"Y'ALL HAD TO BE HERE" PART II - Comedy

This is part II of an interview with Steven Marcus Releford, Niles Abston and Johnny Mac, a few of the brilliant minds behind "Y'ALL HAD TO BE HERE." For those who missed their legendary, sold-out show last time, you have a new opportunity to experience their multimedia music and comedy extravaganza thanks to "Y'ALL HAD TO BE FREE'D" live at Bar Lubitsch at 7702 Santa Monica Blvd., West Hollywood, CA on June 19^th at 8:30 PM. You can buy tickets for that show right here.

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Johnny Mac has a good point about how social media has impacted stand up comedy.

Steven Marcus Releford: Doing stand up I was apprehensive about social media. "Why do I need social media if I'm already out there doing stand up? That's not where it's at!"

At least you had developed mad skills at places like The Garage before focusing on social media. Many people don't want to put in the work. Desmond Dekker was a Jamaican musician and producer that helped create Bob Marley and The Wailers. To sharpen them up into the perfect machine for playing live music with no fear Dekker would have the band perform alone in graveyards at midnight for the dead.

The absolutely incredible Desmond Dekker.

Niles Abston: That's what an open mic is like. If you could perform for the dead then having fifteen live people watching you is going to give you that energy. That's what The Garage open mic was like. If you can perform for people knocked out in their chairs drunk and asleep...

You know you're ready for the big time.

Niles Abston: When I was putting my Netflix special together, I knew that if my joke made people chuckle at The Garage, than the same joke for one hundred people who paid to see me will cause the roof to come off. That was always my gauge, does it get laughs at The Garage mic? If it doesn't I'm throwing it out.

What you said about Desmond Dekker making the band perform in the graveyard, if the band can bring that much energy to a live crowd and they do well it makes perfect sense. The Garage was our graveyard.

Bob Marley and the Wailers.

Plus, any Los Angeles stand up comic performing live is going to be tougher because L.A. stand up comedy is tough.

Niles Abston: You have to want to be here to be here.

It's a gift for the audience too because all of you sharpened your acts at The Garage together, so now you are bringing the finished product to the people paying you to perform.

Steven Marcus Releford: There is an element in this group that we have from performing shows together for years. We've been running shows for a while. We've been working the scene with feet on the ground so we know what's happening.

That's the energy we got from The Garage. With our show we'll all be able to witness the greats coming up. To have that osmosis between the people and us is that energy in the name, "Y'ALL HAD TO BE HERE." Because if you missed it you missed it, so now here it is, again.

Johnny, have you ever seen an LA comic that's more focused on creating a character to play in a Hollywood film, so they don't have real jokes, and then go out to New York City only to fail because of that deficit?

Johnny Mac: I've never personally seen it but it is kind of a known thing in New York City. It's a running joke in the scene. "I had an LA comic on my show and..."

Niles Abston: They had a lot of charisma.

Johnny Mac: Exactly. They were all personality and no jokes. Because in New York it's all about the jokes.

Niles Abston: When I moved there in 2019 I would always get the, "Are you sure you are an LA comic?" I didn't know what that. They really don't think we can write jokes out here because some people really went out there and fucked that all up.

There are killer joke writers up on stage out here, it's just that some people went out there before they were ready and fucked it up for the rest of us. That's why I started Basement Fest as a way to chip away at that. I'd bring comics out from LA for the festival and they'd kill in New York, so it's not the truth.

So LA can write jokes. I like how you created Basement Fest to defeat the stereotype.

Johnny Mac: Comedy is performance plus writing. You are the actor and the writer. And in LA you got a lot of actors who want to be comedians. They want to be funny actors. Someone like Will Ferrell, he's hilarious, but we don't know if he is a stand up comic. If someone wrote jokes for him though, he would kill it.

The power and fury that is Will Ferrell.

We write our jokes and perform them. If you are a performer without the material, it shows. The better writers seem to be better performers. You want to have a balance. That's the best version. But if you can write comedy and do it deadpan, that's the best comic. If you are very personable, but have no joke or punch line, that's not a good comic.

Niles Abston: We see those people there. They will yell the punch line. They'll change their voice into a British accent or they'll sing the punch line. Because they know that in their head there's a voice that's saying their shit ain't funny. So they throw something extra on it to try to make something else.

I've seen that all the time. Why are you faking a British accent if you aren't British? Why are you singing the punch line even though the joke is not about a song. Oh, because you are not funny, and I'm talking about a specific person, right now.

