Name: Joe Rogan Experience #1785 - Earthquake
Uploaded: 2022-02-26T00:00:00.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Joe Rogan Experience #1785 - Earthquake' from PowerfulJRE on Comedy Buff. Published 2022-02-26. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Joe Rogan Experience #1785 - Earthquake' from PowerfulJRE on Comedy Buff. Published 2022-02-26. Transcript available.

Joe Rogan Experience #1785 - Earthquake

Joe Rogan Podcast, check it out.
The Joe Rogan Experience.
Train by day, Joe Rogan Podcast by night, all day.
All right.
Talk to me real quick.
What's happening?
Hey, what's up, Joe?
Great to see you, man.
Thanks for having me, first of all.
My pleasure.
Listen, your special is fucking outstanding.
It is one of the best specials I've seen in a long time.
It's hard to laugh by yourself out loud on a phone.
When you're watching someone on a phone, I laughed hard.
Thank you.
It was great.
It's you.
It's like, you know, sometimes someone does a special and it's like, it's
better seeing
them live, but you captured it.
It was the journey.
It was the first time I was properly financed.
You know what I mean?
We wasn't borrowing money or had the right vehicle, properly supported by the
distributors and
everything.
So it was the opportunity.
And then I knew the significance of it by Dave being a part of it, that this is
the
one I needed to elevate me to get off of this level that I'm on right now.
Well, we were talking about this before, but in my mind, your level in terms of
your ability,
you're already there.
You're one of the best comics alive.
There's no doubt about it.
So this is a great representative of that.
It's a great representation of that.
Because it's very rare that someone gets as good as you are that's not selling
out arenas.
That's how good you are.
Well, thank you.
So it's exciting for me.
Yes.
And, you know, I hope that you know it.
You're a comic, man.
You never know what's going to do it, what's going to generate.
I never had a problem with, I never equated quantity with quality.
So when I seen people 15, 17, 18,000, I never felt inferior or bad that I had 2,000.
You know what I mean?
I mean, the work of it.
And then at the end of the day, to be quite honest with you, as a comic, you
know,
when you first get into it, you stay with, you just want to make people laugh.
And I have achieved that.
So I had already felt that I was successful.
But sometimes you do sit back and like, God damn, when are they ever going to
get to the E's?
They keep skipping me.
How long does it take?
I mean, because, you know, I said in my echo, the thing I'm saying,
I have been the bridesmaid for so long and never the bride.
And watch all my friends just get TV shows and everything.
And like you said, I look at my friends, and I see them, telling them why I don't
feel it.
I just look at them and say, they had an opportunity, and they achieved.
And they won on it.
And they cashed in on it.
I have yet to have that opportunity to cash in on it.
So that's what I'm looking for.
Well, the fact that Dave Chappelle's behind it, that Dave produced it,
and he introduces you at the beginning of the special, that's gigantic.
That's going to help a lot.
Yeah.
But we've all been talking about you for years.
Everyone's terrified to follow you.
Everyone.
When we find out that you were at the comedy store, everybody's like, oh, shit,
where is he at in the lineup?
Fuck that spot.
That spot after you is not fun.
Yeah, I mean, when you have nothing but your jokes, you've got to at least
perfect that aspect of the career.
Well, you're a hustler, too.
You're always out there.
And the guys that are constantly working, there's a polish that you get when
you're on the road
and you're doing those Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sundays, where you're just
constantly doing sets.
There's an undeniable polish that a guy gets.
Yeah.
I mean, you there.
I call them the front line workers.
You know what I mean?
Success takes you off the front line.
You know what I mean?
It does.
It keeps you from your fans to feel exact because we feed off the information
that we get from our fans.
Yeah.
And if you're isolated with security or other things that you have to do or the,
you know, the enormous of your career,
you kind of like get away from the people who actually support you.
And that's the key to me.
I always stay within my constituents some way, family member or somebody.
I take a young comedian on the road with me who I look up to and say he can
make it and just allow him to be in the life.
And I just watch what he do and what he going through.
And that's how I keep my stuff.
Yeah, I do the same.
I do the same.
And I also bring a lot of comedians to the shows that I do in town, bring open
micers.
I bring, you know, have them go up, I give them tips, give them good spots, you
know, let them try it out.
Give them rough spots sometimes after someone really good, let them feel that.
Let them feel that.
And I think for a lot of guys, a lot of guys get big and then they start
getting television shows and movies.
And you don't realize how much time that takes away from your stand-up.
True.
When I was doing Fear Factor, I remember, like, seeing guys that would come
into town, you know, that were doing the road constantly.
And I'd be jealous.
I would.
I was on a television show.
I was on a hit show.
And, you know, and everybody wanted to be on a hit show.
But I would see these guys that were so smooth because they'd just been doing
those Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, two shows Friday, two shows Saturday,
Sunday on the road.
And they were just whoop, whoop, whoop.
Right.
Just greased up and just smooth and just everything was polished.
Yes.
Yeah.
That's the top level.
You know, you get to that when you're headlining constantly and you just, your
act is just so polished.
Yeah.
And you can see it, too.
Mm-hmm.
And relevant.
And they talking about things, you're like, damn.
Yeah.
I ain't see it that way.
Yeah.
Damn.
Yeah.
You know what I mean?
So it's the beautiful part.
That's what I look for.
You never seen it this way.
Right.
You never seen this angle of it.
Well, that's the best when you watch a comic and they say something that you
would have never expected.
