DREW: @averagedrew
Yes we missed a week of the blog while we were on tour. Yes we are sort of cheating this week by just telling y’all about said tour. But look, we are tired.
Tired, and super hungover.
The cold hard truth is traveling around this great land and bringing live comedy to you folks is one of our dreams. While realizing it, we just didn’t wanna do a damn blog. I mean, we didn’t NOT want to, but we were busy being hilarious and climbing chickens.
Since many of you couldn’t be there with us (but A LOT of you were – thank you!) we figured we’d do a little review of the days. Well, Trae and I figured that. Corey apparently figures he’s too Hollywood for blogs. He’s certainly too fat to climb chickens.
Night 1: Atlanta @ the Punchline Comedy Club
Night one was an amazing start to the tour. It literally could not have gone any better. We played to not one but TWO packed out houses on back to back shows. Everyone had great sets.
Our photographer Jason Grindle was around, and we felt very lucky to have him there. Especially since we needed him to grab a shot of us with comedy legend George Wallace. No not the segregation governor, the other George Wallace. George decided to drop in, do a guest set, and then drag us back on stage to publicly praise us for being hilarious.
This picture is my Comedy Diploma
Having a legend tell a sell out crowd you’re gonna do big things feels pretty good. Having him then tweet it to the world also hits. We crushed and then sold a hell of a lot of t-shirts (Thanks Atlanta!).
Night 2: Asheville @ The New Mountain Theatre
Stop two of the tour took us to Asheville, NC. Home to hippies, carnies, freaks, and apparently a slew of liberal rednecks, Asheville is my favorite city to visit in the whole world. I dig southern hippies and I dig southern beer- it did not disappoint. When the sound guy checked on us in the green room his eyes were redder than Trae’s neck, and he just started laughing and mumbling. I knew in that moment the crowd would be on board with jokes. I was not wrong. The show was incredible.
That night we all had separate rooms (a real treat on a road trip) and an amazing hotel thanks to some friends of ours.
The next day our good friend Kevin took us to Biscuit Head. The restaurant came highly recommended during our question and answer session. By that I mean more than one drunk fan yelled “biscuit head!” at us. At first I thought they’d just given CoFo a new nickname. But no, it was an al day breakfast spot.
We loved it. Corey literally was overwhelmed and tried to buy “one of everything.” He was sincerely upset his bill only came to 40 bucks as he was hoping to spend more apparently. I think this was about the time he dubbed himself “the CHO” – or Chief Hittin Officer.
Skew doggie at’s a lot of food. Also a lot of chins.
Night 3 – Johnson City, TN @ the Hideaway
As I mentioned, the wellRED tour was not want for liberal rednecks coming out to support. Y’all came out in full force and we appreciate it so very much. But Johnson City was absolutely the reddest crowd we’ve had so far. There were barefoot women, drunk ass peepaws and more than a few slurring fans trying desperately to speak in full sentences during the Q&A and failing. But absolutely the reddest cat we met was a dude named Aaron. A vet, a liberal, a comedy fan and one hell of good guy – Aaron was red as hell. He brought a kazoo to the show and had to be asked to refrain from playing it multiple times. He also brought two cans of pork and beans, one of which he rolled on stage during the Q&A. Corey thought it was a bomb and, upon realizing it wasn’t, ate it.
VanCamp’s. The best.
Please reread that fucking paragraph. A man came to our show with a kazoo and two cans of pork and beans and to support us he decided to throw one at us. Corey responded by eating it, using the lid as a makeshift spoon. Y’all – shit got redder than hell at that little punk rock bar. The last time we saw Aaron he was outside after the show. A hippie redneck womern asked him for a smoke. He told her he would give her a smoke AND a lighter for her headband. It was a home-ade hemp like rope she’d clearly made herself. She obliged and the stained shirted, boot wearing redneck put the hippie girl’s hemp necklace on and danced in celebration. If that ain’t what the wellRED tour is about, then I don’t know what is. It was one of my favorite nights in a long time. Shout out also to Jaime for the “special” cookies. They hit.