You're talking about many. I've seen a lot of comedians like that. For their punch line they'll use an emotional, cartoon voice and transform into a different human being. They'll use a radio disc jockey voice like they are doing a commercial or suddenly screech their punch line and shock the audience into laughing because of the cringe factor. They'll wave their arms like a windsock puppet because they don't have a punch line or much of a joke. People in mental institutions do that, so it seems funny.

Niles Abston: I know a lot of comedians that perform in their black voice. When they are up there doing stand up, that's not how they are in real life. They are trying to sound like a black person. You see a lot of white people doing it. Trying to sound black.

Johnny Mac: Growing up, most of my favorite comics were black. I did my own voice.

Steven Marcus Releford: I feel like stand up at large is kind of like the martial arts. LA has The Way of the Crane. New York has The Way of the Monkey. So it's like, if you pull back from it there are different styles, but there is an overlap of what makes comedy, comedy.

I believe that LA comics are under great pressure to be a character that works on film, instead of a stand up comic that performs on stage. Some great comedians would just never look good on film.

Steven Marcus Releford: My family was visiting the other day, and said, "Look at you. There's nobody like you on Netflix." It's like I have to fit the mainstream whatever so people will be like, "Ok, he goes into that box." Black comedians go through that too. People assume there are only three types of black comic archetypes.

Niles Abston: "Is he a crazy one?" One of the biggest comedy archetypes is what I call, "The Def Jam." It sounds crazy, but white comedians expected us all to be like that. They didn't even want to have Def Jam happen. That was invented by Russell Simmons and his company. They presented it to HBO and it almost didn't get made because they were trying to explain, like, that black comedy was synonymous with hip hop because hip hop was popular at the time.

It was the 90's so black comedy had to reflect that. They couldn't get black people to watch comedy, but there were these underground spots like The Peppermint Lounge live in New Jersey where you would go practice there and end up on Def Jam. If you could kill with the black crowd in New Jersey, you would end up on Def Jam and so that almost didn't make it on TV.

And now 20-30 years later, you want black comedians that you almost didn't want back then? So that means whatever the new wave is right now, you are suppressing that, and it almost won't happen. Whatever we do in 2022 with our finished product, they are going to make black people do that in 2040. That's just not going to work.

What you are doing with your show is a completely different art compared to Def Comedy Jam. With the current technology you'll also be able to present the show to more people than comedians could 20-30 years ago. It can be on YouTube, Hulu, Netflix...

Larry Byrd, killing it.

Niles Abston: I kind of compare everything to NBA and basketball. Stand up comedy is a lot like the NBA. Back in the 80's Larry Byrd was one of the best basketball guys ever. Everybody was freaking out because he was making two or three threes a game. Now you got guys coming off the bench that are making two or three threes a quarter because the League realized three is more than two so lets just take more of these shots.

So for a kid growing up now they would watch a kid from the 90's would think it's boring because they are only scoring 80 points. Now it's just, shoot the three, shoot the three. The game has evolved. I feel like comedy has evolved that same way. Most of the stand up comedians you know have a podcast, edit the podcast on your own, direct on the side, write scripts, do stand up, run shows, do all these things and we are still expected to kill onstage like our predecessors.

Yes, that's right.

The unbeatable Chris Rock.

Niles Abston: I love Chris Rock. I love Dave Chappelle. I wouldn't be doing what I do without them. But if you compare 26 year old Chris Rock or Chappelle to 26 year old me, I would eat those motherfuckers alive because I have to edit, I have to direct, I have to write. I have to do all these different things they don't have to do, and I still have to do stand up.

The audience is also much more demanding. They have heard it all before.

Niles Abston: Exactly.

Steven Marcus Releford: Oh yeah. If we are all able to achieve what we've done now imagine how high we will fly when we can delegate these tasks to others and have that weight lifted off of us.

Johnny Mac: We are training with weights, dude.

Marcus was talking to me earlier about how just being his own manager takes away from the time he has to write jokes and perform.

Niles Abston: You gotta damn near be a company yourself.

Steven Marcus Releford: Its also a testament to being black on the scene. You have to work ten times harder and build that shit on your own.

Niles Abston: You can't just be good.                          

We were talking about it before, and what a lot of people don't understand about being African American in Hollywood is that you do not have the same generational wealth that white comedians and actors, mostly actors in Hollywood, have.

