Oral History Spencer Hicks

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Transcript:

Sheldon Beach: I’m Sheldon Beach from the Metropolitan Library System. Today is May 16th, 2019., and I’m here with Spencer Hicks to talk about comedy. How’s it going?

Spencer Hicks: I’m doing well. How are you?

SB – Not too bad, not too bad.

SH – Thanks for having me.

 

SB – Thanks for coming. So, first question, how long you’ve been doing stand-up comedy

SH – I started doing stand-up comedy in 2004. I started going to the Loony Bin, which was the only club around. When I first turned eighteen, it was eighteen to enter, twenty-one to drink. So, when I was eighteen, I went up there a few times and just watched the open mics and then they changed it to twenty-one only to enter. So, I had to wait until I turned twenty-one and then when I turned twenty-one, I spent the next three years just watching open mics. I was always telling myself ‘Hey, Imma do it next week!’ and then just putting it off and then not doing it.

SB – And how long ago was it that you did your first one?

SH – It was either July or August of 2004.

SB – Do you remember what that was like? Do you remember your first time doing it?

SH – I was just scared to death. At the time, you are allotted four minutes. On stage, I probably did, if I did a minute, I would have been shocked. I think I did three jokes and then just said goodbye. I don’t think the host was ready for that, cause he had to come running from the back. Yeah, I don’t even remember what jokes I used or what I said. It’s one of those out-of-body experiences, the first couple of times that you did it. It was like that, just being more scared than anything.

SB – How often were you doing it back then, after you got started?

SH – They had a rule, they still do, where if you go up one week you can’t go up the next week. So it would be every other week until I started getting together with BradChad who you spoken with and some other comics from OU. James, James Nghiem, Lee K Gineon, Seth Joseph. And so, at that point, Tulsa had a Loony Bin as well, so we would do a week here in the city and then next week we would go up to Tulsa and do their open mic.  And we did that for, for a while.

SB- How long was it after you did your first one when you did your ‘three jokes in thirty seconds’ when you decided ‘Hey, I’m not bad at this.’?

SH – I don’t know if I ever thought that I was not bad at it, but it was something, but I read a whole bunch of books about ‘How to Do Comedy’ and all these things that aren’t helpful at all once you start doing it. But things I would take, take as gospel because I had no other reference. But it’s, I think I was like, ‘o.k’. I’ll try it, I’ll get…, it’s just… you can cut all this because it is just me rambling now. I think that when you start doing comedy, you get the adrenaline rush of just being in front of people and saying words and getting a reaction from those words. And then, you become, I guess, addicted to that. Because, I mean, it was kind of all I lived for for awhile and it was just trying to find time to get up on stage. And at that point, there was vested in it. If you had a bad show, it would crush you. It would crush your spirit. But then, after a while I don’t know if you just become a sociopath to it, but you don’t…. I mean, not having a bad show still sucks, but you don’t care as much. You know, it doesn’t hurt you like it used to. I don’t know if that answered your question at all.

SB – Yeah, yeah… so, when you started to it, 2004, there, it was completely different than it was now, right?

SH - Ah, sure.

SB – People were newer to it, you know, it’s very different to them than it was to you. What was the comedy scene around like back then?

SH – It was really the only quote unquote real shows were at the Looney Bin. We would always, you know, try to work to do bar shows or a little one-night shows with our friends. Try to get all people to come out and watch. A few years after I started a buddy of mine, Derek Smith, started. We started a weekly show at the speakeasy on 51st street we called it ‘Mondays don’t suck’. Every Monday, we would from 7 to 9, we would all get to do comedy. We would do sketches, we would play games, and that’s kind of where we got a lot of stage time and Seth Joseph started to do the open mic out of Othello’s down in Norman on Tuesdays so we would go do that. And on Wednesdays was the Looney Bin. But now, there is so many open mics that you could theoretically get up on stage every night of the week in Oklahoma, which was not the case when I started.

SB- When was the last time you got up on stage and told jokes to people?

SH – For an open mic or a show?

SB – Just anything.

SH – I did the Apache Casino down in Lawton a month ago and then a month prior to that I did a casino. I can even think of the name – way up, right on the Kansas border, they are building a water park and I am ready for that. It was pretty nice, something to take my kids to. I don’t get to go out as much anymore, with three kids and my wife was doing her own thing so my free time is not as much as it used to be and I’m not going to do a show unless I’m getting paid or it’s just something for me to get out of the house.

SB- Since you brought up your family actually, I do have a question. Do you… I’m told, your wife is involved in politics?

SH – She is.

SB – Do you ever think of a good political joke and think ‘maybe not’?

