Starting Standup in Maine with David Walton

#14 Dave Chapelle, Comedy Camp, and Year 1 Begins

• David Walton

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In this 14th episode David Walton shares updates from his comedy writing camp in New York City, including watching Dave Chappelle perform at the Comedy Cellar. He announces exciting changes for the podcast, including plans to feature more interviews focusing on comedians' origin stories. David also reflects on his own comedy journey, the craft of storytelling, and teases an upcoming interview with a rising social media star. 

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Speaker 1:

Oh man, that's rubbish. That's rubbish. Well, hello, welcome to Starting Stand-Up. My name is David Walton. Thank you for joining.

Speaker 1:

Starting Stand-Up is basically an audio journal of my quest to become good at stand-up. And I'm in New York City. I'm back, I'm here writing. We're calling it a comedy camp and my good friend, jeremy's sister, who's been on the show, is here with me. He had a few days off from work, so we're throwing out that kind of 22 year old unemployed energy right now. And we saw, I got to see Dave Chappelle last night. I went to see a band first, but today has been all writing. It's a day of all writing and then a very exciting guest.

Speaker 1:

I think a lot of people have responded to me just not talking the whole time, which I completely understand, and I'm very pleased to report that next week or the following week, depending on how hard this will be to edit, because all technological disaster but a very meteoric rising social media star is going to come on the show and it was really fun to listen to him talk about what this ride has been like for him. He's basically had a job in finance and then started posting videos and within six months, had hundreds of thousands of followers. He's incredibly funny and talented. He's a lovely guy and so I'm excited to share the hour and 20 hour or so interview we just did and he came over. It was in person. It was really fun and it was really fun to see a young guy who kind of took a pivot in his life and is following his dreams and is having success and it's almost like it feels like tip of the rocket ship and I just love it. And so it made me think about kind of a as I think about this show and what it is, or this podcast, and I've always said that this thing is, is morphing and developing and growing and I don't know where it's going. There's no real strategy, except that I commit to a weekly journal entry, if you will, and, um, it sort of came organically today.

Speaker 1:

It's like I really would love to interview people who are and just talk about origin stories. The start uh, it's very helpful for young people to see how things develop and and and how people get their breaks, and so, while I do like an entire life of humans if I had my dream, every comic I love that makes me laugh, literally every single comic that I see at the Comedy Cellar that I see online. I would love to talk to them about their beginnings, really focus on the beginning, the start, starting, stand-up, but I'd also like to expand it to you know, just anyone who has comic sensibilities, whether it's online or on the stand-up scene anywhere. So I'm going to put that out into the universe. And so if you are listening to this and you think you know someone it doesn't have to be anyone famous, honestly, but just people who are doing stuff that you know you think have a cool starting story please hit me up. I would love to interview them. So we're going to ramp up more interviews, which I think will be a huge relief to a lot of you. I will also say it's been very freeing watching people on, you know, social media not care about production value. As someone who was born in 1978 and grew up like where everything has to look good, like in the movies and TV it has to look really good and expensive, and it's kind of freeing that this younger generation doesn't seem to give a. They don't care. They don't care about production value, they just want good stuff, and so, in that vein, I would like to report right now that, because of technical issues. Today's podcast is being done on an iPhone and I'm just talking into an iPhone, so if it sounds okay, I encourage you to take that as a good thing. If it sounds bad, well. I thank you for being here and white-knuckling your way through this. This is not going to be a very long episode, but it's going to be back to the roots of just a real journal entry.

Speaker 1:

And again, seeing Dave Chappelle, I need to talk about him. I caught about 20 minutes of him At 1.30 in the morning. He had had done an hour. We went to a different show and at the comedy cellar they have the, where whenever you go to the bathroom, they have the five screens of everyone performing. It's sort of a simulcast. And I was like, oh my god, I miss dave chappelle. Like how did I miss that? He's, of course, it's always a secret when he's gonna do there, but he's prepping for his snl. He He'll, I think he's hosting this weekend on Saturday, so he was prepping. But, um, when I got there at one 30 and I'm not kidding, at one 30 in the morning, I was there for 20 minutes. He had four tequilas, a joint and half a pack of cigarettes. I don't know how he did it that fast.

Speaker 1:

And if I had consumed that, Uh, the the level of brain debt, the level of nonsense that would be coming out of my mouth uh would be extraordinary. And I may do an episode where I try to match uh Dave Chappelle's intake and and record it for you to see, uh, what it's like for a kind of very low level brain to consume that and then to have an other world. He's an alien. I I now believe he's from another world, another planet, because he was, he was had so much in his system and he was razor sharp he was. He was making this crowd scream, laugh, like I don't think I can recall any specific jokes. He was doing crowd work and stuff, but there was that sense of you know, like I'm a tennis player, I love tennis, I love, love tennis. It's my number one uh sport at the moment.

