Name: The Story Behind Earthquake's Name
Uploaded: 2022-02-26T18:03:06.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'The Story Behind Earthquake's Name' from PowerfulJRE on Comedy Buff. Published 2022-02-26. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'The Story Behind Earthquake's Name' from PowerfulJRE on Comedy Buff. Published 2022-02-26. Transcript available.

The Joe Rogan Experience
My first joke was something about Michael Jackson.
Yeah, and that was it. That's all I remember.
Did you write anything out before you went up there?
No, well, I tried writing, but my penmanship is so bad.
I've been coming out of public school. It's a damn shame when you can't even
read your own shit.
And my spelling is terrible.
So it was like, okay, it's Michael Jackson. What did I think about Michael
Jackson?
I took it from there.
So did you rehearse it in your head? Like, how did you do it?
I rehearsed it in the mirror like most comedians.
And, you know, the toothbrushes are hollering and the toothpaste is standing up
and everything.
But it didn't translate on the stage that time.
Because when I first started doing it, I just looked up, unfortunately, looking
up at the sky,
up at the roof of the place like a woman ain't making love for money.
You know what I'm saying? Ain't enjoying it at all.
So I am, um, that's how I got down for my first one.
So you just didn't know where to look?
Um...
Did you feel uncomfortable? Like trying to...
The insecurity. That's why my name is Earthquake.
You know? And people keep asking me, "Why your name Earthquake?"
I said, "The reason I named my name Earthquake, 'cause if this shit don't work
out,
I ain't gonna mess up my good name."
So...
Somebody come in and say, "Hey, what's up, Earthquake?"
"Hey, my name Nathaniel. I don't know no Earthquake. He was Earthquake."
He was...
Nah, that was my brother or somebody, but my name is Nathaniel.
I don't even know no Earthquake.
That's hilarious. I thought it was just from the reaction you got from the
crowd.
No, it was an insecurity that if this don't work out, I did not fuck up my good
name.
That's hilarious, 'cause I thought it was the total opposite.
I thought it was a cocky move.
No!
Like you're about to cause an earthquake.
No, it was like, "Nah, if this... this don't work out, baby."
You know what I mean? I wouldn't be... I wouldn't scully my good name.
It's funny because it's a perfect name for you.
Oh, thank you.
It really is.
It's the insecurity of wanting to protect your name.
You literally came up with the best nickname ever for you.
Yes.
Yeah.
And that's how it came.
I used to tell a joke.
People were like, "How you came into the Earthquake?"
"Uh, this is happening when your mother takes every precautions
and not to have a child and you still get pregnant.
And there's nothing else you can name that child but a natural disaster."
That's what I wrote as a joke for it.
But the truth honestly about it was the insecurity that if this don't work, I
don't want to mess up my name.
Were you living in Florida at the time?
I lived in Florida.
When I got out, I went to Atlanta.
And from going to Atlanta, that's when I started seeing what the comedy clubs
was like.
And that's when we started opening my club two years later.
So you do an open mic two years later, you have your own club and you're going
on every day.
Yeah.
Wow.
You got to understand, I'm Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and
Sunday.
Three shows on Fridays and Saturdays.
One on Tuesday, one on Wednesday, one on Thursday, two on Sunday.
Every day for about four straight years.
Wow.
And it just...
And you're doing like an hour every night.
Every show.
Every show.
Off the top.
Have you ever read the book Outliers?
No.
It's a great book.
Okay.
Is that Malcolm...
Who is that?
No.
It's someone else.
Yeah, Malcolm Gladwell.
It is Malcolm Gladwell.
It's a great book.
One of the things it's about is they detail people who are extremely successful.
And he talks about the amount of time that's required to get really good at
something.
And how many people that look like overnight successes, the amount of time they
put in was extraordinary.
One of the things he talks about is The Beatles.
They did all these shows in Germany where they were doing like what you were
doing.
Where they were doing every fucking night they were doing shows.
