By Sean Tuohy

South Florida-born comedian Dave Williamson is a natural storyteller with a quick wit that can be deadly. Williamson’s comedy gives an unflinching look at his life as a parent and grown man. He originally worked at his family’s car dealership, but then broke out and started touring nationally and recently sold a Web series to NickMom.

Williamson took a few minutes to sit down and talk about his stand-up career, how he approaches comedy, and what the future holds for him.

Sean Tuohy: What led you to comedy?

David Williamson: I really enjoyed writing in college. I got a minor in creative writing. I was a comedy fan, and a bit of the class clown. After college, I was freelance writing for magazines and my girlfriend (now my wife), took me to a sketch comedy club. I immediately wanted to write for them. You had to be a performer, so I tried out. Luckily, they accepted me and I fell in love with performing. After a few years, sketch comedy led to stand-up, and I never looked back.

ST: Who were your comedy influences growing up?

DW: I was a big fan of “Saturday Night Live” as a kid. I'd also recite funny commercials to make my parents laugh. My mother's side of the family had great storytellers, so I spent family gatherings watching them tell tales. That's what pretty much led to me being a class clown.

ST: What was your first time on stage like? Good, bad, or eh?

DW: I got comfortable with sketch comedy pretty quickly because I was already a good public speaker. The first time I did stand-up, I was warming up the audience at the sketch show. It went terrible. I had no idea how to do segways, or punch lines for that matter! But then I talked my way onto a theater show that a local radio show was putting on. I basically lied and told them I was an experienced stand-up. I did 15 minutes and it went surprisingly really well. I was hooked and concentrated mostly on stand-up after that.

ST: Do you write jokes down or do you keep them in your head?

DW: I used to write everything down, word for word. After you are a few years in, you get better at "writing on stage" and working things out in your head. I write down premises, and set lists, but I rarely will write down a joke word for word anymore.

ST: You have great delivery. Did that take time to develop or was that natural?

DW: I feel like that comes with being comfortable on stage, and doing the sketch comedy for two years before I got into stand up certainly helped with that. It definitely develops and is a process over time though. There is no book you can read and boot camp you can take that will be a substitute for stage time. It's all about logging hours on stage.

ST: How long does it take you to create a new bit?

DW: Totally depends. Depends on the bit, and depends on the shows you are doing. In Los Angeles, you are usually doing short showcase sets night in, night out, so there are fewer opportunities to work new stuff. On the road, you can sandwich new stuff in between the proven jokes during your headline sets.

ST: How did it take to get the material together to record “Thicker Than Water?”

DW: That was my first CD so it was a culmination of my jokes that I wrote over the first eight years or so of doing stand-up. I already have a new hour, and I'm excited to record it, because it’s more representative of my voice and ability now, and what I've been creating the past two years.

ST: What does the future hold for Dave Williamson?

DW: More touring, and continuing to grow with my material. I hope more television opportunities, which would give me a chance to build my audience. I've started hosting a podcast called Water Polo Dojo, where I basically teach comedians about my favorite sport, water polo. I've started a production company called Clean Plate Productions so I can develop multiple Web series and independent films, creating my own stuff instead of waiting for it to happen. I'm also producing a comedy festival, so I'm pretty busy! Also, tweeting is fun.

ST: What is the worst joke you ever heard?

DW: Ugh. That's a tie between every joke an audience member has told me after a show. Usually with whiskey breath and way too close to my face!

To learn more about David Williamson, visit his official website, like his Facebook page, or follow him on Twitter @DaveWComedy.

FULL ARCHIVE

By Sean Tuohy

There are few stand-up comics that have the ability to grab you with one joke and keep you interested. Sometimes it takes some time to develop the right rhythm with the audience, and rarely does it happen with one punch line. That is unless you’re comedian Slade Ham.

I was lucky enough to discover Ham's work one night and his on-stage personality and delivery grabbed me and wouldn’t let me go. Recently, the Texas-based comic has been working as a radio DJ and podcast host in addition to spilling jokes on stage.

I chatted with Slade about his career in comedy, his first experience on stage, and the worst whiskey he’s ever had.

Sean Tuohy: What made you become a comic?

Slade Ham: It’s funny, because the things that made me want to be a comic aren’t the same things that still make me want to be a comic. I’ll answer this question the same way in the past: I was a rock DJ on the radio in my hometown, and a huge fan of stand-up throughout the 1990s, and I thought that my clever (in my mind anyway) quips on the air were somehow on par with the people I watched on A&E’s “Evening at the Improv.” It was the natural progression for a delusional 23-year-old.

The reality is that you don’t know anything in your early 20s. You just don’t. The truth was that I had already dropped out of college, moved to Dallas, failed at basic survival, moved home, was in the early stages of a bad relationship, and was scraping by as a bartender. Stand-up really was just one more attempt to find something I was good at. And of course there was the allure of being the center of attention, the guy on stage. What keeps me doing stand-up is that I feel like at 38, I have some pretty solid opinions about some things. I know who I am. I have stuff to say and the stage gives me a platform. At 23, I had nothing to say, even if I didn’t know that at the time. I just needed to feel like I was working toward something.

ST: What was your first time on stage like? Good, bad, or awful?