SH – Yeah, well, I mean I’ve tried. I think I used to do more political stuff, but past ten years I tried to stay away from anything political or too controversial, just because. In Oklahoma, especially, it just divides a crowd, regardless if the joke is funny or not. It might leave people with the impression… I want people to come to a comedy show, have fun, not have to think about deeper things. I talk about my son’s diabetes. I talk about fart jokes. I do, I rather be fun and absurd than something that makes you think. Well, I mean, not saying… that’s just my style. I rather it be fun and light rather than heavy and cerebral, I guess.

SB- I think it is kind of funny that you do say that ‘I don’t want people to be too put off. I’ll talk about child diabetes, not politics.’

SH – Yeah, it’s just that, I have got a four-year-old at home, and when he was one and a half, he was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes. It’s kind of a daily struggle. And so, it was something I didn’t know a whole lot about. I’ve got a buddy who’s got type 1, you don’t really get to see what they go through. All the misconceptions there are about diabetes. And so, I poke fun at that. My son’s got type 1, my mom’s got type 2, when people don’t know the difference. There is just some humor in there that…

SB- Yeah, I don’t have any idea what the difference is and I feel like everybody in my family is diabetic.

SH – Well, type 1 is genetic. Your pancreas stops producing insulin. There is nothing you can do about it. You got to take shots for the rest of your life or you die. Type 2 is kind of the more jokey one, the people who are overweight, who lost their feet, it’s your pancreas either can’t produce enough insulin or your body becomes kind of resistant to the insulin your body produces. So those are the people who have to watch their diet. There are pills now that you can take that are kind of help level out the blood sugars and if it gets bad enough, they have to take shots. Those are the two types. I don’t want to just… the joke is kind of mean to type 2, So I am not going to put that out there.

SB- Well moving from diabetes to…

SH – I apologize for bringing it down.

SB- Yeah, when you do comedy now, you say you try not to do something, like a political joke that will divide the crowd. You are the first person I’ve talked to that said something like that, I guess, especially being here in Oklahoma, it’s a really divisive thing. I never really thought about ‘Oh well, this is going to alienate half of the people in the room.’

SH- Right, yeah.

SB- Nobody’s really brought that up yet.

SH- Yeah. I mean, I try not to… it’s just when you do the Looney Bin, there are going to be people who are just there because one of their friends drag them there. They don’t care either way. But then, if you can get those people on your side, there is something gratifying watching someone who doesn’t want to be there or who doesn’t enjoy it. If you can get them on your side, that’s good. It’s way better than seeing someone who was having a good time and then you said something about Trump or Obama or something like that, and they are like, ‘Um… nah… nah. This guy is not for me.’ Like I would rather try to get someone on board than push them away.

SB- With the comedy scene being the way it is now, do you see people who are better because they can go out and do it six or seven nights a week?

SH- Oh, for sure, yeah. When we started, everyone, there would be people who would be kind of funny be like, ‘They’re so good now’. These days, there are people, kids who are like twenty-one or eighteen, who are coming out, doing jokes, and you are like, ‘If I was that good when I first started, I would be on TV now’. That’s not true, that’s just grandiose. But, it just make me jealous at how talented some of the comics we have here are. Just from the get go. It took me probably five years before I was comfortable on stage, telling absurd jokes. These kids, Alex Sanchez, when he first started he was so, so good. You see someone, like ‘How long have you been doing it?’, ‘Oh, this is my second time.’ It just makes you sick that they are so good so quick. That’s just me being old and curmudgeon.

SB- When I talk to BradChad Porter about, well about comedy, one of the things he brought up was when you all first started doing it, there was an empty space kind of in the middle between Jerry Seinfeld and the people doing open mics. And that is kind of the role that OKC Comedy has built, and you have been involved with that as well. Can you talk a little bit about what all, that’s been like? What is OKC Comedy?

SH – You nailed it right on the head. There’s certain levels of comedian out there. You’ve got the name brand, the people who sell out Madison Square Garden. Right now, that is probably going to be like: Amy Schumer, Bill Burr, Dave Chappelle. The big-name comics that have broad appeal, and then are is the road dogs, like you go to the Looney Bin, your local comedy club. People who are, spend fifty weeks a year just traveling the country going to, doing a week at a club. But then, there is the people in-between who are, people who are famous but not big enough to sell out. They’re too big for an Oklahoma comedy club, but not big enough for a giant casino or whatever. And so, OKC Comedy, our goal was to get those people, people who are a fan of comedy, you know who they are, whenever they are hitting up Dallas or Fort Worth or St. Louis. Whenever they’re close by, just asking them to come, you get a night, here in Oklahoma City, get paid for it, and then we can get one of our local comics to open for you and they get experience with a whole new crowd of people who are not going to open mics. A group of people who are coming to see this comedian, but you get to tell your jokes in front of this crowd and introduce yourself to people who are fans of comedy in Oklahoma. So that was the goal, and we went hard for a while. After I started having kids, I kind of haven’t been as involved but it was great. It was fantastic. We did them at the State Fair, ‘what is that, ah’, City Arts Center, and then we started doing them at the ACM at UCO and now I think we are going to start doing them at the Paramount.