And they had put in hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of hours doing these
shows.
And so when they first, you know, air quote made it on the scene, they had put
in so much time performing.
So much different than most bands because they had done so many shows nightly
over and over and over again.
Yeah.
There's no substitute for that.
Not at all.
Not at all.
And it's the foundation of who I am.
So when I have to sit here, I go in with the confidence knowing.
All I got to do is make sure my environment is pure for me to be able to write
the way I do.
Keep my mind straight.
And I can come up with an hour.
I can come up with an hour.
I can come up with an hour.
And when you were doing this, like two years in is a very unusual, that's not a
lot of time for someone to be, forget about headlining at all, but headlining
every fucking night?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
We would get some comedians that come on it, but we didn't get any of the main
comedians because comedy act wasn't happening.
That's such a cocky move to open up your own club two years in.
That's amazing.
Yeah.
But they were so vulnerable.
They was in the bad, bad part of town.
They didn't serve food.
And then they, the cotton was, I mean, the one that really would bring them
down.
They were so arrogant with it that they had booked a comic, two comics, for the
whole month.
Same comic.
Every week.
Every week.
Oh, that's crazy.
Yes.
I remember it was Joe Torrey, Joe Torrey and Ted Karpiner, and they did the
whole month.
So when I brought my investors there to get the club, I said, look, these same
two gonna be here.
There's 400 people in here.
They got two waitresses.
Plus they ain't got no food.
Plus they in the bad part of town.
So what we gonna do, we gonna put it, we gonna put the club in Buckhead.
Black people don't go there that much right there because they don't go there.
We gonna call it Uptown.
And we gonna serve food.
We gonna have valet service.
We gonna be in a better part of the town.
And that's how you got it.
So once you, any of you gonna go up against anybody, you first gotta recognize
their weakness
and where you can draw from what they got.
And that's why I pivot all my commercials to them that way.
Are you tired of going down to a place, you park your car, and you might don't
know who
gonna be there and they begging you for money?
No.
Come get your jokes up at Uptown Comedy Corner.
You know what I'm saying?
Where you don't see the same comedian over and over again.
And we have food.
And we have prompt service and everything else.
Come to Uptown.
And as you sit there, you give them a comparison at a time.
And people are like, yeah, we like it.
And that's how I got them.
That's amazing, though, that you did that two years in.
Like, go from your career in the military, where you kind of half-ass it, you're
not really into it.
And then all of a sudden you find this new thing and you're all in.
Yeah.
You're all in.
You're opening up your own club 24 months in.
That's crazy.
But, you know, it was out of necessity.
Because I got tired of driving night all the way to Lakeland, Florida to get $50
a show.
And then the biggest one, you tell a woman you're a comedian.
And she's like, oh, I ain't never seen you at the comedy act.
You know, we segregated in the black community.
If you ain't here, then you ain't doing it.
You know what I mean?
So it ain't done.
It wasn't as expanded as it is now that they couldn't even imagine this other
club.
This was the club of all clubs, the only club.
If you didn't work there, you wasn't no black comedian.
So you had this in your head that you wanted to do this.
And how did you make that happen?
Like, who did you get to invest in it?
Like, how did you start a club?
Well, it was this dude named Gary Abdu.
He was a comedian, too.
But he booked things in, like, he used to do little small places like Denny's,
for example,
and put a plywood box up there, little small place, sit there and he'll throw a
show.
And he'll book me to pay me $150, me, Ricky Smiley, and the rest of them.
And we sat there and said, "What you need to do is we need to open up a black
club."
So I showed it to him.
And I said, "This is how we can get him," what I previously said.
He said, "Good idea."
So we all went out and tried to get investors.
I went to all Deion, Sanders, Dominique, all the people in Atlanta.
"Hey, man, sure. Just call this person. Call this person."
Motherfuckers ain't never do nothing.
One of the person was real.
One of the person represented was very honest.
