved, but for the most part right now, I’m happy to just go out and be the warm up act and have, quite frankly, the greatest day job in the world.

J.T.: That would be fantastic. Have you been told to keep things in check?
Jimmy: You know what, the only notes that I was ever given, to be honest with you, is just ‘don’t swear.’ That was it.

J.T.: I interviewed Archbishop Schnurr and the whole way to the interview, I’m smoking like a freight train telling myself, ‘Don’t say fuck, don’t say fuck and for fuck’s sake, don’t say goddamn.’ Then I got worried that I had hyped myself up so much that the first words out of my mouth were going to be, ‘Fuck, fuck, fucking, fuckity fuck!’…and then I would go straight to hell.
Jimmy: (laughing) Of course! You know, it’s funny, I did a private gig once, which I can’t stand doing, by the way, and before I went on, the guy goes, ‘The only thing I ask is just  don’t say fuck.’ So I said, ‘Oh, okay.’ So I decided to replace every ‘fuck’ in my act with ‘goddamn.’ As it turns out, that might be a little more offensive to some people. Turns out that saying, ‘This goddamn thing and that goddamn thing’…some people truly get offended by that. Okay, good enough.

J.T.: Now, you’ve played Wiley’s a few times…
Jimmy: This will be my third time there. I used to play Joker’s way back in the day, so when that kind of went down, Rob (Haney) was kind enough to call me up, so I went over there and I love it.

J.T.: Do you think it’s a good room for you?
Jimmy: You know what? I’m a guy that speaks so positively about comedy clubs as opposed to venues, and you have one of each in Dayton. I love Wiley’s and while he might not get the numbers that the other club gets, in my opinion, you’re getting comedy fans as opposed to people who just want a night out. I like a nice 150-200 seat room with the stage right there and the people are right there with you, so you can communicate as opposed to perform. That’s the problem…well, I guess it’s not a problem…well, I kind of think it’s a problem…I think that having the stage and the audience so separated has made some comedians go in the direction of, ‘I should perform! I need to kill!’ as opposed to just worrying about being funny. That’s what I love about Wiley’s…even back in the day when Joker’s was there. There were many years when Joker’s drew tremendous crowds. Then, sadly, it became a place for bachelorette parties and you end up wanting to slam your head against a wall.

J.T.: There’s no competing with a bachelorette party.
Jimmy: The day that someone puts a rule out across the country that bachelorette parties are not allowed at comedy clubs, that guy will be my hero.

J.T.: Speaking of Rob, when he told me he sent you an email warning you that I wanted an interview, he said, ‘Oh, I told him that a local writer wanted to interview him and that you were a big fan of his iPod.’ Rob and technology equals a bad mix.
Jimmy: You know, Rob will send me an email and if it takes me more than one word to respond, he’ll write back, ‘Can you just pick up the phone!’ He’s like a dad in that way. Like a dad…if you picture the stereotypical dad…that’s Rob. ‘I don’t understand this future!’

J.T.: When he said I loved your iPod instead of Podcast, I was like, ‘Yeah, I love how Jimmy’s playlist jumps from Marilyn Manson to Air Supply…it’s such an eclectic mix.’
Jimmy: You know, there’s a good chance that might happen. Yeah, you’ve seen my iPod. You like the way I handle it. You like the case and the clear plastic I put over it to prevent scratches.

J.T.: Well, let’s wrap this up. Is there anything that you want out there that we haven’t covered?
Jimmy: Nah, I think that covers it. In fact, I’m going to be pulling into a garage and I’m probably going to lose you. I sure do appreciate you taking the time to do a story.

J.T.: And I surely appreciate you taking the time to talk with me. I will definitely see you when you get to Wiley’s then.
Jimmy: Fantastic! I look forward to it. Thank you so much and I appreciate it J.T.

You can catch the sweetly sardonic humor of Jimmy Pardo for a limited engagement at Wiley’s Comedy Niteclub (101 Pine St. in the Oregon District) on Friday November 5th at 9:00 pm and for two shows on Saturday, November 6th at 8:00 pm and 10:30 pm. Tickets range from $10 to $12 and, since this is a special show, no coupons, passes or offers can be accepted. Call (937) 224-JOKE to make reservations and for more information, check out Wiley’s website at www.wileyscomedyclub.com or become friends with them on Facebook.

“So A Dyslexic Walks Into A Bra…”

By 2 Comments

…and Other Tales From the Fringe of Dayton’s Comedy Scene.