Niles Abston: We could do a Top White Actors List. Look at all the kids that are actors in Hollywood. They are all kids of white actors or executives. The only kids we have like that is Jayden Smith and he sells water. He doesn't even want to do that shit. He sells boxed water. He's like Jesus. Will Smith raised Jesus. He's like this good person that tries to help people, and then he makes music here and there. Every other white kid like Jayden Smith is an actor or producer.

It's also, look at the top studios you think of when you think of the giants even now that affect Hollywood. They are all white. And then you try to name a famous black Hollywood studio. You can't.

Niles Abston: Oh yeah. And they can only make so many projects a year. How many black kids growing up did you know that wanted to be a P.A. (production assistant)? They are like, "PA? Is that Pennsylvania?" But white kids will have families that get them to be a P.A. on a project, and now they can just sit back and watch a big time director do their job...

Sun Rise the Divine from "Y'ALL HAD TO BE HERE."

Steven Marcus Releford: And get paid $700 for a major fucking film.

Niles Abston: I'm finally going to get to watch a director do their thing because I had to grind for seven years, to get hired on a TV show, write that show, make it funny so I could see the words I wrote be directed. That's how I managed to see a major director work. While some other kid can just say, "I have an uncle that works here so I'm going to go check that out." So you just look at the hurdles we have to go through just to be around to see the stuff. Because you can't be the shit you want to be unless you see it.

It sucks because people tend to hang out, by default, with other ethnicities they are apart of, whether they are Armenians, Jewish or white, although LA and NYC are more integrated. To make it in Hollywood an African American has to hang out with those Hollywood industry, generational wealth Caucasians. That can be tough.

Steven Marcus Releford: That's where the resources are at. There are people starving right now, crossing deserts, looking for where the white people are at. "I don't care where I end up, I'm bringing my baby where the white people are at to find some food."

What bothers me about Hollywood is that there are no African American Golden Era Hollywood studios going back decades, but they are more than happy to profit from the African American, gangster stereotype. Or any black stereotype.

When I grew up, there'd be movies with African Americans shooting people, and they'd be more than happy to collect the money based on films like Boyz in the Hood, or Menace 2 Society exploiting the black gangster archetype.

Johnny Mac: They'll even hire white writers to tell black stories. It's crazy.

I understand how sometimes to tell a story you have to have an outside perspective, but you still have to represent that inside perspective without using a stereotype. Paul Mooney, a great man, understood the black experience, and had to explain to white people who aren't paying attention, especially middle class white people, by being an ambassador without insulting them when he wrote for The Cosby Show. 

He provided an example of a happy, upper class black family to inspire others the way he could because he was dealing with white Hollywood executives. Hollywood has gotten better. Reservation Dogs, on Hulu, is doing a good job of talking about Native Americans without resorting to stereotypes.

Niles Abston: FX is killing it. At the end of the day that is a Native American show with a Native American creator, Taika Waititi, directs a lot of episodes, but they had to package their culture, while there are some rich white people that are like, "Ok, fine." Meanwhile there has never been a show that is too white for TV. You never hear that. But you hear, "Too Asian for TV, too black for TV, too Mexican," because we have to make our experience palpable to them, first.

When you look at Atlanta people think, "Wow, they are really talking about some shit black people don't get to talk about on TV." Here's the thing, you have to look at all the groundwork Donald Glover has done to make white people feel safe around him. Donald Glover is the safest bet for white people when it comes to a black guy. He's the black friend to white people.

He can rap, he's handsome, he's talented, he's been in so many spaces like 30 Rock and Community where he has collected all these white tokens in a way so that they say, "Yeah, we will let you make a TV show," and then, "Woah! That's not the show we wanted you to make...but it's making money." So he's been able to do what a black director hasn't been able to do on television because he has been so palpable to white people for so long.

Steve Trevino - Comedy

As a stand-up comic I can tell you that going up there in front of the mic under the lights with nothing but your wits to save you is fucking difficult.

A while ago I performed at The Comedy Store. That place is gorgeous, but a lot of comics have told me that it's a tough gig. I had performed there before, so it was my second time (just in the Belly Room because I'm a little bitty comedian) and I kind of knew what to expect.

I went up there, did my act, and got a pretty mellow 50/50 ratio. That is, people laughed at half of my jokes. Not screaming laughs, mind you, but real laughs that were not polite, but genuine.