SH: It was a train wreck. I mean, people laughed, but civilians don’t always know better. Regular people laugh at “that’s what she said” jokes and “The Big Bang Theory.” I don’t say that to be condescending, but non-comedians have an underdeveloped sense of comedy. They think in one step. So to a room full of people in my hometown, people with very little exposure to mainstream stand-up, I definitely did well.

I was also paraphrasing bits from George Carlin and others in those first few weeks. I didn’t know any better. I corrected that really quickly though and I started sucking with my own material instead of someone else’s. No one is good their first time. You are good compared to having never done it before, but no one is good compared to the standard any pro would consider baseline.

ST: How long did it take you to develop your own voice as a comic?

SH: The adage is that it takes seven years. I think it was closer to 10 for me, but there were gaps in my schedule that delayed things. The thing is that your opinions and values change as you get older, so your voice has to as well. The whole concept of “voice” on stage is funny to me—it’s really about being authentic and being able to present what you have to say as honestly as possible. Once you learn to do that, all the other stuff falls into place. You don’t have to worry about whether you write a story or a one liner, or whether the tone of a bit “fits” your voice. You just start to write as “you.” Not only does it solve all those other problems but it simplifies your actual writing process as well. Some days I still feel like I’m working on that, but for the most part I figured out—really, really figured out—who I was on stage around the 10-year mark.

ST: Which stand-up comics influenced you?

SH: I was influenced very heavily by Carlin in the early stages. Carlin, Richard Pryor, and Bill Cosby remain my Holy Trinity of stand-ups. Pryor and Cosby, particularly in regard to storytelling, have turned out to be bigger influences than Carlin though.

ST: You are also a radio host and podcast host of The Whiskey Brothers. Do you approach these platforms differently from stand-up comedy?

SH: They really are such different mediums. When you are on the radio by yourself there is no instant gratification. It’s literally playing to an empty room. No feedback, no laughter, no interaction. Maybe the phone rings, maybe it doesn’t. It’s just you and the microphone. I really don’t know why anyone does it, honestly. I did it initially because at least in the 1990s there was a bit of a rockstar quality to the DJ. It’s what you did if you had no musical talent but still wanted to go to concerts and feel important.

With the podcast (and with "The Outlaw Dave Show"), it’s a group environment. There is interplay and improvisation and you are actually creating something with your peers. It’s a totally different environment than being on stage by yourself. And of course you have to maintain the control. You’re operating on a clock, there are breaks to think about, levels to watch, and a ton of other things to distract you from simply being funny.

ST: Some comics write whole jokes down while others just keep it all in their head. What is your creative process when coming up with a joke?

SH: I used to have a long writing process. I would write every new joke out verbatim. I would use way too many words. I would over think it ridiculously. Now, I do so much of it on stage. I trust myself to throw a loose idea out in the middle of a show and see what happens. I always bring one good punch line with me and if things don’t work, that’s my out. You can always follow it with something old and proven to redeem yourself. It’s the thing the drum into your head in defensive driving classes. Always leave yourself an out. I’m gonna brake check this asshole who’s tailgating me, but if he gets all road ragey I’m going to make sure I have some space to get out of the situation. Not that defensive driving course offer that level of aggressive driving technique, but they do teach you to leave an out. New jokes are sort of that dangerous.

Most of the really good lines in some of my stories have just happened on stage though. You really are in a different mindset during a show—much more free, much more creative, very much the same way that people are in hypnosis shows. There is no over thinking it. It’s live fire, funny or die. I have a huge respect for the guys that can just sit down with a notepad and write “jokes.” I am fascinated by that. I realize that that seems like a racecar driver not knowing how to drive a stick shift, but I really do suck at it.

ST: You are a well-known whiskey drinker. What is your least favorite whiskey to drink?

SH: I was given a bottle of something called Yukon Gold for the podcast once. It’s the only bottle I’ve ever given back to a fan. It tasted like feet and sadness.

ST: I have to ask, did the Asian woman at Dunkin' Donuts ever dial the other "1"?

SH: Haha, that’s such an old bit but such a very true story. Kudos for knowing some of my old stuff that well. I’ve told the stage version of it so many times that I’ve forgotten what parts are true and which ones aren’t. What is true is that I was very much chased by my ex that night and I went to the Dunkin’ Donuts with the very sincere hope that a cop would be there. I remember laughing about that to myself even as her headlights raced toward me in the rearview mirror.

And she very much burst through the door and started throwing anything she could get her hands on—salt shakers, napkin holders, and then eventually one of those big drink machines got shoved off a counter and shattered the plate glass window. The only other person there was that poor little Chinese woman. It was two in the morning and I know I’m putting words in her mouth in the joke. As far as I actually remember, she just stood there as everything broke and watched. And I’m certain she pressed the “9” and both “1s” the second we left.

ST: What is one random fact about yourself?

SH: I take a toy Yoda with me everywhere I go and shoot pictures of him like one of those roaming gnomes. He’s been in something close to 15 countries with me since I got him last October, and I guard him as closely as I do my passport. There is a photo album with him on my Facebook and Flickr, and it’s gotten so bad that people no longer care what I’m doing; they just want to see Yoda in cool places.

To learn more about Slade Ham, check out his official website, like his Facebook page, or follow him on Twitter @sladeham.

Writing On Stage: 9 Questions With Stand-Up Comedian Dave Williamson

Developing A Sense of Humor: 9 Questions With Stand-Up Comedian Slade Ham

The Writer's Bone Interviews Archive