Speaker 1:

It's sort of a recent kind of middle-aged thing, um, and I sometimes it's like when you watch, when you, when you play someone who's worse than you, you feel really good and then you play someone who's just like one level up and you just get destroyed and it's very discouraging. It sort of feels like, oh there's, you go to this hopeless phase. And I I got a little pang of that as I watched chapelle and that might sound ridiculous, but it's like the only reason I'm doing this is because I think I have the delusion that I, that I can be really good at it, that I that I can get pretty far in stand-up, and when I watched Chappelle I was like I can't even. I can't even remotely go there. So what's the point? But that's a stupid thing to think. You just got to do what you enjoy.

Speaker 1:

And this is a challenge as a journal, I think one of my biggest. It's not a mistake that I've been doing, but there's a sense that it's really hard, almost like you're a tinker on a car or a motorcycle. These stand-up sets it's a lot of like technical work, almost like getting rid of things, like realizing that you don't need to say almost anything, realizing that you don't need to say almost anything. You know where I want to talk about, let's say, the concept of kids needing more shame, like this generation has too little shame, and I want to do like five or ten minutes just exploring that idea and in that exploration none of it's really that funny. And then you realize that in the stand-up vein. All I have to say is, you know, kids just don't have enough shame. And then I go right into the jokes, and so that's been a pattern of this.

Speaker 1:

For those of you who've been around and listening to all the episodes, you'll hear me say it over and over again it's just realizing how little you have to say. And for all of us who tell stories at dinner tables and stuff like that, you'll notice, with the people who can control a room and everyone's like sort of riveted and not losing attention. And we all know, like when I tell a story, I'm so sensitive to people, like I can tell, unless I'm hammered drunk, I can tell that like I'm losing people and it's because I'm too verbose, as you can see, but it's, it's a skill and if you, if you do value telling good stories and you value, uh, you know, being good company and a good conversationalist, it's like oh yeah, like this is people's time, don't need you just become a little aware of like when the details are extraneous and when you're just saying too much and you can lean it up. And I think the great storytellers, they just have a knack for knowing what's necessary to say and what to leave out. They're like real-time editors in a way, and I'm not, so you're getting privy to this sort of verbal diarrhea and I thank you for that. I always thank you for that.

Speaker 1:

How is your venery going? Has the new year started well, by the way? Yeah, I always feel like you know, not enough, but that's just me's. Just, that's just me, and I, I generally hope everyone's getting enough cuddles and enough contact and is feeling it, and if you aren't, you know I really do hope that you'll, uh, you'll find ways to to, you know, to get that venturi going in a way that that's, that's good for your soul. Okay, so that's the update.

Speaker 1:

Actually, today, when this comes out it comes out every Thursday I'm going to be doing three open mics in the city with this material that I really, way, way more than I ever have, have really honed writing and it's exciting. I've got that feeling of like oh, I think I have. I really have now maybe six, seven minutes, and so the goal when I started this thing was to get a 20 minute set going and I would say today in a really cool way, celebrating our wins. Today feels like that 20-minute kind of goal is possible in this next year. The mystery guest that I interviewed today, his manager, came along, young Buck, and he said something interesting. This guy's been cranking daily content for the whole year. He's a real process over results and his manager calls the year. They just had year zero and now they're just beginning year one, and I like that. I feel like everything up to this point up to tonight for me is year zero and in a weird way, I feel like I'm turning the page and we're just beginning. We're just starting now, so I'll leave it there.

Speaker 1:

That's my journal entry. It's a short one. This week I wanted to do, I thought about putting together this interview, but we actually videoed it, so it'll be my first one that can kind of coexist on YouTube and it's going to take a lot of work. Again, I don't have any producer. I'm doing all of this myself and it's a tremendous amount. This will be a big lift, but I'm going to use it as an opportunity to get like branding on the video and just try to get a little bit more of a professional operation.

Speaker 1:

That is my commitment and it's really what I owe this very generous, very talented, very funny. I mean huge, huge fan of this guy. I discovered him when I reengaged with Instagram and he was one of the first videos that kind of came in through the algorithm. I immediately followed him. So it was a real trip to all of a sudden be in his presence and having a grand time, and really he's a friend now. I mean, we've got some friends in common and so it was super fun and I'm really excited and I really have the bug now to talk to people and to get into people's start.

Speaker 1:

So, once again, if you know anyone that you think would be a good fit for me to talk with, and at any level, please hit me up on direct message or if you have my phone number or email, I'm all for ideas. So thank you. Thank you for listening. This has been a really raw you. Thank you for listening. This has been a really raw on an uncut journal entry and my goal today was to not edit a single thing, and I think I have. So thank you for joining. If this was your first starting stand-up episode, thank you for being here and I hope you have a wonderful day and a wonderful week and I hope all your dreams come true and I hope that you once again live a life full of adventure, fun, peace and uh and venery. All right, see you next week. Very exciting, thank you.