We said, "Listen, man. Quick, I get five of these calls a day.
He ain't going to do shit."
I'm just...
He ain't going to do nothing, man.
I ain't even going to waste your time.
You know what I mean?
So lucky, Gary found the number one plastic surgeon in Atlanta.
And he invests.
But he told us, "I'm going to give y'all $10,000.
If y'all can flip this and show it can work on the small states, then I'll get
the club."
So we went to Birmingham a couple places and turned $10,000 into about $50,000
to $60,000.
And then when we get that from that point on, he said, "You can do it."
And he gave us the half a million dollars to get the club.
Wow.
Yeah.
Dr. Tom.
Wow.
Rest in peace, my brother.
Wow.
Yeah, white dude was great.
He put all the titties in the women in Atlanta, Georgia.
He was the titty specialist.
You know what I mean?
So if you seen any big titties in the '90s, in the early 2000s, it was Dr. Tom.
And how did you know him?
I didn't.
My partner, Gary, at the time knew him.
And he pronged him in and we got together.
We said, "I found somebody I could do it."
But it's just a stipulation for us to do it.
And when I met him, I was cool.
It was beautiful.
Do you remember the opening night?
Yes.
We had 15 people.
Yeah.
Wow.
Yeah, it was 15 people.
We were so surprised.
How many seats is the place?
It hold 250.
Yeah.
Yeah.
250 people.
Some of the people, matter of fact, my video person who handled my media for me,
Star,
that's how we met.
I hired her as my waitress.
And we've been friends ever since.
Wow.
And I gave her a job to handle all my social media.
Wow.
Yeah.
So you go from there, 15 people.
Yes.
And was it you the first guy on stage?
Yeah.
I had a couple of comedians to help me out.
But I was the main man until we was able.
Because see, once that club closed, then all the comedians, oh man, I'm sorry,
man.
I'm going to get down.
Because now you're the only comedy club in the city.
Right.
You know what I mean?
But till then, it was a battle.
And it was a blessing in disguise because it made me the beast that I am today.
When did it start to catch on?
After Steve left.
Once Steve, and Steve, he taught me so much, you know, because when he came, he
said, I'm
going to do your club because I couldn't get no headliners.
Nobody that could draw.
And I was like, Steve, would you do it?
He was hosting Showtime.
And he probably said, I'd do it for you.
And he came in on a Wednesday.
And it was only about 30 people in there.
And I was like, okay.
And he came in and looked.
He said, give them all their money back.
And come pick me up tomorrow at five o'clock when we do media.
I said, what do you mean?
There's 30 people in here.
He said, Steve Harvey don't do no show for 30 people.
I said, okay then, man.
And then I picked him up.
And he took me to the radio.
That's when I learned how powerful media is.
And he stopped by.
He said, let's stop by Dunkin' Donuts because we got to get some donuts.
And some oysters.
Because you got to smooth these jocks' egos.
Because they feel you're going to try to take their fucking job and everything.
You got to be good on them.
And we got in there at 5:30.
Stayed on from 6:00 to 9:00.
Stayed on from 6:00.
Stayed on from 6:00.
Stayed on from 6:00.
Stayed on from 6:00.
Stayed on from 6:00.
Stayed on from 6:00.
Stayed on from 6:00.
Stayed on from 6:00.
Stayed on from 6:00.
Stayed on from 6:00.
Stayed on from 6:00.
Stayed on from 6:00.
Stayed on from 6:00.
Stayed on from 6:00.
Stayed on from 6:00.
Stayed on from 6:00.
Stayed on from 6:00.
Stayed on from 6:00.
Stayed on from 6:00.
Stayed on from 6:00.
Stayed on from 6:00.
Stayed on from 6:00.
Stayed on from 6:00.
Stayed on from 6:00.
Stayed on from 6:00.
Stayed on from 6:00.
Stayed on from 6:00.
Stayed on from 6:00.
Stayed on from 6:00.
Stayed on from 6:00.