After I walked off the stage I felt pretty lame. Compared to The Ice House, it seemed like my act was weak. But you don't get up a big damn stair case in one giant step.

I sat down to watch another comic go up. I can't remember his name, but he had performed at The Ice House before and he was funny. I could tell the way he talked and moved that he had been performing for a while, and his jokes were good.

Nothing happened. He fell flat on his face. He didn't lose his cool, but not a single damn joke worked for the poor guy. The crowd wasn't hostile; they just weren't affected. It was extremely depressing to watch.

The comic was a total pro. He finished his set as relaxed as possible and got off the stage. The thing was, he was a much more experienced comedian, but it just wasn't his night, that night.

So after that I didn't feel so bad.
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Steve Trevino is a stand-up comic from Texas who infuses his blue-collar humor with a Mexican-American cultural perspective. His comedy veers away from the predictable ethnic references, instead focusing on observational humor about life as a member of the working class, infused with an energy only a guy from Texas could generate.

Trevino recently performed in San Bernardino for the Laugh Out Loud Comedy Festival Art Show. His hour-long comedy was filmed for a Showtime special, along with routines by Rita Rudner, Jay Mohr, Tommy Chong, Willie Barcena and Monique Marvez.


As a Mexican-American, Trevino says he sometimes has to deal with an entertainment industry that expects his work to just be a series of jokes based on racial stereotypes.

“I write material about life. Whether you are black, white or Asian, you can relate.”

“I’m very proud to be Mexican-American, but I set out to make my material as broad as possible,” he adds. “George Lopez does a lot of racial humor, but we are different types of comedians.”

Trevino’s persistence has paid off, and he’s currently working on a pilot for a sitcom that will be bankrolled by legendary producers David Himelfarb and Vic Kaplan.

“We are working on a show about my life with my family, the woman I live with and the love/hate relationship a couple can have.”

He points out that since it’s about him, the show is going to have a cultural element. “I want to show a Mexican-American couple in a good light.”

Trevino talks about how the network got so carried away with the racial vibe of The George Lopez Show in that they even asked that comic to have a tortilla machine on the show. It doesn’t get more one-dimensional than that.

“I think George Lopez’s sitcom was great, but the networks really pigeonholed him.”

Trevino also admits that for all its glitter and glamour, L.A. can bring an audience that might be too cynical to laugh.

“When you play in Hollywood, it’s like there’s a big attitude problem. When you perform in the Inland Empire, it’s for people who work like I do,” he says. “I’m a story teller, I talk about my life. You have to be sincere. People can tell if you are lying.”

As a stand-up comic, he’s met a lot of pot comedians. Does that get old?

“I think, ‘Oh boy, here he goes with the pot material.’ It’s kind of like race humor. It was funny 10 years ago. Now it’s like, ‘Really, dude, those jokes again?’”

Trevino points out that pot humor can be just as one-dimensional as racial humor. “They never make fun of weed in a good way. Why not tell a joke about how cannabis helps a person’s life?”

Dave Ross and Holy Fuck, Part II - Comedy

This is part II of an interview with stand-up comic Dave Ross, who's the host of Holy Fuck, a free comedy show you can find at the Downtown Independent theater. You can read part I of the interview right here.

Aside from Facebook, your show has also gotten popular because of standard-issue, O.G. word-of-mouth communication. Is that easier, now that so many people know about it and you don’t have to promote the show as much as when you first started?

It’s really nice. The two-year anniversay was so big. We had Maria Bamford, Nick Kroll, Jesse Case, Cornell Reid and the show was hosted by Jeff Waughner. People were telling me, “Wow, that lineup is insane, I can’t wait to see it!”

Having Jesse Case there was amazing. He’s one of my best friends. He’s been at it for five years. He’s done Last Comic Standing, and he's also a road comic.

Jesse Case

Maria and Nick and the rest have some heat behind them, too, and during the show all of them just murdered in front of an audience of nearly three hundred people.

For Holy Fuck’s second anniversary there were people standing on the side on the hallway and there were people sitting Indian-style on the ground. It was way more than I could ask for.

What was that show like, compared to your very first one?

Fifty people came out the first night. I was lucky to get that. It’s just hard to get people to go to any show in L.A. I was lucky because I had just started comedy, and although I was going up every night I wasn’t so obsessed with working at the time that I wasn’t hanging out with my friends.