The only sound cutting through the sea of silence is a slight feedback whine as the flop sweat pours from your forehead, reflecting chromatic prisms from the glaring, white-hot spotlight. You clench the microphone with sweat-slicked hands, as your mind becomes an echoing chamber of panic. You can’t even make out the faces in the crowd, the piercing light obliterates their features, changing the warmth of humanity into an amorphous blob of judgment. How could this have happened? Your mom told you that you were funny. The clerk at UDF always laughed at your jokes. Your shadow, nailed against the faux brick wall by the merciless spotlight, seems to shrink as your confidence bids you a fond adieu, leaving you for climes that are more hospitable. You either recover quickly, raining down a torrent of bon mots to cover your previous gaffe, or you walk the longest walk ever made under the glaring reproach of the unamused.
Stand up comedy is one of the least understood and surely one of the most minimally regarded of the performing arts, yet it is one of the most difficult crafts to hone, execute and endure. The constant pressure to produce and perform is unrelenting. Development of a single joke’s precision, synthesis and rhythm is always evolving. The eternal search for material, the sharpening of lines, the shaping of words and the final development of delivery is exhaustive. Ironically, just as perfection is almost within reach, the material is usually scrapped because it is no longer topical or has become tired and mawkish and now, all new material must be captured and crafted.
In an attempt to check out the local comedy scene with an eye for how they all got started, I interviewed several local comics. Some of them are fairly new to the landscape, appearing at open mic nights for very little or no compensation, while others are national road veterans, having amassed quite an impressive resume’. The first question that arises would have to be why anyone would want to pursue a career in comedy in the first place.
A seasoned comedian, Mark Fradl, started his career in 1992 and ran hard until 1999, before abruptly leaving the stage completely for various reasons, including being burnt out on the road and its day to day hustle. He returned to stand up several years ago because the desire for performing live was re-ignited within him. When I asked him recently why anyone would get into comedy, he said, “I think you’ll find most comics have the same story: people told them they were funny. They somehow got up the courage to go up that first time at an open mic night (still the hardest thing I’ve ever done) and they just kept doing it. The dream starts huge – Tonight Show, Letterman, sitcom – but quickly narrows down to more immediate goals – get a strong five minutes, get a strong fifteen minutes, get ANY work, get good work, and then the Holy Grail of goals: quit the day job. I think that’s what keeps people in it, there’s always another little rung to climb. Step-by-step you’re deeper into the life.”
Ryan Singer, who used to be a schoolteacher for Dayton Public Schools and is now on national tours stated candidly, “I just had to. It is that simple. As a kid I remember seeing standup comedians on television and thinking to myself, ‘that is the best job ever!'”
A recent college graduate as well as a fairly current addition to the local comedy scene, Mat Thornburg took a slightly different route to the stage. “I was really involved in theater in high school” he wrote me, “and I always ended up getting cast as the comic relief. People kept telling me that I should try standup comedy, but I had no idea how to get started. Then when I was in college they had a comedy contest to win tickets to see Dane Cook. So I guess you could say the reason I got on stage the first time was because I wanted to see Dane Cook, but really it was something that I was going to do sooner or later and the contest was just an easy way to make that first step.”
Jeff Bang, nicknamed, quite unimaginatively ‘Banger’, is a butcher by day and does stand up locally as well as working at Wiley’s comedy club as a…well…I’m not really sure what Banger does, keeping me company while I stand outside and smoke, I guess. Anyway, when I asked him why he kept doing stand up, he answered my question with a question.
“Why do I keep doing it? Do you know what it’s like to get a good high? A big rush?” To which I replied that not only had I never imbibed in any illicit drugs in the past, I would eschew all illegal substances in the future if in fact any illegal substances were presented to me. He did not believe me, informing me that I was full of bovine fecal matter and continued onto his point. “There is no bigger rush than standing on a stage and making people laugh. There is no bigger rush. You get up there and do it and you have however many people are there, a hundred, a thousand, however many, and they’re in the palm of your hand and they are just hanging on every word. There is no bigger rush than that.”
Mark Fradl echoed Banger’s reasoning with, “…the good shows are great enough to get you through the bad ones. There’s still the insane rush of coming up with an idea and doing it on stage that night and honing it show after show. And there’s still a thrill in seeing how you’re bringing some pure laughter into someone’s life.”
“You’ve got to have that burning desire like 24/7 that makes you want to go out… just want to go out. You’re scared and nervous, but you want to go out there.” remarks James Earl Tompkins from Springfield. Originally from the East Side of Chicago, he landed at Wilberforce and Central State in his mid-twenties. His inspiration actually came from a speech class where he learned how to debate and discuss topics. He saw that he could apply those concepts to comedy and began trying to hone the mechanics at open mic events. His first forays did not always go as planned. “I felt so small on a lot of those days. I just wanted to hide. Hide out for weeks.” He sought solace in books that showed him the pitfalls of failure and how to strike back and overcome over adversity.