Stayed on from 6:00.
Stayed on from 6:00.
Stayed on from 6:00.
Stayed on from 6:00.
Stayed on from 6:00.
Stayed on from 6:00.
Stayed on from 6:00.
Stayed on from 6:00.
Stayed on from 6:00.
Stayed on from 6:00.
Stayed on from 6:00.
Stayed on from 6:00.
Stayed on from 6:00.
Stayed on from 6:00.
Stayed on from 6:00.
Stayed on from 6:00.
Stayed on from 6:00.
Stayed on from 6:00.
Stayed on from 6:00.
Stayed on from 6:00.
Stayed on from 6:00.
Stayed on from 6:00.
Stayed on from 6:00.

The Story Behind Earthquake's Name

The Joe Rogan Experience
My first joke was something about Michael Jackson.
Yeah, and that was it. That's all I remember.
Did you write anything out before you went up there?
No, well, I tried writing, but my penmanship is so bad.
I've been coming out of public school. It's a damn shame when you can't even
read your own shit.
And my spelling is terrible.
So it was like, okay, it's Michael Jackson. What did I think about Michael
Jackson?
I took it from there.
So did you rehearse it in your head? Like, how did you do it?
I rehearsed it in the mirror like most comedians.
And, you know, the toothbrushes are hollering and the toothpaste is standing up
and everything.
But it didn't translate on the stage that time.
Because when I first started doing it, I just looked up, unfortunately, looking
up at the sky,
up at the roof of the place like a woman ain't making love for money.
You know what I'm saying? Ain't enjoying it at all.
So I am, um, that's how I got down for my first one.
So you just didn't know where to look?
Um...
Did you feel uncomfortable? Like trying to...
The insecurity. That's why my name is Earthquake.
You know? And people keep asking me, "Why your name Earthquake?"
I said, "The reason I named my name Earthquake, 'cause if this shit don't work
out,
I ain't gonna mess up my good name."
So...
Somebody come in and say, "Hey, what's up, Earthquake?"
"Hey, my name Nathaniel. I don't know no Earthquake. He was Earthquake."
He was...
Nah, that was my brother or somebody, but my name is Nathaniel.
I don't even know no Earthquake.
That's hilarious. I thought it was just from the reaction you got from the
crowd.
No, it was an insecurity that if this don't work out, I did not fuck up my good
name.
That's hilarious, 'cause I thought it was the total opposite.
I thought it was a cocky move.
No!
Like you're about to cause an earthquake.
No, it was like, "Nah, if this... this don't work out, baby."
You know what I mean? I wouldn't be... I wouldn't scully my good name.
It's funny because it's a perfect name for you.
Oh, thank you.
It really is.
It's the insecurity of wanting to protect your name.
You literally came up with the best nickname ever for you.
Yes.
Yeah.
And that's how it came.
I used to tell a joke.
People were like, "How you came into the Earthquake?"
"Uh, this is happening when your mother takes every precautions
and not to have a child and you still get pregnant.
And there's nothing else you can name that child but a natural disaster."
That's what I wrote as a joke for it.
But the truth honestly about it was the insecurity that if this don't work, I
don't want to mess up my name.
Were you living in Florida at the time?
I lived in Florida.
When I got out, I went to Atlanta.
And from going to Atlanta, that's when I started seeing what the comedy clubs
was like.
And that's when we started opening my club two years later.
So you do an open mic two years later, you have your own club and you're going
on every day.
Yeah.
Wow.
You got to understand, I'm Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and
Sunday.
Three shows on Fridays and Saturdays.
One on Tuesday, one on Wednesday, one on Thursday, two on Sunday.
Every day for about four straight years.
Wow.
And it just...
And you're doing like an hour every night.
Every show.
Every show.
Off the top.
Have you ever read the book Outliers?
No.
It's a great book.
Okay.
Is that Malcolm...
Who is that?
No.
It's someone else.
