Video: Marijuana Jokes from "Glamorous"

Here is the first public release of the video I shot at City Stage at Level 5 in Wilmington, North Carolina during the recording of the first half of me CD 'Glamorous'.  I have submitted this to the Bridgetown Comedy Festival which is odd because I don't do any of these jokes anymore.  
                                                      Booze Cruise TONIGHT!

Tonight is the 4th monthly Knoxville Comedy Booze Cruise.  Tickets are still on sale for $10 via THIS LINK but you can reply to me on twitter @mattwardcomedy and get a special discount code that will take a BIG chunk off your admission tonight up until 6pm.

Comedy Booze Cruise IV This Friday!

Knoxville Comedy Booze Cruise IV

It's time for another Knoxville Comedy Booze Cruise this Friday at the riverfront in Downtown Knoxville, Tennessee. Each show has had near capacity crowds (as you can see from the poster to the left) and this time looks to be no different.  Comedians set to perform that night include Taylor Hiner, Drew Morgan, Dave Wright, Jeff Blank and John Upton.


You can still get your tickets NOW for just $10
by going Here>>

Why Getting "Likes" On Your Facebook Fan Page is Important

Why does it matter that the page has a lot of "Likes"?  Because when bookers visit the page and see how many people are interested in it, that increases the tour's legitimacy.  Take note comedians, "Like" all fellow comedians comedy pages for that purpose!


Please take a moment to "Like" the facebook page of my Crackers of Comedy Tour.  As you can see when you get their, facebook made me call it "Crackas" not "Crackers" because apparently the "er" makes it racist...
Like The Crackas of Comedy Page

Many Comedy Irons in the Fire

Samuel Flynn Ward Born Oct 20th

Having a baby changes everything.  That was the thing I was told over and over.  The truth of the fact is, having a baby adds another constant 'to-do' to your task list that always gets pushed to number 1. Don't get it twists (as the hip folks say) it is THE priority in my life. Creating a synergy among my life activities to all be in sync with that fact started with leaving Verizon Wireless.  My son was born in October and since then I have been very present as a parent getting up to change diapers and watching him when my wife headed out to run errands.  However, in that same time period I have written a solid 20 minutes of new material (45 minutes of shitty material total whittled down) along with accomplishing way more than most stoners do in a years time.  For example....


The Cape Fear Comedy Festival

Submit Now

Last summer Cape Fear Comedy Festival's other co-founder (Timmy Sherrill) and I started discussing when to start submissions to this year's event.  We originally targeted December but after further thought we realized that after the first of the year would be best.  I got the web site up to par (web designers feel free to laugh here) and content updated and started to put the word out about when submissions would begin being accepted. So the feedback we seem to be getting shows a great deal more interest in the festival then in previous years.  This includes a partnership with the Iowa Comedy Festival which we will be trading performers with in 2012.

Laughing for Life 2012

Laughing for Life
For the last few months I have been working on locking in a date for the 2012 Laughing for Life Charity Comedy Show.  The first year the event occurred in December and the last two years it has been in early February.  This year I decided to change the date to May to allow it to coincide with the Cape Fear Comedy Festival, just like Port City's Top Comic does. After many texts and emails I finally got the date confirmed as Cinco De Mayo 2012 (I think the world ends really drunkenly right after the show).  This event is one of my passions as it has helped raise over $10,000 for families right in the Wilmington, North Carolina area.


Port City's Top Comic

Port City's Top Comic is the longest running comedy event I have produced.  I have been very careful to consider all comedian feedback to continue to make the event change in a way that causes it to be very highly regarded among comedians that have competed in it. As indicated in the last paragraph, the event have been held during the Cape Fear Comedy Festival the last two years.  Each year the event has kicked off the festival, however, in 2012 the event has moved to the Friday night of the festival as the early show to the headliners. Port City's Top Comic is in it's 5th year. The event is held at City Stage, where Laughing for Life will take place the following night.


