North Carolina Comic Joe Zimmerman has had an amazing year. In the past twelve months, he has performed on John Oliver’s New York Stand-Up Show, The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson, Last Comic Standing, and this Friday night, his Comedy Central Half Hour will premiere at 12:30 am. Okay, technically Saturday.
Originally from Morgantown, WV, Zimmerman got his start while attending college at Davidson University, just outside of Charlotte. Later he moved to Asheville and began touring the country with the group The Beards of Comedy, who recorded two albums and played all over the country. Joe relocated to NYC and the group disbanded on good terms to pursue their own efforts.
On stage, Joe is extremely charming and sharp. Clever without being condescending, he often makes himself the butt of the joke, but his bits are filled with his unpretentious insight. Joe is one of the nicest and hardest working comics I’ve ever met, and his efforts are paying off. Recorded in Asheville, he recently released his first full-length solo album, Smiling At Wolves, which reached #2 on iTunes.
I sat down with Joe earlier this year at The Cape Fear Comedy Festival in Wilmington, NC to discuss his upcoming Half Hour and his process for working his material. I also want to let it be known that he spent the first few minutes of the interview saying “test” into the phone that I was using to record, as well as making our knees touch when I sat across from him and then finally setting up his phone to record the interview as well. Joe is just effortlessly funny.
Justin Thompson: Tonight I heard a lot of new stuff. Now that you’ve recorded an album, are you forcing yourself to write more?
Joe Zimmerman: I was stymied because I polished, polished, polished for the album, and then two weeks after I recorded the album, I got the good news that I got the Half Hour, which is exciting. [Joe does the ‘raise the roof’ motion.] I just raised the roof. [Joe leans to speak directly into the microphone.] Raise the roof.
That’s one of my big career dreams, to do the Half Hour on Comedy Central, so I focused on polishing that half hour of material for three more months, which was essentially 80-90% material that was on the CD. So then I did The Half Hour and it had been six months of polishing between the album and Half Hour. And I also did the Ferguson set, which was polishing.
And then two weeks later I got to open for my hero, Brian Regan, which was 20 minutes in front of big theater crowds. I had to do my polished, cleanest material.
This week I was like, “I’m writing some god damn new material,” so I sat down and wrote ten minutes on crows and forced myself to say it tonight. I’m really excited about doing new material, but I haven’t been able to up until the last week. Which has been great, but I am itching to do new material.
JT: How did you prepare to tape The Half Hour?
JZ: They’ve got seven really great cameras, that look really great. They’ve got a great team making sure everything looks good and sounds good, and they have an audience person who is specifically in charge of knowing the audience and getting a good audience. You only have one shot at it, so that’s a lot of pressure, but the atmosphere is set up perfectly to succeed. Then it’s just your job to be in the moment.
I had felt more pressure than I had ever felt, because you only have one shot at it. and pretty much no matter how well you do, it’s going on television, possibly forever. Supposedly they air The Half Hour twice a year, forever. It could be at four in the morning, but it is still forever. I just ran my half-hour set a lot, and just tried to get that set down inside and out. I was happy with it.
JT: Tell me about your work ethic?
JZ: My work ethic? Well, it depends on what phase you’re in. I find I have to go through different phases. The new material phase, where you have to write a lot and do your new material muscle, which is a different muscle than your polishing muscle. When I’m going through the new material phase, I just try to free write every morning, with no email or phone distractions. And I can usually free write for about an hour. And maybe I didn’t get anything out of it, or maybe I’ll write something that I like, and I’ll just put that in a Word document and try it out onstage that night, maybe.
If it’s a polishing phase, like doing The Half Hour, I will try to find a rehearsal space, like I’m an actor trying to rehearse my lines and play with them a little, play to make them better. I will try to do out-loud rehearsal. I don’t know if a lot of people do that, but that’s what works for me.
My girlfriend is an actor and she rehearses a lot, and I’ve noticed that she gets better and better at delivering the lines, so I’ve started to try rehearsing a little bit. Rehearsing out loud helps a lot when it comes to taking your bit from your page to the stage.
JT: Rehearsing out loud, that’s a new thing you’ve started?
