What comedian can claim to be all by himself and yet so universally accepted?
That comedian would be Brian Regan.
Regan, who is no stranger to N.E. Ohio, brings his heightened reality style of comedy to the Akron Civic Theatre March 4, where he will be performing material from his latest live CD, “All by Myself,” released this past Fall.
Likened by many to Jerry Seinfeld, the Heidelberg alum has made a living out of taking the mundane day-to-day moments of reality and turning them into fall-down hysterical comedy. Rather than engaging in the typical tour-de-farce of gimmicks or shock talk, Regan, brings observations of real life, adds a larger than life physicality and self-deprecation to the mix. And he has used this medium to sell out theaters nationwide since 2005.
So how is this guy alone exactly?
Unlike several comedians who have parlayed standup success into cable television shows, the 54-year-old Miami native is the rare comedian to make the leap from comedy clubs to theaters without the exposure of his own TV show or film.
One of his first breaks came from Comedy Central in 1992 with his first break-through “Something’s Wrong with the Regan Boy.” His second hour standup special, “The Epitome of Hyperbole,” is currently airing on Comedy Central and the DVD is available in stores. Brian’s 1997 CD, “Brian Regan Live,” has sold over 150,000 copies and consistently charts in iTunes Top Ten Comedy Albums. Brian’s 2000 “Comedy Central Presents” special continues to be a top viewer choice as well.
Before hitting the tour road to promote and perform his latest routine, Regan took some time to speak from his home in Las Vegas about video-bootlegging fans, the science of comedy, the internet, Heidelberg and red dots.
Did you really have to contact native Clevelander Eric Carmen for the rights to use “All by Myself” for your latest CD and what is the inspiration to all by myself?
“I’ve got a little bit in the CD that I kind of used that wording. It also means me on stage by myself, so I wanted to use that as the title. You’re allowed to title anything you want. I just wanted to be on the safe side, so we just reached out to his people and said, ‘Hey man, are you cool with this?’ they said yeah. It is interesting the turns a career can take. Who would have known that my people would be reaching out to his people?”
How did a middle-class kid from Miami find his way to a N.E. Ohio Division III college?
“I played football (wide receiver) in Miami Florida, and I was trying to figure out where to go to college. Three of my high school football coaches had gone to Heidelberg, and they had migrated down to Miami which is understandable. So, it was through them that I found out about Heidelberg, and I was able to financial aid to go up there. It was kind of an economic choice. (With Heidelberg being a Div III school there were no scholarships).”
So how did you make the transition from Economics to Stand-Up?
“They didn’t have Accounting as a major, so I became an Economics major, and I thought I was going to be an account just because I didn’t know what else to go after. My dad was an accountant for Eastern Airlines; I took an accounting class in high school and did pretty well at it, so I guess I was going to become an accountant!”
“After one semester of that, I thought, ‘This is just not for me, man, and I talked to my college heads coach who thought I may be more interested in being a communication theatre arts major. So I switched over to that, and he was right.” I took my first class then in Speech, and I thought, ‘Hey this is fun making people laugh.”’
So your first audience was in the Heidelberg locker room?
“I used to always make my teammates laugh. It was always fun for me. I mean I like playing football, but I also liked making people laugh, even before I had thought about becoming a comedian. I used to do this thing called the word of the day. I would have a word and a silly definition for it, and all the players knew me for it.” It was my first attempt at coming up with a daily gag.”
Regan would first hit the stage trying his new soon-to-be avocation on campus and then in local theatres “in Tiffin while attending Heidelberg. He dropped out in 1980 to focus on comedy.
You eventually got your degree 17 years later. When you do come back to N.E. Ohio do you often connect with old classmates?
“I come across Heidelberg people across the United States, but come across more in Ohio since that’s where most classmates tended to come from. It’s always nice backstage to get a note that so and so from your chemistry class is out front. And they know that I don’t know cuz I never went to chemistry class. If they’re from O’Reilly’s Pub downtown then I’d know the guy.”
While his often self-deprecating style of delivery and physicality all seem to disguise a confident, comic genius who has all the answers of a wise guy, the key to his longevity and ability to crank out funny bit after funny bit is stepped in something far more contemplative.
“One thing I try to be smart about is to be careful never to feel like I have figured it out. Once you act like you have it all figured out, and know what you’re doing, you get a little cocky, and you get a little stale. It’s a never-ending learning process. It’s a constant quest to try to learn how to be a good comedian.”
You have done the David Letterman show at least two dozen times, dating back to 1995. How much harder is it to get laughs when you have a few minutes to do an abbreviated bit?
“I am very fortunate that I have a regular thing on the Letterman Show. Regan just did his 24th show on the infamous Letterman show in November. “It’s not easy man. You get 4-1/2 minutes on Letterman and it’s different from performing in front of my fans. If you are in a theatre people already know who I am, but in the Letterman Studio, they are not there for me. They’re there to watch David Letterman and a TV taping.
