Comedy Field Trips!

If you are a comedy agent, you typically are booking comedy shows all over the country and if you’re lucky, even outside of the United States.  The more shows you book, the harder it is to visit and meet the clients face to face that are utilizing your booking services, it’s just part of the job.

When the shows are somewhat within driving distance to my office, I like to visit them and watch the comedy shows I’m booking to see & evaluate the comedians performing their jobs, as well as personally meet and thank the clients that Summit Comedy are working with.  I call these “Comedy Field Trips”!  Sometimes I’ll bring close friends of mine as well to enjoy the comedy show, and if possible, make a fun trip out of it to include the local sites of the destination and possibly get a round of golf in pre or post show.  Yes, the phrase “I’m working!” sounds hard to swallow as you’re reading this, but I can’t help that there are many perks to my job, and as Taylor Swift says “Haters gonna hate, hate, hate…”, or however that song goes?! ;)

Upon graduating college and before starting Summit Comedy, I worked with the now defunct comedy agency Creative Entertainment.  In my first month of being hired, the company’s owner, Brad Greenberg, said to me, “On Saturday, you and I are driving to Atlanta to go meet with a new club client we are working with.”  This was indeed my first comedy field trip.

Saturday came & we were off to Atlanta, GA!  Brad, was on the phone the entire time making business calls on his big Motorola flip phone like the one pictured below.  I drove, he made calls….one after another.  I was in full learning mode listening to him make and negotiate comedy deals.  I learned a lot from this man and still appreciate the fact that he took a chance on me.

This trip had 2 objectives.  One was to meet up with the very talented guitarist (Gibb Droll) who was apparently a family friend of Brad’s who he wanted to meet up and possibly chat about representation.  Even though he owned a comedy agency, Brad was always looking outside the box on how to make more money in the entertainment market.  He was apparently in the “Wrestling bear” and “Chippendale” business before striking gold in the 80s during the comedy boom.  The second objective was to go visit the new venue they were booking comedy for.

After our dinner with Gibb Droll, we had to shuffle over to the venue.  We drive up to a building that had a marquee saying “ALL NUDE DANCERS” in big letters and underneath in small print saying “& free comedy”.  Yes people, comedy at a strip club.  This doesn’t say a lot for the establishment if you have to offer comedy as a second form of entertainment for a gentleman’s club?!  It was a one comedian format designed to have comedy sets during the “breaks” of the dancers.  That comedian was Billy Gardell.  If you’re not familiar with Billy, many moons later he had a big hit on the CBS show "Mike & Molly".  Not too long ago I was watching late night TV and saw Billy discussing working up the ranks of the comedy business and Conan O’Brien asked him about the “toughest gig he ever had”....

Watch BILLY GARDELL of Conan here.....

I literally laughed out loud watching this.  Also, he mentioned in this clip that it was approximately 1990.  My story was actually in 1995, so either he was off on his year, or he worked a LOT of strip clubs early in his career and many other agents have this exact same story.  Haha.  I’ve only met Billy twice early on in my career, but I can’t wait until our paths cross again to tell him this story personally regarding my first ever comedy field trip.  This business is a crazy roller coaster ride full of "comedy field trips".

-Chuck Johnson
President; Summit Comedy, Inc.
www.summitcomedy.com
800.947.0651

From Sex Police to my own Comedy Agency

Golf is my hobby, it’s my happy place and I try to visit it often.  Everyone should have a “Happy Place” right?  I wish my hobby was a bit more affordable, but I digress.  Often times if you don’t have a foursome arranged in advance, you get paired up with other strangers coming to their happy place as well.  I honestly don’t mind since I’m an extrovert by nature and love meeting new people.  At some point in the round (4-5 hours typically) it’s almost inevitable that you get asked “What do you do for a living?”.  All of my friends know that I’m a comedy agent, but when a stranger asks you that question, it’s NEVER left with just “Cool.”  There’s ALWAYS follow-up questions: “Do you get to meet famous people?”, “How do you scout your talent?”, “I’m funny, can you hire me?”, etc.  One of the most frequently asked questions is…..”How’d you get into that line of work?”

My answer is always, “SEX POLICE”.