Yeah, Malcolm Gladwell.
It is Malcolm Gladwell.
It's a great book.
One of the things it's about is they detail people who are extremely successful.
And he talks about the amount of time that's required to get really good at
something.
And how many people that look like overnight successes, the amount of time they
put in was extraordinary.
One of the things he talks about is The Beatles.
They did all these shows in Germany where they were doing like what you were
doing.
Where they were doing every fucking night they were doing shows.
And they had put in hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of hours doing these
shows.
And so when they first, you know, air quote made it on the scene, they had put
in so much time performing.
So much different than most bands because they had done so many shows nightly
over and over and over again.
Yeah.
There's no substitute for that.
Not at all.
Not at all.
And it's the foundation of who I am.
So when I have to sit here, I go in with the confidence knowing.
All I got to do is make sure my environment is pure for me to be able to write
the way I do.
Keep my mind straight.
And I can come up with an hour.
I can come up with an hour.
I can come up with an hour.
And when you were doing this, like two years in is a very unusual, that's not a
lot of time for someone to be, forget about headlining at all, but headlining
every fucking night?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
We would get some comedians that come on it, but we didn't get any of the main
comedians because comedy act wasn't happening.
That's such a cocky move to open up your own club two years in.
That's amazing.
Yeah.
But they were so vulnerable.
They was in the bad, bad part of town.
They didn't serve food.
And then they, the cotton was, I mean, the one that really would bring them
down.
They were so arrogant with it that they had booked a comic, two comics, for the
whole month.
Same comic.
Every week.
Every week.
Oh, that's crazy.
Yes.
I remember it was Joe Torrey, Joe Torrey and Ted Karpiner, and they did the
whole month.
So when I brought my investors there to get the club, I said, look, these same
two gonna be here.
There's 400 people in here.
They got two waitresses.
Plus they ain't got no food.
Plus they in the bad part of town.
So what we gonna do, we gonna put it, we gonna put the club in Buckhead.
Black people don't go there that much right there because they don't go there.
We gonna call it Uptown.
And we gonna serve food.
We gonna have valet service.
We gonna be in a better part of the town.
And that's how you got it.
So once you, any of you gonna go up against anybody, you first gotta recognize
their weakness
and where you can draw from what they got.
And that's why I pivot all my commercials to them that way.
Are you tired of going down to a place, you park your car, and you might don't
know who
gonna be there and they begging you for money?
No.
Come get your jokes up at Uptown Comedy Corner.
You know what I'm saying?
Where you don't see the same comedian over and over again.
And we have food.
And we have prompt service and everything else.
Come to Uptown.
And as you sit there, you give them a comparison at a time.
And people are like, yeah, we like it.
And that's how I got them.
That's amazing, though, that you did that two years in.
Like, go from your career in the military, where you kind of half-ass it, you're
not really into it.
And then all of a sudden you find this new thing and you're all in.
Yeah.
You're all in.
You're opening up your own club 24 months in.
That's crazy.
But, you know, it was out of necessity.
Because I got tired of driving night all the way to Lakeland, Florida to get $50
a show.
And then the biggest one, you tell a woman you're a comedian.
And she's like, oh, I ain't never seen you at the comedy act.
You know, we segregated in the black community.
If you ain't here, then you ain't doing it.
You know what I mean?
So it ain't done.
It wasn't as expanded as it is now that they couldn't even imagine this other
club.
This was the club of all clubs, the only club.
If you didn't work there, you wasn't no black comedian.
So you had this in your head that you wanted to do this.
And how did you make that happen?
Like, who did you get to invest in it?
Like, how did you start a club?
Well, it was this dude named Gary Abdu.
He was a comedian, too.
But he booked things in, like, he used to do little small places like Denny's,
for example,
and put a plywood box up there, little small place, sit there and he'll throw a
show.
And he'll book me to pay me $150, me, Ricky Smiley, and the rest of them.
And we sat there and said, "What you need to do is we need to open up a black
club."