Wednesday (Trae):
Well Wednesday was somethin else, let us tell ye. Because see Wednesday was our “day off”. You’ll never believe this, but it didn’t work out the way we wanted it to. We hate havin to be all nebulous and poopy about stuff but there’s a lot of stuff we have goin on right now that we are super excited about but also can’t really talk about, but just suffice to say that we had agreed that we would use our “day off” to work on one of these things. And then the earth intervened. And I don’t mean like…weather or anything. Just…the earth. Y’all know how the earth be. It just fucks shit up. Yuns get it.
So first of all my wife was taking my kids to grandma’s in West TN on Wednesday, but kids being kids and her bein a woman, they ended up not leavin until about five a damn clock. And there’s two things in particular my boys love: 1) company, and 2) raisin seven shades of hell at every waking moment. So they ran Corey and Drew absolutely ragged most of the day. Pirate sword fights, wrestlin matches, zombie attacks, you name it. Great fun had by all, of course, but two grown (hungover) men are no match for the Righteous Zeal of Those Who Toddle. CoFo and Drew both passed out pretty much IMMEDIATELY when they finally did leave.
And where was Dad you ask? Well I was around and engaged in the hijinks as well up until about 3, when I had to get ready for, I shit you not, an audition for a Burt Reynolds movie that’s filming in Knoxville. Yeah. I hadn’t planned on it because I didn’t even know about it until Wednesday morning when I got an email from one of the producers, saying they’d seen the “Liberal Redneck” videos and wanted me to come in. So of course I’m thinking “A Burt Reynolds movie filming in East TN….lawd they gone have me in overalls throwin raccoons through trailer windows.” But naw, as far as I could tell it was just a standard audition. And I mean hell it went fine I guess, but if anyone reading this auditioned for that movie as well, don’t lose any sleep over my ass, buddy. Still flattered they asked though, don’t get me wrong.
So I get back to my place at like 7, and the fellers is plum dead to the world. I don’t blame em, I was kilt too. So I rouse them and we get to work. But not before dinner. And Drew, the Renaissance Dick that he is, rustled up a bigass pot of “Drew’s Skew Stew”. which was basically a bunch of cajun seafood in a creamy rice soup. Hit City, USA, population three dumb comedians, buddy. Lawdamercy, it was fire. So of course went smooth IN on that shit, and now everybody’s stuffed, tired, and stupid (the last one we couldn’t really help). We finally got to work and actually made some fair progress, but as we’ve all had to realize countless times since graduation, we weren’t the worldbeaters we thought we’d be. And just like that, our “day off” was over.
Thursday (Trae):
On the plus side, we all three got some truly magnificent slumber in on Wednesday night, so we woke up Thursday ready to sgit on down the road and keep haulin ass and gettin paid. So we lit out for Nashville, where we had two sold out shows at the very awesome
Lipstick Lounge. These shows were also fundraisers for a very cool documentary project called
Love, Hate, Church and State. The shows were packed, the crowd was fantastic, and it really couldn’t have went better.
Or so we thought. But see it turns out that the Lipstick Lounge is a very popular destination for karaoke in the Music City. And you know what that means. Well actually probably not cause there’s no way you would but listen I’ll just tell you what it means. It means that for me and CoFo…it was time to spit, son. We kicked it off with Forgot About Dre, with me handlin the Doc’s verses and Corey absolutely destroying the Shady parts. Over the course of the night we hollered at some more Dre (“Nuthin but a G Thang”), a little DMX (the songbird of my generation, IMHO), and Corey broke from the rap theme briefly to do a shirtless rendition of “Queen of My Double Wide Trailer”, by the man himself, Sammy Damn Kershaw. That’s right, bayba.
I for one had resolved to “take it easy” on Thursday night but, as you may or may not have already ascertained, I broke that resolution like a fat fuck on January 8th. So while it was a hell of a time, by Friday I was already back in the “kill me” camp in terms of how I felt physically. I don’t think Corey and Drew were doing too much better. Gettin older sucks man. But the tour wasn’t over yet, y’all.
Friday (Trae):
We woke up Friday morning and joined some (sincerely lovely) industry people who were in town for a pretty damn important business lunch. As a man is wont to do, we decided on a little hair of the dog to ease the pain. And for me and Drew, that’s where it ended. But CoFo ain’t me and Drew (or any other fundamentally sane person), so he got more and more…animated, and by the end of lunch was describing the entire plot of Tim Burton’s Big Fish for literally no reason before walking back to the car with his shirt off. The man ain’t the CHO for nothin.