SB- Yeah, I saw that Kyle Kinane was at the Paramount recently. And I remember when I was at ACM, I went to see Brian Posehn there. And I thought that the opener was really funny and I don’t remember who it was.

SH- Yeah. I don’t remember who opened for Brian Posehn either, but we can find out.

SB- But as a fan of comedy, I really appreciate, I have the opportunity living in Oklahoma City to see people like that. And I think that is something that wasn’t an option a few years ago.

SH- Yeah, for sure. And there was, there was and still is a void in Oklahoma’s comedy scene. Like I love the Looney Bin and it’s amazing, and sometimes they’ll do, they’ll do big shows like that. Like they’ve had Dave Attell out there, but as far as kind of like indie comics. The people who live in L.A. or New York, either have shows or write on shows and then they get out and tour. Most of the time, they are not coming to Oklahoma. They are hitting up the big markets. And so, we just try to grab them. Once we started, we got our first one was Kyle Kinane. We did it at the Speakeasy, and it was when he was opening for Patton Oswalt, touring with him. And so, getting in with that scene, you don’t realize how small the comedy world is, but Kyle would tell one of his other comedy buddies and then they would book a show with us and then it just kind of spread like that. And so, it got pretty easy to book shows and it was great because we could put up some local guys and we can get time with them and it’s fantastic.

SB- So you are not as involved with OKC Comedy, do you keep up with much in the comedy scene now and still go to shows sometimes?

SH- Yeah, I try to, as much as I can during session. I go to work, and I go home and take care of the kids. But after session ends, I’ll have more time to do that and the year prior to that, my wife was campaigning all the time and so I was home with the kids. I think that now we have found a routine, hopefully (knock on something), I get to get out more.

SB- I think it is interesting talking to people, when I do this, when I talk to people, their lives in Oklahoma City, it’s interesting to me how much Oklahoma City has changed. Overall, it is things like this. A lot of it is things like, if I want to go to an open mic comedy tonight, I can because that is an option. I want to go see an NBA team, if we hadn’t got knocked out of the playoffs…. Maybe I could. Do you see, do you see that a big change that people like you… When you are doing it, do you realize that this is something I’m helping make Oklahoma City better with?

SH- I don’t, I don’t ever looked at it like that. I think it was just, this little niche thing me and some friends enjoy doing, and I never really thought about in that sense, but sometimes there is… I’m sure this is true in any other of sub-demographic, but there’ll be in-fighting and that kind of stuff whatever. Sometimes, comics are like ‘Well, you never put me on a show, blah, blah, blah, or whatever’. And so, the thing is ‘why don’t you do it yourself?’. That is what we did. We had one open mic that we could go to twice a month and we started shows. You could do the same thing. There was a joke about a comedy hierarchy in Oklahoma City and if you weren’t a part of it. It was silliness. It was just silliness. But comedy is one of those things where you don’t need anyone’s permission to approach a bar or venue and ‘Hey, would you be interested in doing a comedy night? Maybe charge door, maybe take part. You know, figure that out.’ It’s kind of learn as you go. It’s the same with stand-up comedy. You can read all the books, but getting on stage, you are going to learn way more having good shows and bad shows than you are reading a book about how to do it.

SB- Did you always want to do comedy when you were a kid? Did everybody tell you, ‘Oh yeah, you’re funny. You should tell jokes for, for money.’

SH- Well, never like that. I was always kind of the funny kid. I didn’t hit puberty until I was senior in high school, so I had to be the funny guy. Otherwise, I brought nothing to the table. So, when I was in eighth grade, I started to writing jokes down in notebooks, and they were all awful but that was when I started the process. I liked Johnny Carson. Me and my dad would watch Johnny Carson all the time. We would watch Mel Brooks films and that is kind of where the bug was planted.

SB- I knew I have talked to a few people who said when they first started like James Nghiem and BradChad Porter, they were…. It’s funny to me either they were able to say a specific number, like when we first started there were eight comedians, or something like that. Now, there are a lot. BradChad says that per capita Oklahoma City has really a really significant number of comedians. Who are some of your favorite local comedians?

