Interview: Comedian Dave Ross
...telling a joke about Gary Coleman being Jesus...
Josh Altas conducted this interview with comedian Dave Ross for Nailed Magazine.
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NAILED MAGAZINE: When did you first try out standup? And what made you decide to get up and try your first open mic?
DAVE ROSS: I first did stand-up at the end of a music open mic in Fresno, CA in 2006. I’d been a radio DJ in Fresno for awhile, and I loved to be on the mic, so it was just a natural progression. A bunch of my friends had tried it, and I was about to quit radio, so I figured I should try out being funny in public to strangers. I was scared to death, though, and tried to bail out a bunch of times before I went up. I drank a whole bottle of Jack Daniel’s and really don’t remember much of my set, except telling a joke about Gary Coleman being Jesus and pissing off an old lady. It was a horrific experience, and I was so scared that I didn’t perform for another 6 months. I was scared that time, too, so I did it three more times and decided to “quit forever.” I didn’t do it for three years. It wasn’t til 2009 that I really got up the courage to really do it.
NAILED: In addition to being a standup, you also co-organize “Holy Fuck,” which runs weekly in Los Angeles. When you are booking a show, how do you decide which comedians to put together?
ROSS: So many things go into picking lineups, but really we go for two things: diversity and comedy. We only book people we think are funny, and we want the lineup to be diverse in both styles and experience level. It’s obviously great to get a big-name comedian that you love on your show, but I also love putting on a newer comedian that people don’t know much about yet. Watching someone do your show for the first time, and crushing, and defying people’s expectations, is really wonderful.
NAILED: What is the line up that you are most proud of pulling off?
ROSS: There are a bunch of these. Getting Louis CK on the show was great. And the first time Aziz did it. Marc Maron, Maria Bamford, Todd Glass, Jimmy Pardo, Demetri Martin… every time each of those people agreed to do the show for the first time, I flipped out. I couldn’t believe they’d even give me the time of day. If I can get Tom Lennon and Bill Burr to do the show, I’ll die happy.
NAILED: As some one who books a show, who are some up and comers to keep an eye on?
ROSS: Oh man, there are HUNDREDS of comics I could list here. All of my friends. Go watch them. Go to most comedy shows in LA and you’ll see at least one comedian you’ve never heard of that you love. Right now, I really love watching Pat Regan and Jonthan Rowell. The both started after I did, and I’ve gotten to watch them get better and better at open mics and terrible shows, and now they’re both amazing, and they’ve only each been doing it a few years. Like I said, though, there are so many comics like that in this town. We’ve got a great scene.
NAILED: Tell us a little bit about the CD and what made Jeff Wattenhoffer, your co-host, and you decide to put it together?
ROSS: It just felt like the next step. It was something I’d been thinking about for awhile, and once we hit the three-year mark with the show, Jeff and I knew we had to do something big. When I was a kid, I was a big punk rock fan, and the only way I found out about new music was to buy those cheap Fat Wreck Chords and Epitaph Records comps (and millions of other labels, too), and there’s such great comedy in LA that I really wanted to do that for our comedy scene, in whichever way I could. Hopefully, people will hear this album, and become a fan of the comics that are on it, and from that, become a fan of the other great comics that are friends with them, and so on and so forth. That’s a lofty goal, I know, but it’s a good one.
NAILED: When was the last time you nailed it?
ROSS: I have never once nailed it. Unless you’re referring to “that pussy”, which I also have not nailed.
Dave Ross is a stand-up comedian and storyteller in Los Angeles, CA. He is creator of the wildly successful Holy Fuck comedy show and a MOTH GrandSlam winner. You might have seen him on Tosh.0 with his sketch group, WOMEN, or heard him telling stories on KCRW. He is a regular at L.A.’s Nerdist Theater at Meltdown, as well as the Hollywood Improv. Visit his official site: here.