I’ve interviewed a lot of professional comics, and they always mention how lonely it can get because of the work schedule.

That’s how it is. You get obsessed with working all the time and then your friends stop showing up to see you. I had lived in California for ten years, and back then my friends all came out to support my show.

I was really worried about the first Holy Fuck. I didn’t want to take the show to the Downtown Independent theater at first because it has 220 seats. I felt that any crowd would feel tiny, but about 60 people showed up on the first night. That really helped get the ball rolling.

Offering a free stand up comedy show while the recession is still raging is a very cool thing to do.

I’m escastic we could help with that. There are a wealth of great comedy shows in this town. There is another show downtown called Hand Clown. They are celebrating their one-year anniversary, and it’s on the last Thursday of every month.

Jake Weisman hosts a show at the Park Restauraunt every other Monday. Maria Bamford goes up there every show, too. Weisman also runs a story-telling comedy show with me called Two-Headed Beast.

Barbara Gray puts on another show called Space Boners that’s free. She also runs a show called One-Two Punch that’s totally free. Mark Maron has peformed there, along with some other huge names.

There are a lot of great free shows in this town. Comedy has to be the cheapest type of entertainment. You could name any day of the week, and I could tell you where to go to see comedy and get drunk for $10.

There are just so many shows. We all just want stage time. For every show that costs money, there are three or four free shows that you can see for free, and they are all amazing.

Have there ever been some bad shows that just didn’t work out?

At one show there were twenty people, and that felt like no one was there. That was the seventh or eighth show that Mark Maron came to. It was raining, and I just felt so horrible because I look up to him immensely. I just felt like I had shit on one of my idols. Cut to a week later, we had a sold-out crowd.

Mark Maron

There have been tough nights. The one thing about running a free show where you can’t pay the comics is that when you are booking big names, if they get a gig that pays them money, I can’t get upset if they have to drop out. On some days they’ve dropped out and I have to tell the audience at the last moment.

What’s amazing is that pretty much every single time the audience just stays, and the lineups are always good. There’s always a few stragglers who get up and leave, but most of the time they stay.

Didn’t you have the show on the roof, once?

That was a really tough night which turned out to be our best show. I ran the show twice a month up until July of 2011 I started running the show with two co-producers, Jessica Ruiz and Jeff Swatthoffer, which allowed me to put on the show once a week.

Because it was going weekly we were concerned. We had been getting good crowds, but we were afraid that putting on the show that much would thin out the crowds. We focused on making sure the first six shows were huge.

So one night the show is at 9 pm and I get a call at 7 pm from the house manager at the theater. She tells me there was a calendar mishap. There was an event going on at the theater that was booked months ago from 7 pm to 11 pm, and they had paid a bunch of money.

We had promoted the hell out of the show, too. So I got to the theater and tried to talk to the guy, but he was not helpful. He had paid money and I hadn’t so he was on his high horse about it. Abbey Londer was going to be on that night, too. The woman who manages the building suggested that we throw the show on the roof, but we had no chairs.

So all of us thought it over, and at 8 pm we finally decided to throw it on the roof. Before I even started to try it all just figured itself out. The audience started showing up and helping us out. We got some folding chairs from a place down the street, and then we went into the gym next door and got a construction light for a $30 deposit.

A couple of other people set up the stage and the sound. Two hundred people came out and watched the show on the roof. I’ve never seen a crowd of people so positive…so into it. They were totally on board. We were under the night sky and every comic killed that night. We had a blast, that and it felt like a community. Everyone pitched in. It was just like making lemons into lemonade.

We’ll never do it again, though. There was just too much stress.

I know that you are very busy performing on the road right now, so thank you for the interview. Is there anything else you’d like to add before you go?

I’ve already said it, there are so many cheap or free shows… the comedy scene out here is huge. All you have to do is show up. Holy Fuck is quite literally the most satisfying thing I’ve ever been a part of. If you are looking for entertainment and great people to hang out with, go to any comedy show.

Meltdown Comics

My favorite show right now is Meldown, at Meltdown Comics. Pretty much everything that happens there is amazing.

If you send me a message on Facebook, I’ll tell you where I’m going that night. There’s so much and it’s so diverse. No one should ever think they can’t afford to go out for comedy.

Holy Fuck, 9 pm every Tuesday at the Downtown Independent, 251 S. Main St., Los Angeles, CA 90012.

