AN ANNIE HALL MOMENT FROM MY FIRST SOLO ROAD TRIP

Published by Rick on Tagged Uncategorized

I recently commented on a Facebook post by my podcast partner Steven Alan Green where he made mention of some great scenes in the 1977 classic Woody Allen film, “Annie Hall.” I noted an Annie Hall moment that happened on my first road trip as a solo act, where I found myself in Houston, Texas, in February, 1986. I will tell that anecdote in detail a little further down, but first let us set the stage.

I cite the beginning of my solo comedy career as November 8, 1985, the day I did my first solo spot at LA’s Comedy Store. I was getting plenty of work from there, but meanwhile the US was having a major boom of full-time comedy clubs, with one seemingly in any city of over 100,000. There were several agents based in LA who booked road gigs outside of LA and California, and with my confidence building, I started hitting them up. Through the Ice House in Pasadena, a highly respected venue that Rick and Ruby had played numerous times over the years, I was able to get booked for two weeks at Spellbinder’s, a major comedy venue in Houston. I would go in as the middle act on both weeks, with different headliners and openers/emcees in each week. Incidentally, this would turn out to be my only road gig ever where I didn’t work as the headliner.

When I mention the comedy boom, I think back to how money and drugs flowed freely at that time, and some club owners probably felt the party would go on forever. It did last about five more years. Meanwhile, the performers got paid a decent salary, and for most venues airfare and lodging was covered. (Sometimes the venues even supplied me with a rental car!) It was a bit of a luxury if the club sprang for hotel rooms, for in many cases, such as this one in Houston, the comics shared a condo. This would be fine if everybody lived the same lifestyle, but in most cases we didn’t. There would invariably be a teetotaller sharing space with alkys and druggies, or a happily married comic sharing space with guys trying to get laid every night. I kind of fell in between, in that I liked drinking and other indulgences, but I was more enjoying the freedom of doing my act every night and was motivated to perfecting it. Plus I would begin what would turn out to be a 13-year relationship only a few months later.

I quickly found out it was easy to gain future gigs through each road gig, and Houston was where that began. The first week’s opening act was a local who had drink, drug, and gambling addictions,
but he also was well connected on the Houston scene. Every weekday night after our gig, he would take me over to The Comedy Workshop, where Sam Kinison got started, and where Bill Hicks had retreated back to after not finding LA to his liking. A very drunk Hicks was on stage that first night I went, improvising with the 20 or so in the room. I sat down right up front, and the first thing he said to me was, “I know you, don’t I?” Turns out he did, as he was at the LA Comedy Store as a 20-year-old frustrated doorman when I first moved to LA in 1981, and he had seen Rick and Ruby there a couple of times.

Not only did I hang with Hicks a few times that week, I got to know the owners of the Comedy Workshop, who booked numerous runs of road gigs throughout the southern US. I would work for them many times over the next 3 or 4 years. A lot of the gigs were admittedly crap, but it was a chance to see parts of the US I would never see otherwise. I remember being booked at a casino in Biloxi, Mississippi, which I didn’t think about again until 19 years later, when Hurricane Katrina came through and I could see from TV coverage that that casino had been completely demolished.

Oh yes, now the promised Annie Hall moment! One night in that first week, some people who really enjoyed my act invited me to come to their house for a little after-party. There should have been red flags all over that one, but I completely ignored them, and said “Yeah, let’s party.” They were native Texans, complete with the drawl. The main guy was drinking a beer while driving, but he told me that in Texas, you could have an open container of alcohol in your car so long as your seat belt was fastened. If that was true, I’m sure it wasn’t for much longer. There were two couples at this one house, and they laid out about six lines of nose candy on the coffee table. For some reason, just as I leaned over to take a snort, I had a vicious sneeze that blew everything off the table. The host was clearly annoyed, and I was embarrassed, but all I could think of was to mention the scene in Annie Hall where Woody Allen’s character is in a similar situation in LA where he is offered cocaine and declines, saying it makes him sneeze. A second later, he sneezes, with the contents creating a huge ball of smoke. One of them remembered that scene and had a laugh, but to be safe, I opted to not deplete their supply any further.

They paid for a cab to take me back to the condo, and we all parted on friendly terms. I would work Houston many times over the next few years, as well as Dallas, Corpus Christi, Austin, El Paso, and several smaller cities. I would never see that group of people again, nor would I ever work Spellbinder’s again. Given the way things have been going lately in Texas, even seeing that state again is pretty far down on my priority list.

July 30th, 2022



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