And you're like, wow, that's a nice angle.
That's a nice angle.
Yeah, that's it.
That's the craft.
That's the hook.
Yeah.
Yeah.
That's the sweet spot.
We call it in the pocket.
That's when you're in the pocket.
You get it.
Where did you record this?
Washington, D.C.
Nice.
Yeah, at home.
I'm from Washington, D.C., southeast D.C.
So when Dave came to me, where you want to go, I said, well, let's go ahead and
make it as rough as possible.
Let's go out and do it at home.
And let everybody be here.
So at least, if nothing else, I stamped my hometown.
That's right.
You talk about that in the beginning of it.
Yes.
The other guy that I've had on recently who's also, it's undeniable and
unbelievable that he's not huger is Tony Woods.
Yes.
Yeah.
I had Tony Woods on recently and then we did a show together at the Vulcan.
I'm like, God damn, he's good.
Yes.
He's so smooth.
Me and Tony have been friends for over 25 years.
Yeah, me too.
I've known Tony since the 90s.
Yes.
Tony is my man.
He's from D.C. too.
And he has that slow delivery and sarcastically.
It's beautiful.
When you write, do you sit down and write?
Do you just collect information throughout the day?
How do you come up with the material?
I never, I write in my mind.
I never physically write.
What I do, I come up with a concept and elaborate on it.
And usually it comes with a truth and then it expands to a big ass lie.
You know what I mean?
Like they say, the first casualty of war is the truth.
So that's what it is.
There it is.
And then I just expand on it and expand on it and expand on it.
So when I get on stage, I never know what I'm going to say.
But once I see it, then I just say what I see.
Because I see it in my mind and then I just, it comes out that way.
That's how I do it.
So when you write new material, do you just go up with it or do you try to
sandwich it in between material that you've already done?
No, like this right here, I say, this is what I'm not going to talk about.
I take everything like this special, I'm not going to talk about any of that.
And then I start from then on.
So like, so you take all the material that you're not going to do anymore
because you did it in the special.
Right.
But when you like, say if you have a new bit that you're trying to work into
your act, do you try to do it first?
Yeah, I do it right there because I know where it is to be funny with it.
You know what I mean?
So I start just say what I find is funny.
Like we're going through this thing with Kuwait.
I mean with Ukraine, excuse me.
And I'm like, okay, the Russians are marching.
They're marching.
So you start from that point on and just elaborate all the way through.
And you just work it out on stage?
Work it right there on stage.
Interesting.
Yeah, I work it right on stage.
Have you always done it that way?
Always.
Really?
Yeah.
See, I had my own comedy club and it was the Uptown Comedy Corner.
And the comedy act theater wouldn't allow me to perform there.
So when I...
Where was that?
In Atlanta, Georgia.
So they wouldn't let me perform there.
So I told my mother, they don't know what I said.
My mother said, told you, if they're not going to let you ride their bike, you
either get your own bike or walk.
So I'm like, all right.
I got my own club.
And because I was affiliated with this dude, they said, it's not an all-black
comedy club.
It's white dudes and probably own it.
So they kind of like boycotted my club.
So they left me there to do all the jokes.
And I had to entertain them.
So I was able to just go up there and just go.
And it was the best thing ever happened for me.
Who the fuck boycotted your club?
Other comedians.
And you know, back in the day, because you know, back in the day, you've been
in the game long.
If you work this club, you can't work this club.
You know, Comedy Act Theater was the premier black comedy club.
So you got a club in Los Angeles, Atlanta, that's the premier black club.
And it's this new club with the dudes that's not from here, named Earthquake.
And the owner said, you go up here, you'll never work in my club.
You know what comedians going to do.
They're going to be like, nah, man, I would do your club.
But Gary said, if I go up there, I ain't going to be able to work.
I'm like, all right.
And it was only until Steve Harvey, which is a good friend of mine, called him
up.
I said, Steve, none of these motherfuckers ain't doing it.
He's like, fuck that, I'd do it.
Steve came in, sold it out.
And when they saw him come seeing him, they saw me.
And the rest was history.
Wow.
So you were basically working at your club almost every night.
Every night.
Wow.
I was the feature, the open mic, and the headliner.
You know what I mean?
That's why people see and thinking I'm drunk or something, leaning up against
the wall.
That's just what I would do.
I used to just lean up on the wall and do an hour straight off the top and just
hit it that way.
And that just became my style, and I just continue on.
See what I say?
And just riff right off of it.
That's an amazing gym to train at.
Like, to have that kind of a setup, it's kind of by necessity.
Exactly.
But still, that's an amazing way to work on your act.
Holy shit.
Yeah.
That's how I do it.
I just, you know, come up with some different typers and elaborate on them.
So you didn't do any prep beforehand?
Like, you would never sit down with a notepad and write ideas out or anything?
No, I don't do that.
What I do is, this is what I'm going to start at, and I continue on, and then
at the time,
I tape every show I've ever did.
And I suppose I've been disciplined enough to go back and say, I know it's
something that
I want to elaborate on later, and I got it down so I could talk about it later,
but I never
did.
I never did.
I just said, fuck it.
I caught it, and something else to come.
You know any comics do that?
Record and never listen, or never watch it?
How many?
A lot.
Almost every one of them.
Oh, yeah.
I got all my shows, and I never watched none of them.
I occasionally will go back and look at them if there's something that I don't
remember I
said.
I know I said something, and I got to figure out what it is.
I'll go watch.
See, that's where it's als