I’ve been a huge music fan since the first time I heard the band KISS in the 70s, and even when I enrolled at Appalachian State University in 1991 (Yes, THAT Appalachian State who famously beat Univ. of Michigan in ’07), I knew that I wanted to go into the music/entertainment business.  While attending A.S.U., there was a regional band out of Chapel Hill, NC named SEX POLICE that was pretty popular and they were booked to perform at the school.  Being a broke college student and going to see live shows all the time didn’t mix well, but someone had mentioned to me if I joined the campus activities board (A.P.P.S.) and helped make promotional banners/posters for SEX POLICE that I not only would get into the SEX POLICE show for FREE, that I would get to see EVERY live entertainment show on campus and would be part of the planning process for all of them.

I couldn’t sign up quick enough.  Me and my partner in crime Mike McDowell painted a SEX POLICE promotional banner outside of the now defunct “Gold Room”.  I continued to be a part of this on-campus programming the rest of my days in college.  The highlight was indeed my senior year.  I was the chairperson of what they called “Stage Shows”.  I was overseeing a group of about 30 students and we literally planned events EVERY week for the entire school year.  My senior year alone, I was responsible in some way for all these bands: Dave Matthews, Widespread Panic, Hootie & The Blowfish, A Tribe Called Quest, and countless others.  We also put on a few comedy shows throughout the school year as well that we booked through a comedy agency (Creative Entertainment/The Comedy Zone) in Charlotte, NC a few hours away, which was, and still is, my hometown.

I was sent in the Fall of ’94 with a few others involved with programming Birmingham, AL for a weekend to attend a college programming conference called NACA.  This was a regional conference for schools in the entire Southeast region to show up and learn more about programming ideas, and to see bands, comedians, hypnotists, jugglers, poets, magicians, and basically anything else imaginable in the live entertainment realm.  While there I met with a woman (Linda Greenberg) who worked at Creative Entertainment in Charlotte.  She gave me her business card and told me to call her when I graduated.  Now again, I liked comedy, who doesn’t like to laugh, right?  But the music business was where I wanted to be….so I thought.

Fast forward to May of 1995.  I’ve graduated, I start to look for a job in the Charlotte area.  There’s not a lot of entertainment options in the southeast & I wasn’t quite ready to make that big jump to NYC or LA where I knew I could find a job easier.  There was one music agency in Charlotte I had my eye on, but I just couldn’t wedge my way into a position with them.  I pull out the business card I had received 7 months earlier, and called up Creative Entertainment.  I got an interview, I showed up in a suit, they laughed at me (everyone was in t-shirts & shorts), but was hired anyway as a new college agent. Kind of brilliant on their part, right?  Here’s a guy fresh out of college, let him sell college comedians to college kids basically his own age.  Creative Entertainment booked many comedy clubs around the country as well.  They were in the college & corporate market, and they also managed comedians.  A few of them they managed included Pat Godwin, Rodney Carrington, and Carrot Top.  Carrot Top was a HUGE star in the college market at that time, and here’s this new/green agent assigned as one of his main agents to get him more work in the college market.

Let it also be known, that when I was hired to be a comedy agent, I had probably seen no more than 6-8 comedy shows while in college, and had NEVER gone to a comedy club.  Haha.  The agency owned a comedy club in Charlotte, and the owner of the Creative Entertainment (Brad Greenberg) told me my homework was to go to the club EVERY weekend and see the comedians performing.  It really was a trial by fire into learning as much about the comedy business as possible.  I’m a quick learner, and asked a lot of questions.  I had also realized during this learning process that in my opinion, booking comedy was MUCH easier than booking bands.  The production needs were so much easier, and less egos/humans to deal with than bands.  For the most part: One comedian, one microphone, easy breezy.

After about 1.5 years into my comedy agency baptism, Carrot Top (Scott Thompson) moved on to bigger things and left the Charlotte based agency.  It was a great move for Scott, as he eventually landed a full-time Vegas residency gig at the Luxor where he remains today.

I then shifted my agent duties into booking the Comedy Zone night clubs as well as maintaining a foothold in the college comedian market.  Just shy of my 3-year anniversary with Creative Entertainment, I was unfortunately down-sized.  I saw the writing on the wall, as the Carrot Top money train had left the building, and the ol’ “last hired, first to be fired” rule came into effect.  Within days of being laid off, I had created a new business name, logo, gotten a business license, and proceeded to start a comedy empire.  That was in the Summer of 1998…..almost 19 years later, I’m still selling jokes…..because if you’ve ever played golf with me, you’d know I’m clearly not good enough for the PGA tour.

-Chuck Johnson
President; Summit Comedy, Inc.
800.947.0651
www.summitcomedy.com