The Story

Part one : There's a version of my life where I'm still hauling a guitar into a van at midnight, arguing about setlists and splitting a $47 bar tab four ways. That version of me would be shocked to know I ended up doing stand-up comedy—and probably a little relieved, too.

The truth is, the stage was always the destination; I just took the scenic route to get there.

I started playing in bands when I was 15, mostly because I had aspirational dreams of being the next Slash or Jimmy Page. I thought it was cool, and I genuinely loved the music. We called ourselves Black Horse, which tells you everything you need to know about where our heads were at.

We played all over Chicagoland—bars, basements, and the occasional actual stage if we were lucky. The crowds ranged from "enthusiastic" to "three people and a bartender who was clearly annoyed." But here's the thing about playing to a room that doesn't care: you learn really fast how to make them care. Or, at least, how to survive when they don't. That was my first exposure to the mechanics of stand-up.

There's a specific kind of humility that comes from being in a band. You rehearse for weeks, you think you're ready, and then you get up there and something goes wrong. A string breaks, someone misses a cue, or the sound guy hates you for reasons you'll never fully understand. You have to just keep going. That skill? Turns out it's incredibly useful in both comedy and life.

After years of bouncing around bands, I found myself in a traditional Brazilian Bossa Nova group, traveling the country in a van with dancers, percussionists, and trumpet players.

I started noticing during the constant repetition that the parts of our shows I looked forward to most weren't the songs. It was the in-between stuff—the banter and the accidental moments. One time I said something off the cuff and the whole room laughed, and I thought, "Oh. That's the thing." After getting burned one too many times by unnecessarily big egos and band nonsense, I quit and decided to take a break. It would be two years before I truly discerned what comedy could be for me.

Comedy and music aren't as different as people think. Both are about timing. Both are about reading a room. Both require you to stand in front of strangers and ask them to feel something. The main difference is that in comedy, if a joke doesn't land, there's no guitar riff to hide behind.