Dave Ross and Holy Fuck, Part I - Comedy

Dave Ross is a hardworking comedian in a city where the stand-up comics that don’t keep going just go nowhere. To Hollywood, it’s a gold mine of comedic talent to choose from, and the talent that makes it can make it can make it big…but until then for the performer who just wants a stage to play on it can feel like they are just another shiny rock in a big, dark hole.

Ross spends most of his waking life touring around L.A. and across the country as a professional comic. In addition to all that, he hosts and organizes Holy Fuck at the Downtown Independent theater, a show that draws some of the hottest names in comedy without charging a dollar at the door. 

Usually, if you want to play in L.A. you have to pay in L.A., but for fans of real stand-up comedy, there are hidden hideouts where you can find free entertainment. 

While that’s enough good news to get any unemployed, underemployed or underpaid adventurer out of their apartment, Holy Fuck actually has free parking on the street if you get there early enough, in addition to not charging you at the door to get in since there’s a concession stand inside where the house makes all it’s money.

Every night at Holy Fuck is like waking up in the morning and finding your stockings stuffed by mysterious goodies from Santa Claus. A veteran of the scene, Ross knows good comics and great ones, so for the price of a bottle of Corona Extra you can see A-list comedians like Matt Braugner, Aziz Ansari, Dimitre Martin and Nick Kroll, to name just a few.

Ross was able to take time from a work schedule that would kill a decent-sized bear to talk about surviving in the business, performing on the top of a roof under the open sky, and how he has been able to keep the faith for the last two years with Holy Fuck.

How long have you been organizing Holy Fuck?

The two year anniversary was on Tuesday, November 17th. The first show was in 2009.

How did you get the idea for Holy Fuck?

It has always been a work in progress. When first I started I didn’t know what I was doing. I just wanted to help my friends perform. I was doing a lot of open mics at the time, and I met a few people who had an art gallery in downtown L.A. and on Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights they’d put on shows and illegally sell booze. 

It made you feel cool…you’d get an email with an invite and a password. You’d pay the cover, walk inside and there’d be bands playing and everything when you got in. It was just regular folks hanging out all night long. 

The Downtown Independent theater

But they ended up getting busted. When that happened they couldn’t do it anymore, but they still had the lease to the place. At first we were going to put the show on there, but then they lost their lease. I met the owners of the Downtown Independent theater at the last moment. They wanted me to put on a show with new comics and they asked me to run it. It was a chance to help my buddies who were looking for stage time, so I told them I’d do it.

What was the first show like?

The headliner was Matt Braunger. I really loved the guy as a comic and as a person. I was so new at comedy at the time and I couldn’t believe I was talking to the guy.

It was supposed to be, “Holy Fuck BYOB Comedy  At the Downtown Independent” but I changed the name. They were just going to make money charging for beer, and I wanted to make the show cheap. The stage time was enough for me. 

Aside from Matt Braunger, what are some of the other big names who have shown up at  Holy Fuck?

Aziz Ansari did the third show. It was nuts. He was just getting big at the time. A month later his album came out, and it was on every fucking billboard in the city. There have been so many other comics, like Louis C.K., Margaret Cho, Todd Glass, Ron Lynch…Louis C.K. was such a big name to have.

Damn, that’s cool. I’ve noticed that that there’s a whole community based on Holy Fuck because of you. Isn't that a lot of work to put together?

There’s so much to it. I get to help my friends get stage time, I get to put on a free show...I mostly just like entertaining people. Like I said, we’re all broke, and there are so many things that cost too much, and the ability to help everyone be in a room for a whole night for nothing and we’re all just laughing and getting drunk is worth the work.

Considering how popular the show is getting, have you thought of ever charging people to get in?

People tell me all the time that I should start charing. I don’t want people to think the show has no value even though we don’t get paid for performing. But I don’t want to be a producer. I want to get paid for my stand up and for performing. My goal isn’t to be a comedy producer. 

You’d rather be a professional performer instead of being a big producer?

That is what we are all going for. Getting good stage time is impossible in L.A. There are so many comedians out here. We are all trying to get better out here and the travel comics still want to practice their new jokes, so for them L.A. is a gym. For the rest of us, it’s also a gym, but the battle for us is actually getting good stage time before you can get paid for stage time at the big clubs.

Read part II of Dave Ross and Holy Fuck interview right here.

Holy Fuck, 9 pm every Tuesday at the Downtown Independent, 251 S. Main St., Los Angeles, CA 90012.