SH- Um, I love Alex Sanchez, Zack Smith, James Nghiem, BradChad, Cameron Buckholtz, C.J. Lance, Jeremy Westbrook. Jeremy Westbrook has such a unique story. I think he is one of my favorites. Let’s see… I mean I’m going to leave people out, and I apologize, but there’s just, there so many good local comics here. And a lot of friends who were amazing, like Lee K. [Janeanian?] is one of the funniest people I know, she moved out to L.A. Derek Smith moved to Chicago, Seth Joseph moved to New York when I was in Chicago. But there was just… I don’t want to say that we are the minor league, but like I’ve done open mics in L.A., New York and Chicago, and I would put our comedy scene against those comedy scenes any night of the week. Our people are hilarious. Like go to an open mic, local, and you will see some really funny people that should be in bigger markets, should be getting more, more stage time than they are here.

SB- What are some of the good local open mics if I… I know this is something that I have asked a few people, like say I want to go see somebody that’s… my favorite time I asked this what when I asked BradChad and he said, ‘Well, who is your favorite Game of Thrones character and I could tell you based on that which ones are good.” So I could said, well, let’s say…

SH- Well, that is interesting because Brad has never talked to me about that.

SB- So I said… Do you watch Game of Thrones?

SH- Yeah, I love it.

SB- So, in that case, you know what I am talking about, so I said Well, it changes.  Say, one night it just might be the Night King. Alright, in that case, you are going to want to go to the Looney Bin, because if you want to see people who are probably going to fail… Tyrion, season one, when he just about having a good time’. ‘Oh, in that case, you are going to want to go to the Paseo Plunge. What are some of the ones, that if you just had the night free, one night, where would you go?

SH- It depend. Like if I am trying out new material, I think the Looney Bin has the most honest audience. Because it is people who have paid to get in there, they are not there to see you. They are there to see a headliner, or they are there to see one of their other friends doing open mic. So that, those are the most honest reactions. If you can get them to laugh, it is a joke worth exploring. Othello’s. I haven’t been to Othello’s in probably years, but it was always one of the funnest because you could just play around and do, just try out new stuff, even stuff you knew that was not going to be good, it’s more loose. I don’t know if J.J. Alley, I don’t know if they still do open mic out there. That one was, that one was more practice to say, that was just saying words into a microphone. Is what that one was, you never really got good reactions. Does the Plaza still have one?

SB- I think it is the one that moved to the Paseo.

SH- Okay, that one moved to the Paseo. Then I haven’t done it since it moved to the Paseo. But yeah, I try to, I think probably the Looney Bin I would just go to see if I could still make people laugh.

SB- What do you think of the future of comedy in OKC? Do you think it continues to thrive and grow? Where do you see it…?

SH- Yeah, as long as it’s… I don’t know what the word is. Not cultured.

SB- cultivated…?

SH- CULTIVATED! Yes, thank you. Yeah, as long as it’s cultivated. I mean, cause there is some many funny people in, they just come from all different backgrounds, but they are all tied together by them thinking they’re funny, have that drive to try it out on stage. I think there is always going to be the need to have that outlet, somewhere in this city. I think comedy on the bigger scale, you know it kind of comes and goes, depending on what’s going on. There was that big comedy boom in the 80’s and early 90’s and then it kind of faded and then the 2000’s made a big comeback. I don’t know what causes that, why it happens, but I think there is always going to be people who have that need to be recognized for being funny. And stand-up comedy, it’s how you do it.

SB- One of the things that I have heard is people say it would be hard to have a new comedy city because of the Internet, basically, because you can go and find it anywhere. But do you see Oklahoma City potentially being like an Austin and maybe not a Chicago or a New York, but Austin’s comparable in size. We are both between a half in million and a million. Do you think it could be potentially be something like that?

SH- I don’t see why it couldn’t. I think their scenes is probably bigger. You look around the metro area, probably around a million people within 30 minutes of OKC. And that is enough people to draw from, to have crowds, to have people who want to be comedians. There is no reason why we couldn’t. I don’t if it is because Austin is hip, cool, blue part of Texas, maybe. Because you will see that a lot with the creative types, like Paseo or the Plaza district, like those are where a lot of the people who do stand-up live and hang-out in those areas. I think there are those pockets of cool where I think it thrives.

SB- Do you have any other comments you want to add about comedy in Oklahoma?

SH- Hmm, no. Well, I mean it’s fun. I recommend you go out to a show, support local comedy. There is so much talent in Oklahoma City and Tulsa, it’s great. Go, go out and see a show. Go check out an open mic. Try out stand-up comedy. You might fall in love, and we have another comedian.

SB- Well, thanks for taking the time to come down and talk to.

SH- Well, thank you so much, Sheldon. This has been awesome.

SB- Yes, thanks.