In the quiet radio sound booth during a commercial break, “Angry” Patrick Beam is pleased with the Michael Jackson joke he’d just told on air - “He did a ‘Reverse Pinocchio.’ He started out as a real boy but wanted to be a puppet” - but he wants validation from his Clear Channel co-host Corey Deitz.
“Did you like my Pinocchio joke?” he asks.
“Yeah, it was good,” Deitz says.
And he adds with complete sincerity, “You’re a funny guy.”
Beam’s self-effacing side set in, and he says, “Whatever.” But he smiled to himself as he returned to prepping for the next segment in station KDJEFM, 100.3 The Edge’s morning show.
The 43-year-old comedian has always wanted to be in radio, and since signing a contract with Clear Channel in January, he’s living out a dream on two fronts.
“I would say from a young age, I chased laughs like some people chase drugs. That laugh is my high. I call it chasing the dragon. You get that laugh one time, and you spend the rest of your time chasing it,” he says.
Beam might be one of the most recognizable dragon-tamers in Arkansas. Over the past few years, he has been a tireless promoter of local comedy and proactive about opening up more venues for performers, while also balancing a day job and a family.
“I’m constantly churning the waters, and marketing and networking and that’s what has worked for me to be successful. There are a lot ofcomedians I would consider vastly funnier than I am … but if you don’t put the work into it, it’s not going to happen,” he says.
“Very few people are ‘discovered’ in a comedic capacity. So, if you’re waiting on your ship to come in, it ain’t coming, you’ve got to swim to it.” NATURAL STATE OF LAUGHTER
Arkansas is not the easiest state in which to be a comedian, says Michael Brown, 42, who grew up in Corning, near the Missouri state line.
“If you want to be a professional comedian, you gotta get out of Arkansas. … The opportunities are limited, depending on what your end goal is, I guess. If you just wanna be a guy who gets called to emcee an event, then yeah, you could do worse than Little Rock. But my goals were a little higher than just being a local guy.”
As a child, Brown knew he wanted to be a comedian but never considered it a realistic career path: “Especially if you’re a kid growing up in rural northeast Arkansas, that type of job is unthinkable. Nobody is career counseling anyone to be a comedian.”
As a self-described pop culture nerd, he’s catering to his kind with the formation of a Wet Hot American Nerdity Comedy Show - or WANCS - that will perform at comic, horror, gaming and sci/fi conventions.
Ironically, to fund this endeavor, he’s slowly selling off his vast comic book collection.
“Well, it was there for a reason,” he says.
Touring in this way builds connections in the industry and gives budding comedians experience by putting them in front of new audiences.
Though she agrees life on the road is essential, it’s difficult for a woman or anyone with a family, says comedian Amy Pannell, who works as an office manager and hosts a weekly radio show on KABF.
“It’s pretty much imperative for you to travel,” she says. “If you’re not traveling, you may not be considered a very well groomed comedian at all. That’s something that I’ve struggled with. It’s hard as a woman to drive by myself 14 hours to Denver for $200 with no hotel room, and come back, when I have a family. But you’re not going to be on Comedy Central or HBO or performing in any of those bigger cities if you don’t go outside of Arkansas.”
Like a lifelong quest to fashion a perfectly balanced blade, comedy is an art form, a skill that must be honed, and a sharp performance is fine tuned through blunt, ruthless trial and error.
“It’s not something that anybody can do. You have to learn a lot of things about public speaking and performance and acting and writing, and the more you do it the more you learn,” she says. “Sometimes you just have to bomb in front of every audience, and that’s a learning experience.” BOMB THREATS
So, what does it feel like to bomb?
“Have you ever been in a car wreck and you knew you were gonna wreck five seconds before it happened?” Brown says. “That little moment where you’re tensed up and waiting for impact, that’s what it’s like.
“It’s also like that dream everyone’s ever had about being in class and having to do that book report, and you’re in your underwear … . It’s the most shaming, embarrassing, humbling thing. You’re naked. Emotionally you’re the most vulnerable you could ever imagine.”
He has seen comedians bomb on stage and be so scarred that they never attempt comedy again.
“It’s sad, in a way, because it’s somebody trying to seek validation from a room full of strangers in the dark,” he says. “‘Tell me I’m funny. Tell me I’m good enough.’ And it helps to eat it on stage. I’m not gonna say it builds character, but it does. It helps to bomb, so you know never to do those jokes again.”
Little Rock’s Jason Thompson, 36, who has put 270,000miles on a Subaru traveling from coast to coast performing comedy, says bombing makes him feel “completely useless.”
“When the audience is not having a good time, regardless of whether it’s my fault or I’m getting heckled or the room’s not right, you feel like they paid money to walk in this room and start laughing, and it ain’t happening. You feel horrible because you think, ‘I gotta accept money for this crappy show I just did.’ And then, ‘Well, I’ll be at the bar in about 10 seconds and say my apologies.’” THE END GAME
Steve Martin called stand-up comedy “the ego’s last stand,” which Thompson interprets to mean, “It’s the moment where you know - and the audience knows - whether or not the things you think of and say in public are interesting. When you see a drama or an epic play you can fake enjoying it, but at a comedy show, there’s an immediate response to it,that’s why it’s so scary to do. … Good shows make you wanna keep doing it, and bad shows make you want to quit.”
But where can a committed comedian go from here? Only up.
“A Comedy Central Presents or an HBO special would be the Holy Grail, but that’s far away. Just doing something that you love full time should be the goal, and everybody works on that at a different pace depending on where they are,” Pannell says.
Comedian Michael “Doc” Davis, 41, says what he’d love is to shine the spotlight on Arkansas.
“I don’t plan on leaving my state to find fame. I’d really rather bring attention to our state. If I get famous enough and am able to make a connection between me and something, I’d love it if they said, ‘that Arkansas comedian Michael Doc Davis,’ but, really, nobody has any idea where Ralphie May [raised in Clarksville] is from.”
Practicing comedy in Arkansas may be a challenge, but those passionate about the craft have created their niche - whether it’s radio shows or gigs as an emcee or regular stand-up performances - and found steadfast support.
“That’s one good thing about Arkansas,” Beam says. “If you can find a path, and you’re good, you can stay in that path because, in Arkansas, people are loyal to the people they follow in life.”
Of course, like every other comedian, he does fantasize about a night in the lights of New York’s Madison Square Garden.
“I have been fortunate enough that I’ve done some stand-up at Edgefest where I walk out in front of 15,000 or 20,000 people, and if that’s anywhere close to Madison Square Garden, I would do whatever I could to get in front of that crowd,” he says.
“That’s the ultimate dragon to catch.”
Style, Pages 31 on 05/21/2013