None of that is to say that lunch went poorly. On the contrary, I felt pretty great about it all as we were leaving town, en route to “Rocket City”, Huntsville, AL. This stop on the tour was a little different, as Drew and I were already set to be a part of
Epic Comedy Hour, which is, no exaggeration whatsoever, the best “alt” comedy show in the entire Southeast (I say alt in that it just isn’t at a comedy club). I have done Epic before, and it’s always awesome, and Friday night was no different. If you’re in the Huntsville area and haven’t done so already, I highly recommend you check it out.
Need I say more?
Now, all day long Friday Corey had been telling us about where we were going to crash that night, at the house of friend of a friend of his, who we’ll call “Carter”. Apparently Carter is just a ballin ass pimp motherfucker. CoFo had been there before and regaled us with stories of a mansion with an infinity pool, a literal wall of liquor, and, for real guys….a pro wrestling room with authentic championship belts and eight different robes owned and worn by Ric Flair. Needless to say we was tryin to holler at that. We were all pretty wiped out but I mean hell…..Ric Flair robes guys!
Anyway long story short Carter was asleep when the show ended at 10 so we drove two hours to Corey’s parent’s house in Chickamauga, GA. Which still hit because they had prosciutto rolls, which is almost as good as Ric Flair robes. I weren’t mad at it. Only one day left.
Saturday (Trae):
Sadly, Saturday marked the end of the tour for the CHO. Corey had a wedding of a close family friend to attend and had to bid us farewell. He also had rented the car we were using on the tour and had to return it Saturday in Chattanooga so we were going to have to…I dunno, hitchhike I guess. We don’t think things through.
Luckily, our comedian buddy and Hitmaster Extraordinaire,
Daryl Davidson, lives in Chattanooga and was doing a guest spot on our show Saturday night in Oak Ridge (which is right outside of Knoxville). So he scooped us up and we hit the road. Daryl, though happy to give us a ride, was absolutely devastated when he arrived to pick us up. Ya see, the previous night had been a night of the week, and so that meant Daryl had spent it gallavanting around Chattanooga with a car full of white women (Daryl hits, guys). Well, one of these white women had a colossal white woman purse, filled with a bunch of heavy ass white woman shit (curling iron, bottles of spray tanner, a stupid dog, etc., I’m assuming). When Daryl had to slam on the brakes to avoid hitting a car that pulled out in front of him, Ashley/Rebecca/Chelsea/Whatever’s purse flew out of her hands and hit his stereo, breaking it. Daryl is a black man who hits on all cylinders. This was a true crisis. Luckily the video screen on it still worked so we just played rap videos without the sound and talked about football for the whole trip.
We get to Oak Ridge and Daryl’s angelic mama, Mamie, had made us a big ass pizza casserole. It was exactly as good as you’d think it would be (which is to say, fuckin good). And so was the show. We were at the Grove Theater in Oak Ridge and delivered our silly wiener jokes to 300 super awesome people. It was great, and just the best way to close out our first tour together. Afterwards, I bought the strongest sleeping pills you can buy at a Kroger and surrendered myself to the abyss, wiped out but utterly content.
Which leads me to the last thing I want to say. For anyone who was at the shows, or anyone who WILL be at any of our shows (we’re planning many many more as we speak, all around the country), and to every single person who has watched my videos or followed me on Facebook or sent me messages or just supported me in any way….I sincerely cannot express to you how much it means to me, y’all. That may sound like bullshit, but it isn’t. Not even a little bit. I’ve been doing this for 6 years, and even though I’ve had plenty of good shows over that time, every single one of them pales in comparison to ANY of the shows we did this past week.
A little over a month ago, me and Corey did a show together in Atlanta, right before I put out the first video. There were 12 people there. Now, those 12 people were cool as shit, and we had fun, but again…twelve. The next time we came to Atlanta, this past Sunday, we did two sold out shows at the fucking
Punchline, and
GEORGE WALLACE was there. Which is why I say I can’t express enough how absolutely overwhelmed and grateful I am for all of this, and all of you. We are literally experiencing our dreams coming true, and it’s because of you all. We owe all of this to you.
And we will not let you down. From the bottom of my trailer-baby heart, thank you. Thank you so fucking much.
Those two shirts were literally sent to us BY THE DRIVE-BY TRUCKERS! So yes I’m being sincere.