Egyptian born Sherif Hedeyat, who lives in a three-bedroom sleeper cell in Centerville and is one of the members of the Axis of Evil Comedy Tour, started in much the same way. While attending Wright State University, he tried out an open mic night at the now defunct Joker’s Comedy Café.
“I remember I was in the lounge at Wright State,” Sherif recalls, “and I remember somebody saying, ‘Hey, you’re pretty funny. You should try doing comedy at Joker’s.’ I went in there one night and just ate it bad. Literally it was like a year between my first and second time on stage because I was sitting there going, ‘Man! That was a painful experience!’ Then the second time on stage…well, it’s kind of like a drug. You start once, then you go back a while later and then you start to want it and you get better and you want it more, and it progressed.”
With ego crushing moments, little or no pay and the constant reworking of material, why would some partially sane person keep subjecting themselves to this potentially abusive mistress? The rush and the possibility of fame and fortune are motivating forces, but definitely not one that ranks the highest in most of the comedians’ minds that I interviewed.
“I keep doing it because there’s nothing else that provides the same thrill or satisfaction.” says Mat Thornburg. “Standup is great because you know instantly how you’re doing. That can be bad when you’re not doing well, but when you are doing well it’s great to hear it in the audience’s laughter. I think another reason I keep doing it is that there’s always room for improvement. There’s always something I can get better at or something I can make funnier and every performance is an opportunity to learn something new about standup and what works for you as a performer.”
I wondered if the national headliners looked down upon the aspiring comedian with disdain. Having already slogged up the mountain, did they view the local comics as untalented plebes or would they remember the arduous journey that they themselves had made and offer some assistance. I asked Banger this question, because he has a unique perspective, hanging out at Wiley’s, doing whatever it is he does there.
“A good headliner will look at an open mic guy that’s ‘got it’, especially the ones who’ve ‘got it’, and encourage them and they’ll give them little tips here and there.” Jeff said, “The ones (headliners) who are stuck on themselves, and they’re not usually the best headliner in the world, those are the ones that look down on the open mic guys.”
Ryan Singer had a slightly differing view, stating, “I think headliners don’t spend much time thinking about the local comedians one way or the other. I think headliners have their own careers to worry about and especially in the business nowadays, it can be brutal because there are so many comedians out there trying to work the same rooms. It is a tough business and when you do find a headliner that wants to help you, it is truly a random act of kindness. There are those that enjoy seeing the local comedians and offer good advice about building a career. Most young comedians don’t want to hear the advice because is all about patience and hard work. It takes a long time to become an overnight success in comedy.”
The Dayton and surrounding area has nurtured many nationally known humorists and comedians. Jonathan Winters, Erma Bombeck, Dave Chappelle, Drew Hastings, Dave Zage, Kenny Smith, Jesse Joyce, Gary Owen, Rob Haney…the list goes on and on. Is the Dayton comedy scene still a vibrant and living player on the national stage?
“Actually, I see a lot of good, up and coming comedians.” said Sherif. “There was a time for several years when we (local comedians) weren’t working ‘together’. I mean, when I came up, Cincinnati had Josh Sneed, Greg Warren and those guys, they were all hanging out together, they were writing together, they were in the clubs hanging out, they were creating that scene. In Dayton, it was almost like everyone was just doing their own thing or they were going to Cincinnati or Columbus to hang out. It seems like ever since the Funnybone opened (in Beavercreek) we got a whole new clientele and audience and we’ve got a whole new crop of comedians.”
To stand at a microphone alone, captured by the spotlight in front of a group of strangers with the intent of making them laugh is a daunting task unto itself. A classically trained actor performing a one man show does not have to carefully gauge the spectators and change up lines in midstream or alter the dialogue to please his audience. If an audience came to see Hamlet, then Hamlet they shall see. Yet how do you please a group that just shows up with the expectation of being made to laugh? Everyone’s sensibilities and sense of humor are truly not the same. The ability to have a rural farmer sitting next to a office worker who is seated near a college student and having them all succumbing to the least understood of all human reactions, that of laughter…well, one is truly encountering art at its most refined.
You can check out some of the best that the area has to offer almost any given Sunday at Wiley’s Comedy Niteclub (check website for details). This coming month, from July 1st through the 4th, Wiley’s will be holding a comedy contest, which I would like to think of as a Comedic Thunderdome-esque Cage Match of Epic Proportions, but Rob Haney just tells me to shut up when I say things like that. Anyway, you can come down and watch the best of the best compete for comedic glory or, since there is enough time, stand in front of a mirror, your dog and your family for a month, spitting the best anecdotes and one liners you can think of, honing your skills for the Big Time! The winner will receive $1,000 in American currency and forever secure their place in the Dayton’s Hall of Humor…well, if we had one of those here in Dayton, I’m sure that you would be secured there. Check out the open mic nights, and especially come out and support the local talent for the Wiley’s Comedy Contest on Thursday, July 1st at 8:30 pm, Friday, July 2nd at 9:00 pm, Saturday July 3rd at 8:00 pm and 10:30 pm and Sunday, July 4th at 8:30 pm. Tickets are a mere $2. To enter the contest yourself, contact via e-mail Jack Wilson funnymayor@aol.com.