The Crackers of Comedy Tour

2012 Crackers of Comedy Tour

The 2011 Crackers of Comedy Tour was a lofty undertaking.  It was a good example of a my year's of experience only coming in partially helpful when trying to put it to use to create new business experiences.  What the fuck does that mean? It means I had booked shows, yes, but I had never booked a tour that went to 14 cities in 20 days.  I called on all the contacts I had made over the last four years to make it happen.  In the end there were some great shows, and some really, really shitty shows.  The take away?  Sometimes you have to do it before you know how to do it.  In 2012 the Crackers of Comedy tour is taking off again but I will be posting a whole separate blogpost about that.  Not hitting any of the cities hit in 2011, that is all I can say at this time:)




And that is just what I have going on with big events, and JUST the big events in the first half of the year.  I also run KnoxComedy.com and produce the Comedy Booze Cruise along with Victor Agreda Jr.  So in addition to raising a child as well as a stand-up comedian can.  I keep myself pretty fucking busy!

Wake N Bake Podcast Episode 21

Listen to my latest mini-podcast to here some big show announcements!!

Comedian Matt Ward Wake N Bake Podcast Episode 21 by wardcomedy Please note this podcast is for people with short attention spans.  Each episode is around 4 minutes 20 seconds. So you don't have to spend all day on it.... Man.

Carlos Valencia: Coming Up As A Comedian

One of the most interesting things to learn when you are a young comic that is just getting started is how other comedians moved up the ladder to get where there are in comedy. Whether they are now headlining major comedy clubs or just able to do comedy full-time without working at a life-sucking day job, it is fascinating to see how they got there.

Carlos Valencia and Doug Stanhope from March 2011

I became friends with comedian Carlos Valencia in 2008.  In 2009 he gave me the contact info for Doug Stanhope’s manager which led to me being able to produce my first big comedy show.  Doug recorded his CD ‘From Across The Street’ at that show.


I have kept in touch with Carlos and recently asked him to do an interview to give younger comics a look inside how he transitioned from the open-mic stage to being a full-time stand-up comedian.


Carlos Valencia has a look people don’t often forget.  He dresses in a black jacket and wears a black hat pretty much ever show he does.  When his facial hair grows out folks in the South mistake him for being Amish or Jewish.  His delivery is best described as somewhat deadpan, a little mean-spirited and quite cerebral.  He has performed countless times with Stanhope and traveled all over the country competing in the San Francisco and Seattle Comedy Contests.


Carlos is not fond of contests, after all, that is how he got his start.  In 2005, Carnival Cruise lines was having a stand-up comedy contest in the Southeast and Carlos first stepped on stage when the contest came to Charlotte, where he lived.  He didn’t return to the stage for nearly three months then he started regularly attending a weekly Wednesday night open-mic at a coffee shop called SK Netcafe (Which closed it’s doors for good in 2010). Carlos would catch a show at the Comedy Zone in downtown Charlotte and then head over to the open-mic to grab some stage time.  The comradery was good with comedians like Rory Karpf, Justin Chambliss, Danny Swift, Joe Zimmerman and Sid Davis regularly showing up to grab some time each week.


“It was definitely supportive. There wasn't very many of us, and it wasn't like there were very many spots to fight over anyway. There was barely anything that you could call a "scene". The Comedy Zone didn't even have an open mic, so they pretty much didn't care about the locals unless they took their comedy class.” Carlos told me.
“.....the Comedy Zone was never really that supportive of the local talent either. Pretty soon after I started they stopped paying Emcees. You went from something like making $150 a weekend to Zero. I just think a big part of getting ahead in comedy is meeting other successful comics, and that's hard to do in Charlotte..”


About this time the Comedy Zone in Downtown Charlotte shut down.  A new location opened up just east of the city in Matthews, North Carolina. Soon Valencia met comedians Matt Davis, Paul Hooper and they introduced him to comic Kerry White.  Matt Davis began putting on shows he called “SIN” Comedy Show and he got Carlos involved in performing at them not only in Charlotte, but in other cities as well.

Carlos took part in various shows that popped up through town, often performing on shows put together by Joe Zimmerman.  

“My very first paid gig was a show some of the local comics put together independently. We called it "The Fresh Faces of Comedy", at a bar that was owned by the same guy who owned the open-mic coffee shop. I think I made like $60..” Valencia remembers.

Kerry White then took Carlos on the road with him doing several one nighters and comedy clubs. He also allowed him to join him on a self-booked tour called the ‘Thought Criminals’ tour. In late 2008 White asked Carlos to do an entire month long tour with him, so Valecia went to his supervisors and discussed the time he was requesting off and mutually came to an agreement that he would have to leave the company to do the tour. Carlos did just that.  “It's pretty much because of Kerry that I ever got a chance to get my career in comedy going. Before that I was just doing open-mic and the occasional MC gig here and there.” Carlos told us.

