Not One of the Seven: Brad Williams on His Life in Comedy

By Kevin Murphy Wilson • Photos Provided 

Comedian/Actor/Podcast Host Brad Williams headlines The Louisville Palace on Thursday, April 2 with his all new “Tall Tales Tour.” We recently caught up with the affable showman via Zoom to hear about his surreal experiences on and off stage, such as working with the late Rob Reiner and Sir Elton John on Spinal Tap II: The End Continues. 

VOICE-TRIBUNE: At what point were you drawn towards a career in the entertainment world? 

Brad Williams: “Uh, it’s funny because, like, I was always drawn to it. I always wanted to be an entertainer, but then at the same time, that’s one of those jobs where I didn’t know how to do it. It’s like saying ‘I want to be an Avenger.’ You’re like, oh, it’s something that is out there, but no one actually does it. Then I went to a stand-up comedy show when I was 19 years-old with my dad, and the comedian on stage started making dwarf jokes, and the audience that was not around me was laughing, but the audience around me was just kind of, like, clearing their throats, and the comedian goes, ‘What? Is one of them here?’ And I raised my creepy little hand in the air, and I said, ‘Yes.’ And so he called me up on stage, and asked me some questions, and I answered them. I answered them honestly. I wasn’t trying to get laughs but the answers got laughs. Like he said, ‘What do you do for a living?’ And at the time, as a 19 year-old kid in Orange County, California I said, ‘I work at Disneyland,’ because I did. And the audience laughed and I said, ‘But I’m not one of the seven.’ And that got a big laugh, still does. And that’s when I was like, alright. This is something that I’d like to do. So I started doing open mic nights, and once I got a little bit of momentum going, about a year and a half in, I dropped out of college. I had a year to go but I dropped out to do comedy.” 

VT: What had you been majoring in or studying? 

BW: “I was majoring in communications, so we didn’t lose the cancer cure. We’re fine. We’re okay.” 

VT: As a writer and performer, when do you know that your material-in-progress is “finished” and ready to be road-tested or recorded for an album or TV special? 

BW: “It’s never done. I recorded a special a couple of months ago and I’m writing a lot of new material right now. But I still will think of new punch lines to jokes that I’ve already put down. So it’s never done. The wonderful part about stand-up is in order to do it, you cannot have that mentality of, well, I’ll wait until it’s good, or I’ll wait until it’s perfect. You just have to bring it up there. Like, I will bring up half-assed ideas to the stage just because I know that on stage, I will find ways to make it funny. I had an acting coach one time that told me this quote and it stuck with me. He said, ‘Desperate people get super creative, super fast.’ And that is very true. When you’re up on stage with no net and you gotta make those people laugh, you will find a freaking way, my friend.” 

VT: Do you ever ask yourself, “How did I get myself into this again,” when you’re up there?

BW: “Oh, one-thousand percent, all the time. I still make rookie mistakes where I get really excited with new material, and I start the show with it. It’s like, you’re not supposed to do that. Start with old stuff that works, get them going, get some momentum, put in the new material, and that way, if it’s in the middle and it bombs, you’re okay because then you have other stuff that you can put in that works. But I always forget and I will do jokes that I’m excited to do up front. And so, yeah. There are so many times I say, ‘Why did I do this again?’ But it’s all worth it in terms of the amount of times where I’m like, ‘Thank God I do this.’ And thankfully, I say that way more often.”

VT: When you’re on stage, do you have much trouble from hecklers? And if so, what do you do about it? 

BW: “At this point, not really, but it still happens from time to time. Here’s what I want to say. Hecklers are an unfortunate part of comedy. People say, ‘Oh, it’s part of the job.’It’s like, yeah, but it shouldn’t be. It shouldn’t be part of the job. It’s like telling a masseuse, like, ‘Yeah, hand jobs, it’s part of the gig.’ No masseuse gets in there like, ‘Oh, I can’t wait to do another handy today.’ I will deal with a heckler if it happens. In general, it doesn’t happen much, but on the rare occasions that it does, it’s usually pretty easy to deal with because I’ve been doing this for 22 years. What a heckler doesn’t realize is I have played out every scenario in my head already. I have contingency plans for everything. You, as a heckler, thought of that line two seconds before you said it. And I have already come up with a scenario to counter that. It’s like walking up to a 4th dan black belt and being like, yeah, you’re a black belt, but ‘What if I do this?’ It’s like, we have a plan, dummy, so don’t even think about it.”

VT: Let’s talk about your acting for a minute. Any cool tales about appearing in Spinal Tap II: The End Continues? And what was it like to work with the late Rob Reiner?

BW: “When people are like, ‘Do you love acting,’ I always say, ‘I like it, but I like stand-up more.’ Acting is when you work on a project, and then 8 months later, it comes out, and you hope people like it. Stand-up is an immediate transaction. I tell a joke, you either laugh or you don’t laugh at the joke. And I know right when I tell the joke if you liked it or not. 

I can’t imagine being a stand-up and telling a joke, but then waiting 8 months, and then the audience just goes, ‘Oh, yeah, that was funny.’ Like, no, no, let’s have a moment right here, right now. That’s what stand-up is about. And so acting is fun, but any acting I do is just to get more people to come to the stand-up shows. Working with Rob Reiner was amazing though. He’s a fantastic director. He absolutely knew what he wanted. And he knew how to tell you in a way where you could see just what he wanted. But also, he trusted you. And he hired you for a reason. Like, my audition for that movie, Spinal Tap II, was a quick Zoom call with him. That was my audition. I didn’t do a video and send stuff in. He just talked to me for like 20 minutes, and then, he was like, ‘Cool, yeah, you’re the guy.’ There are two things I’ll take away from that experience: one was working with Rob, and then two was my scene with Sir Elton John. When we were doing the scene, there was a live audience there. And in between takes, you know, they would yell stuff out. There’s something like 900 people in the audience, and they would yell at him, and then they would yell at Wee Man, who was also in the movie. And then one guy yelled out, ‘Brad Williams, we love you.’ And then everyone started saying it so I waved at the audience, and when I waved, Elton John, who I hadn’t said one word to me the entire time, turns around on the piano bench and just goes, ‘Who the fuck are you?’ And, you know, that kind of puts it in perspective. That’s one I can tell my daughter one day.” 

VT: Wow. That’s a great story! What can you tell us about the current tour? Do you have set openers for the Louisville date? 

BW: “I have my opening acts that I take with me all over. They’re great comics. One of them is JB Ball, who is the guy I do a podcast with called ‘Heightened Babble.’ He’s really funny and I really love seeing audiences sort of discover him. And then I have another comedian named Quincy Weekly, who’s also very good. So I bring them both along with me and it’s nice because then you kind of have that family away from home. Some of my favorite things about going on the road are that you get to do a show together, and then when the show is done, you go to Waffle House with the other comedians, and you just make each other laugh until 3 o’clock, 4 o’clock in the morning. Those are my favorite memories.”

VT: Yeah, I’m sure it’s probably a gold mine for material, too, just the sights, sounds, and smells of any given Waffle House. 

BW: “Right. You’ll leave with a full belly and a story. That’s for sure.” 

For more information, visit: BradWilliamsComedy.com.