Comedian Brad Williams compares performing a standup set to “building a new plane in the sky as the old plane is flying.”
“I’m always trying to write the next special,” he says in advance of his Tall Tales tour that will bring him to the Kirby Center in Wilkes-Barre on Sept. 17 and Town Hall on Sept. 19. “So while I’m doing the old stuff, I’m adding in new stuff and slowly replacing it. After a year or a year and a half, it’ll be a brand new plane.”
The current model is “Live on Short Street!”, the aptly titled special Williams, who was born with dwarfism, recorded at a theater on Short Street in Lexington, Kentucky. It’s the latest example of Williams leaning into his short stature since he got his start when Carlos Mencia, who was making jokes about dwarves at one of his own shows, brought him on stage and eventually invited him to be his touring opening act.
Williams, a WWE fan, recently served as one of the wrestler Danhausen’s “Minihausen” henchmen at SummerSlam, fulfilling a longtime dream. He’s also an accomplished actor, having appeared in shows including “Sam and Cat,” “Mind of Mencia” and “Deadbeat,” as well as movies such as “Spinal Tap II: The End Continues,” and the Christopher Guest mockumentary “Mascots,” where he shares a show-stealing scene with the late, great Fred Willard.
Williams has a podcast, “Heightened Babble,” with JB Ball, who will open the shows in Wilkes-Barre and New York.
“If you want to know what our vibe is, I’d say listen to a few episodes of the podcast, watch the podcast, and if you like it, great. Come on and see us do it live,” he says. “I love doing the podcast, but dude, I just love being a comedian. Nothing compares to it. If you make a TV show or a movie, you don’t have that instant feedback. Comedy, I tell a joke that I wrote that day and I’ll know if it’s funny right then and there. It’s not like, oh, I gotta wait for an editor and special effects and sound dubbing and all. No. Right there. Very simple transaction.”
The comic is also a regular on the roast circuit, including a notable face-off with Joe Eurell in the Belly Room at LA’s Comedy Store as part of the Roast Battle League.
“Here’s the thing about roasts: It’s a roast. So you can’t really be offended or sensitive or say you went too far because it’s like, well, yeah, that’s what the point of the roast is,” says Williams. “But at the same time, some of the old-timey, like the Dean Martin roasts I really like, and some of the other roasts that were on Comedy Central, where you could tell that all the comics are friends, those are the ones I really enjoy.
“There’s something about when you put two people that don’t know each other together and now they’re saying horrific things about each other, that to me is still funny. A good joke is a good joke, but there’s a little bit of the chemistry that is off when it’s people that don’t know each other, or if people are getting mad during the roast and they’re like, oh, he said racist stuff about me.”
Speaking about his roast battle with Eurell, he says: “For those who don’t know, Joe is in a wheelchair. Cerebral palsy. And man, did we go hard at each other. But Joe and I are friends, right? He’s a great guy. He’s a really funny comic. He knows me. I know him. So it was no big deal. He said some horrific shit about me, I didn’t care. And I’m like, oh man, that was a great, that was a great joke. And that’s what I want the roast to be more of, like be friendly with each other so that you can go further.”
To that end, he considers sense of humor to be a matter of taste, and if he doesn’t laugh, that doesn’t mean he dosen’t consider the bit funny.
“There are jokes that I don’t find funny that other people do. I don’t say that it’s not funny. I say, hey, that’s just not for me,” he says. “So a beautiful part about comedy is now there’s so many places, like there’s the world where Nate Bargatze can exist, who’s clean comedy. There’s Jim Gaffigan, there’s Jerry Seinfeld. These are mostly clean comics. And then you can to a Big Jay Oakerson or a Shane Gillis or a Tony Hinchcliffe [show]. There’s so many realms of this that you can go to.”
Gillis, with opening acts including Oakerson and a surprise guest slot by Dave Chappelle, in July hosted the biggest ticketed comedy show ever at Lincoln Financial Field in Philadelphia.
“We are in a golden age of comedy right now,” Williams says. “And I think one of the reasons why is because there used to be gatekeepers, and Shane’s a perfect example on how there are no gatekeepers anymore, because Shane was going to be on SNL, right? And then he got fired before he even appeared on an episode. There was a time where if that had happened, your career is over. You’re screwed. No one’s ever going to talk to you again. You’re not going to get any more gigs. And Shane is just so funny. And we’re living in this time where all the gatekeepers are gone, so he was able to recover and now has the Guinness record for the largest comedy show ever, which is great.”
He notes that he’s cognizant of how difficult it is for some people to come to a show, which is a motivator for him to deliver the goods.
“For a lot of people, times are tough and they may be pinching pennies. I know how much it costs to go see a show. You gotta buy tickets. Oftentimes you got to get a babysitter, pay for parking, pay for dinner, drinks, whatever. I don’t take this for granted. So if someone is willing to pay money to see me perform, I’m going to do my absolute damnedest to make sure they have a good time and laugh their ass off.”
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