“That first month was a pretty heavy one, the tour was in Minnesota/North Dakota/Michigan/New York and it was the middle of the winter. So it was freezing plus there were blizzards, you could barely see the roads while you drove, we spun out a couple of times, but fortunately most people are smart enough not to drive when the weather is like that. Towards the end of the trip I also started getting sick and by the time I got home I'd lost my voice. It's probably the closest I've felt to dying on the road, to put it in the most dramatic of terms. I could barely talk by the time we did the last gig. It was at a super smoky bar and even though smoke doesn't bother me, I was sick enough that I couldn't breathe, so I had to go out to the car while Kerry was on stage and it was about 8 degrees outside.” Carlos recalled.

Carlos found himself meeting more headlining comics as he continued to do shows on the road with increasing frequency.  He lived on savings for some time then started financing his travels with credit cards.  In October 2009 his girlfriend got a transfer at her job to Atlanta, so Valencia uprooted from Charlotte and headed south. He quickly found Atlanta to have an abundance of stage time and a thriving comedy scene.

While out on the road Valencia encountered many of the ups and downs we all hear about from road comics.

“There were plenty of shitty gigs. Most of the independent shows we did were at bars and dives that had never done comedy before, so sometimes you'd have no stage, or everyone would be talking in the background. One time we had to stop driving because of the blizzard, so we had to drive 15 hours straight the next day just to get to a show where only 5 people showed up. I think the dude there tried to stiff Kerry, but Kerry got the money out of him.

I have often told folks that in my first full year as a comedian I have thought about quitting a few times because of how tough it is.  However, Carlos said, “ I haven't really considered quitting yet, but I definitely have a pretty negative attitude about the whole thing.  I feel I'm still improving. I'm not where I want to be but I'm better now than I was six months ago, and as long as I can keep that up stand-up will keep my interest.”

Carlos has had some experiences he may or may not find amazing, but young comics would, including traveling to Seattle and San Francisco to compete in their national comedy contests.  Valencia has opened up many times for Doug Stanhope and helped connect Doug with other bookers around the Southeast. When asked about if he had any advice for newer comics, he had this to say.

Dave Attel, Carlos Valencia and Matt Davis

“It really depends on where they are, if you're in Charlotte, move; same with every other city that doesn't have anything going for it. And it doesn't have to be NYC or LA. There's great mid-level cities with good clubs and comedy scenes like Atlanta, Austin, Minneapolis, Cincinnati. Like I said before, a big part of this thing is who you know and you're not going to meet a whole lot of people if you're in a town that good successful comics aren't visiting. Of course you can try to start your own scene in your little town, and if you can do it, more power to you, but that's a lot of work. In bigger cities other people have already done the work for you. Then when you're in the bigger city hit up as many venues as you can and get to meet the other comics and try to get hooked up with whatever are the major clubs in town. Eventually if you get good enough you won't need the clubs anymore and you can try to branch out on your own and just do your own independent shows, but in order to get there you gotta get good first, and it's hard to get good if there's not shit going on in the town you're in...Getting in with clubs when you're starting helps cause that's how you can meet headliners, and if the headliners like you enough they may be able to hook you up with other bookers, and you can start working the road from there. It's really hard to get road work just "cold-calling" bookers. I'd say I have a success rate of about 10% from just calling or emailing clubs without references. Then again, I'm not a very good comic, so if you're the next Chris Rock then maybe they'll see your video and all the clubs will be fighting each other to get you on their stage.”

Carlos has decided he wants to plan ahead in 2012.  When we asked him if he had a New Year’s Resolution, he said “Do more shows. Bang less dudes.”

You can check out Carlos on twitter at @carlos_valencia or on facebook you can vist http://www.facebook.com/carlosvalenciafans.

Cape Fear Comedy Festival Submissions start TOMORROW!

2012 CFCF submissions begin January 1st!

One of the events I produce starts taking submissions for stand-up comedians starting tomorrow morning at 9am. If you would like more information on the guidelines of submitting and some valid reasons why you would want to do so, please go HERE