So I showed it to him.
And I said, "This is how we can get him," what I previously said.
He said, "Good idea."
So we all went out and tried to get investors.
I went to all Deion, Sanders, Dominique, all the people in Atlanta.
"Hey, man, sure. Just call this person. Call this person."
Motherfuckers ain't never do nothing.
One of the person was real.
One of the person represented was very honest.
We said, "Listen, man. Quick, I get five of these calls a day.
He ain't going to do shit."
I'm just...
He ain't going to do nothing, man.
I ain't even going to waste your time.
You know what I mean?
So lucky, Gary found the number one plastic surgeon in Atlanta.
And he invests.
But he told us, "I'm going to give y'all $10,000.
If y'all can flip this and show it can work on the small states, then I'll get
the club."
So we went to Birmingham a couple places and turned $10,000 into about $50,000
to $60,000.
And then when we get that from that point on, he said, "You can do it."
And he gave us the half a million dollars to get the club.
Wow.
Yeah.
Dr. Tom.
Wow.
Rest in peace, my brother.
Wow.
Yeah, white dude was great.
He put all the titties in the women in Atlanta, Georgia.
He was the titty specialist.
You know what I mean?
So if you seen any big titties in the '90s, in the early 2000s, it was Dr. Tom.
And how did you know him?
I didn't.
My partner, Gary, at the time knew him.
And he pronged him in and we got together.
We said, "I found somebody I could do it."
But it's just a stipulation for us to do it.
And when I met him, I was cool.
It was beautiful.
Do you remember the opening night?
Yes.
We had 15 people.
Yeah.
Wow.
Yeah, it was 15 people.
We were so surprised.
How many seats is the place?
It hold 250.
Yeah.
Yeah.
250 people.
Some of the people, matter of fact, my video person who handled my media for me,
Star,
that's how we met.
I hired her as my waitress.
And we've been friends ever since.
Wow.
And I gave her a job to handle all my social media.
Wow.
Yeah.
So you go from there, 15 people.
Yes.
And was it you the first guy on stage?
Yeah.
I had a couple of comedians to help me out.
But I was the main man until we was able.
Because see, once that club closed, then all the comedians, oh man, I'm sorry,
man.
I'm going to get down.
Because now you're the only comedy club in the city.
Right.
You know what I mean?
But till then, it was a battle.
And it was a blessing in disguise because it made me the beast that I am today.
When did it start to catch on?
After Steve left.
Once Steve, and Steve, he taught me so much, you know, because when he came, he
said, I'm
going to do your club because I couldn't get no headliners.
Nobody that could draw.
And I was like, Steve, would you do it?
He was hosting Showtime.
And he probably said, I'd do it for you.
And he came in on a Wednesday.
And it was only about 30 people in there.
And I was like, okay.
And he came in and looked.
He said, give them all their money back.
And come pick me up tomorrow at five o'clock when we do media.
I said, what do you mean?
There's 30 people in here.
He said, Steve Harvey don't do no show for 30 people.
I said, okay then, man.
And then I picked him up.
And he took me to the radio.
That's when I learned how powerful media is.
And he stopped by.
He said, let's stop by Dunkin' Donuts because we got to get some donuts.
And some oysters.
Because you got to smooth these jocks' egos.
Because they feel you're going to try to take their fucking job and everything.
You got to be good on them.
And we got in there at 5:30.
Stayed on from 6:00 to 9:00.
Stayed on from 6:00.
Stayed on from 6:00.
Stayed on from 6:00.
Stayed on from 6:00.
Stayed on from 6:00.
Stayed on from 6:00.
Stayed on from 6:00.
Stayed on from 6:00.
Stayed on from 6:00.
Stayed on from 6:00.
Stayed on from 6:00.
Stayed on from 6:00.
Stayed on from 6:00.
Stayed on from 6:00.
Stayed on from 6:00.
Stayed on from 6:00.
S