I drove to Wichita today to perform at the Loony Bin with Billy Wayne Davis and Chris Dowell. I got to the condo with directions I got from Becki (the office manager at the club) and unpacked my stuff and checked by email. Then Chris (the feature) came out of his room and I introduced myself to him. A couple minutes later Billy came out of his room and just said "You guys want to party?"; from that moment I knew this weekend was going to be awesome. A little bit later, I got a call from Mark at the club telling me the show was going to start at 7:00 instead of 8:00, so I told him I'd be there around 6:15 (so I could get acclimated). It turns out, the show wasn't officially starting early, but there was a Christmas party for a local restaurant chain called Spangles. They do a Christmas party every year at the Bin, and it was tonight. So I emceed their holiday party where three of their employees "competed" on stage by doing comedy (of sorts) for a hundred bucks. After that, two of the local comedians (the regular house emcees for the club, Mike Winslow and Mr. Biggs) did about 10 minutes each. THEN I got to go up and do my emcee set. I did fifteen minutes, and honestly it was rough. The Christmas party people were already really drunk and not attentive, plus they had already seen me on stage several times, so they were accustomed to me just moving the show along and not actually performing. Chris is a guitar comic, so he was able to play his songs and didn't have to depend on the standard "Setup-punch" format that I did, and then Billy went up and basically did 40 minutes of crowd control.
After the show, I helped Mark hook up a trailer to get it out of the condo parking lot, and then I went back to the club, where we all went next door to a bar called "Back Stage". Billy and Mr. Biggs were really cool and gave me some really cool advice about my set and about emceeing. Both agreed I got nervous infront of the crowd (which I did, since they were so talkative) and they both said I needed to slow down. They both complimented my material, but they said the emcee is there to move the show along, and laughs should be considered a "bonus". They also said that when an emcee is told to do 15 minutes, some clubs mean, if the 8 O'clock show starts at 8:04, you should be off the stage at 8:15. I had never thought of or heard of that before, so that will be something I probably ask about at clubs from now on. We hung out until about 1:30 when I drove Billy home.
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