“It’s thrilling to do that show, though. I consider it an honor to do Letterman. I consider him to be and I hate to throw the word genius around, but, he is a very funny person. People sort of look at that as a barometer as to where you are in your career, so it means a lot to do that show.”
There are obvious upsides to having your comedy so readily available since the advent of the Internet. What are the real upsides and downsides to this new channel of promotion?
“The fact that my comedy is so readily available, for people out there, it’s good and it’s bad. For the most part it’s good because some Joe Blow may be sitting around, noodling around on his computer and comes across you, like it and buy a ticket to go see your show.
“The downside is that unless you are diligent about writing, a lot of your stuff, people can already be familiar with it when they come out to see your show. I want to be able to decide when a bit is ready to be recorded. It’s a new bit, it takes a year or two to get the words right. People are video-tapping at then putting it on YouTube. I don’t want people seeing this version; it’s in the baby stages.
“We live in a society where videotaping is so pervasive. I had a guy recently just sitting there holding his iPhone recording every single thing. I finally had to stop and say, ‘Hey, are you video-tapping?’ and he said, ‘Yeah, yeah, I love your stuff.’ So I said, ‘Ok, I appreciate that, but you know that’s not cool, right?’
“He’s trying to be a fan, not trying to be a jerk. That’s how people show their support now. It’s amazing to be on stage and you just see red dots all the time. It used to be all about the laughs, now I can tell whether a bit is good by how many red dots.”
The fact that your material is accessible to all ages is because of the fact that your comedy is clean. Is that by design?
“It’s hard for me to figure out how to handle it. It is clean but it’s really not the point as far as I’m concerned. To me clean is a medium, like if you’re a painter, oil is a medium. It is a way of doing something. Like Ansel Adams, the photographer took all those black and white photographs, but the photographs themselves, are still hopefully pretty good.
“I’m sure Ansel Adams doesn’t want people looking at his photos and saying, ‘Man, look how black and white those photos are!’ They’re still beautiful pictures. That’s the way I look at my comedy. I want people to think, ‘Wow, that was funny.’ If they also happen to notice that it’s clean, and that’s important to them, that’s ok as well. But to me that’s a very small aspect of it.”
And in some regions of the country, Regan’s clean act is what draws like in Salt Lake City. He broke Jerry Seinfeld’s record of consecutive shows at the Abravanel Hall in March of 2010 with five consecutive shows. It is that clean medium combined with what he calls his sense of heightened reality.
How do you define it?
“I do like to have the roots of my comedy in reality; I like to talk about things that are real, human experiences. And so my comedy comes from the stuff of life, like going to the doctor, going to the store. And, then within that, I’ll jack it up. If I feel uncomfortable in the joke, I’ll cartoon it; I’ll make it a little on the ridiculous side. That’s where the expression heightened reality comes from, it’s a little over the top, but it’s still base in truth. If you eliminate the base, if you eliminate the truth, then it’s just goofball buffoonery which is not something I am interested in doing.”
From doing bits early in his career about growing up, Regan has come full circle and has done occasional bits inspired from his life as a husband and father of two. But he is careful not to rely on that.
“I don’t want my kids to feel like I’m mining their experiences for comedy for daddy. I won’t say I won’t do some bits like that, but I want them to be about universal things that are common for all kids.”
Regan, who works approximately 26 weekends and near 105 nights a year, and several week nights, looks at it from a home stand point.
“That leaves 265 nights off, so I still balance it so I still have more home life than I do away life. I love doing all those shows.”
Do you feel you have a greater appreciation for what it takes to make it in this business of comedy than today’s instant and often fleeting internet fame some have experienced?
“It used to be getting on television was that magic line you crossed, it’s like, ‘He’s on television, he must be something.’ Now, TV’s still important. I love doing the Letterman Show, but because of the internet, people can get their comedy out there. But audiences are so fragmented. It is so hard to break through where huge amounts of people know who you are. It just seems like there are some any niche-types of entertainers now.”
It still comes down to simply a matter what is funny, and for Regan, finding things that are humorous are more about science and semantics.
“I still laugh. I look back at when I was younger I think I laughed more freely when I was younger, because you’re not thinking about the nuts and bolts of it, you’re not thinking of the science of it. You just laugh. Now, any time I laugh at something, not only am I laughing, I am appreciating the science of it. That was a good bit. And sometimes you can really appreciate a bit without really even laughing. You’ll say, ‘Wow, that’s funny.’ Which is an inside thing that comedians say to each other.”
One thing that is not an inside thing, is that Regan’s fan base continues to grow. Through his tours, YouTube, his CDs and DVDs, more and more people are not only laughing at him, but with him.
