MY LAST US ROAD TRIP — THE VERY LAST!!

Published by Rick on Tagged Uncategorized

We turn the clock back to the early summer of 2001, about three months before 9/11, and seven months after I started working in UK. I had hooked up with the comedy club chain called Comedy Zone, who were able to book me on a run that started in Charlotte NC, went to Myrtle Beach SC, back to Greensboro NC and finishing up in Charleston WV over a span of three weeks. There would also be some forgettable one-nighters in Kentucky and Alabama as well.

There’s only two things I remember from my two nights in Charlotte. One was the club’s managers, a husband and wife, persuading me to hang out with them after the show the first night, and they took me to, of all places, a lap dancing club! I guess they dealt with a lot of comics for which this was on their to-do list. I was by now fifty years old, with absolutely no interest, and decided to spend my time talking to one of the dancers (once she was back to fully dressed) about her “off-stage” life. Turns out she was a single mom of two! The second night at the club went ok, except the opening act, who was young and local, had a bunch of his friends urge him back on stage after I had already finished. I took it as a slap in the face and told the booker about it the next day, which he wasn’t pleased to hear.

After that weekend, I took a charter bus from Charlotte to Atlanta Airport, where the guy I would be working with in Myrtle Beach would be coming from his mom’s house in Birmingham AL and drive us both there. About ten miles after we left Atlanta airport, he got a call on his cel phone from his agent. He chose to talk while driving, and sure enough, the flashing lights of a police car came on behind us. There was considerable debris on the shoulder, so he drove ahead some distance. This caused a major freakout from the officer, who turned on his siren, and as we finally pulled over, he leaped out of his car with gun drawn, screaming “Put your hands where I can see them!” The cop didn’t calm down, even after we complied, and as the two of us sat in the back of his car, he started talking about taking us to jail. The young comic began to cry, and I think the only thing that saved us was both the comic and the cop were African-American! I imagined the cop was suspicious of a relatively new car being driven with out-of-state plates by a young Black man with a middle-aged white passenger, possible carjacking maybe. Still, the young comic was given a ticket, and probably had to pay a hefty fine after appearing in court. I wrote a letter to the court later on his behalf, but never heard from the comic again. Except that now he’s a regular on The Daily Show, Roy Wood Jr.

From Myrtle Beach, I had a couple days off, and Roy dropped me off in Chapel Hill, NC where I stayed with relatives I hadn’t seen in about 35 years, before taking a Greyhound Bus to Greensboro. This venue, like the one in Myrtle Beach, was 99.9% attended by white folk, so the comics felt ok tossing racist banter about onstage. I was sick of hearing the N-word from so many black comics in LA, now I had to hear it from white guys? I worked Greensboro with a young frat boy type whose every punch line had the same faux-sarcasm inflection. We would also be working together in Charleston, but he would be playing golf with his fraternity friends and wouldn’t be driving up for a couple days, so I had to make my own way on the 243 miles separating the two towns. Selfish bastard!

I would have to take two Greyhound buses, the first one leaving me in a small town where the next bus to Charleston wouldn’t be departing for about five hours. I can’t remember the name of the Virginia town I had to hang out in, but I was reminded again how Greyhound depots always had that vibe that city planners would look for wherever the ghetto was, and that would be where the bus depot would be built! It was daytime, but I was still paranoid for about four of the five hours I was stuck there, only breathing a sigh of relief in the last hour when this crazy woman who was just hanging out there finally moved on. The bus didn’t get into Charlotte until about 2AM the day before the shows, but the hotel, where the comedy club was also located, thankfully let me stay the extra night at no charge. Hallelujah!

As for Frat Boy comic, I truly wanted to avoid him at all costs. I got my reprieve when it turned out that Cartoon Network was having a marathon over the weekend showing every single Bugs Bunny cartoon in chronological order, about 24 hours worth. So I stayed pretty much in the room the whole Saturday, only leaving the room to eat and timing things so I didn’t go downstairs to the venue until I was sure he was almost done. I did it that way for both shows, and the only communication I ever had with him was an email I sent a few weeks later rebuking him for being so selfish and leaving me to the elements, and that I would insist to the bookers to never have us work together again. He actually apologised soon after, but the damage was done.

I had a Sunday gig somewhere about 100 miles away, absolutely can’t remember, but I do know that whoever I was doing the gig with lived in Atlanta and would drive me to the airport, where I’d be flying back to LA the next night. I remember nothing about him except he was nice and had really long hair. And one other thing I remember was this massive rainstorm about 50 miles from the airport that was bad enough we had to pull over for awhile. Still I made my flight with plenty of time to spare.

By the summer of 2001, I was firmly enough entrenched working UK that I made a vow to myself never to do this type of road work ever again. 20 years later, I’ve kept that promise, though I had equally crazy travels that first decade or so in UK. But none where I ever feared for my life.

September 13th, 2021



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