JZ: Yeah, treating it like I’ve written a script. It’s not a script in that I don’t have to stick to the lines, but I have written a loose script for myself that I can play around with and try to deliver what I’ve written for myself. I’ve tried rehearsing more and I’d say that’s helped the performance quite a bit.
JT: That is reflected in your style, it’s very sharp.
JZ: I like ad-libbing and playing with the crowd, but lately I’ve been focused on the material aspect. I’m still open to doing more ad-lib stuff, but the material is so important for a comic. Improv is important for a live show, but material is important for everything else, as far as an album or TV, and everybody wants to hear new material.
JT: How did you get the news that you got The Half Hour?
JZ: First, you get on their radar a little. I got on their radar from being in New York and showcasing, then I got booked for John Oliver on Comedy Central. Then I did Montreal, which is a huge festival for getting seen. For Montreal, they have an audition and a final callback audition, and you have to be invited. Doing comedy for seven years, eventually you get asked to do a Montreal audition, and I got asked to do it, which was huge.
Then I got on their radar and they asked me. They didn’t ask me if I wanted to, they asked me if I was going to submit, and I said I’d love to. I home videotaped a half hour set in New York and I got one shot at it. I promoted the show well and submitted the tape in November and three months later in January, I thought I would have heard by then, so I sorta wasn’t thinking about it anymore. I figured that they would have selected everyone. Then I got the call. Well, they tell your manager, then he called me. My manager just called and said, “I’ve got some good news, you’ve got The Half Hour,” and that was really exciting for me, because I really wanted it a lot but wasn’t expecting to get it.
JT: You’ve had a crazy year.
JZ: Yeah, as far as I hadn’t done any TV before last year, I’ve started to get TV stuff which has been great. And recording the CD in Asheville was a lot of fun.
JT: Why did you choose Asheville as the location to record your album?
JZ: I lived in Asheville for three years, it’s one of my favorite places, and the LAB is one of my favorite venues, it’s a listening room. The acoustics in there are really good, and I thought it would be an original idea, because no one else had recorded a comedy CD there. I thought it was authentic for me to go back to Asheville. I have a lot of friends there, and it’s one of my favorite small rooms.
JT: You went to Davidson College then then you moved to Charlotte, right?
JZ: I lived in Davidson for a year, which is 20 minutes from Charlotte. There was open mic every two weeks, so I started driving down every two weeks from Davidson, essentially did that for a year, then there were a few other open mics but not very many. Then I started hosting random shows and doing random spots around Charlotte for a few years before I moved to Asheville.
Then I went to Atlanta more, with The Beards. Atlanta is kind of the big scene for comedy in the Southeast, but Wilmington is actually coming along from what I’m hearing. And Asheville is coming up too, because when I moved up, there wasn’t one open mic, and then Tomato Tuesdays started. Two years later, there was a show almost every night of the week. I think that coincided with the Asheville festival, and the Wilmington scene has coincided with the Wilmington festival. At the time I moved to Asheville, Atlanta was the only scene so I went down as much as I could and connected with The Beards, essentially because I thought it would be more fun to do gigs with friends, than to do gigs on your own. I think it was a great way to get started doing the road.
JT: When did you start with working with The Beards of Comedy?
JZ: I think ‘08? We started based out of Atlanta and we were fortunate and very new and had the Laughing Skull Comedy Club invite us to do a headline week right away, then we did a west coast tour where I met Brian Regan. We just had a lot of good PR and stage time come out of it. Essentially, We all moved to New York or LA in 2011 and finally decided to do away with the tour, but we’re all still good friends.
JT: Then you started doing clubs on your own?
JZ: I was doing clubs as well, but they weren’t as fun. You’d get paired with a random MC, a random headliner, and a random crowd that isn’t there to see you at all. And a manager who is there grading you. It’s more like, you know, you have to please everybody or you’re fired.
Doing shows with The Beards, if you don’t have a great set, you’re still part of The Beards. It’s more fun and there is less pressure and I could be more authentic to my voice, which was very beneficial for me.
JT: Thanks for the Interview, Joe!
Follow Joe on twitter @JoeZimmerman and buy his album on iTunes.
Watch Joe’s set from The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson and be sure to check out his Half Hour when it premieres on Comedy Central this Friday at 12:30.
