Kelsey Caine & Martin Urbano: What Are You Waiting For?

Rush­ing through the East Vil­lage on a Sat­ur­day night, with the kind escort of come­di­an Pat Dixon, Valerie and I make our way to the apart­ment of Kelsey Caine and Mar­tin Urbano. I should men­tion that it’s mid­night and the ​“city that nev­er sleeps” is liv­ing up to its name. We arrive and Pat takes his leave, as we are soon greet­ed by Kelsey Caine with a host of hats for us to choose. I say choose, but it’s soon obvi­ous that this is a manda­to­ry request (is that a thing?) and that this record­ing is going to be fun. I chal­lenge you to lis­ten to this episode of Com­e­dy Wham Presents with­out a huge smile on your face. 

Urbano and Caine have been liv­ing in New York City for two and three years, respec­tive­ly. Caine chose New York for grad­u­ate school and Urbano chose New York for com­e­dy and Caine. This once Austin-based com­e­dy pow­er cou­ple (I hear them laugh­ing at this label) have each indi­vid­u­al­ly made a name for them­selves since their move, but it’s obvi­ous to any­one lis­ten­ing that they are so sup­port­ive of one another.

“If one gate­keep­er does­n’t like you, move to a dif­fer­ent fuck­ing gate.” Kelsey Caine

Caine put a bid in for Miss New York USA, but def­i­nite­ly did things her way. Her unortho­dox pageant prep, com­plete with NASCAR-style spon­sors on her dress, turned a lot of heads. More impor­tant­ly, it caught the atten­tion of The New York Times, land­ing her a pub­li­ca­tion of her expe­ri­ence in pageant life. With the #MeToo move­ment gain­ing momen­tum and the com­e­dy com­mu­ni­ty hav­ing to face its own demons, Caine took the actions and reac­tions to the Louis C.K. mis­con­duct head on and made a viral satire of the intro to his self-titled show. Caine has made it known her dis­dain with the blind eye much of the indus­try has turned to Louis C.K. and oth­ers like him work­ing in com­e­dy. To keep things even more inter­est­ing, and a nod to how diverse Caine’s inter­ests are, she has been host­ing Pup­pets Present: A Stand-up Com­e­dy Show, which, if the title doesn’t give it away, is Caine and Car­men Lagala (of The Late Show with Stephen Col­bert) as pup­pets, host­ing a show. 

While ini­tial­ly torn about leav­ing the ​“kinder, gen­tler” com­e­dy scene of Austin, Urbano made a quick splash after his move to NYC, land­ing a spot in the New Faces at Montréal’s Just For Laughs Fes­ti­val last year. Gain­ing noto­ri­ety after that appear­ance, Urbano was fea­tured on Jim­my Kim­mel Live! with a hilar­i­ous and flaw­less set. Urbano is now about to have his Com­e­dy Cen­tral debut with a spe­cial at the begin­ning of 2019.

“I think that it [New York City] kicks your ass. I do think that it was real­ly good for me.” Mar­tin Urbano 

While Caine and Urbano each have their own accom­plish­ments, they still find time for col­lab­o­ra­tion. Many of their video pro­duc­tions are a tag-team effort, they host shows togeth­er, they appear on shows togeth­er (we must point you to a recent turn on The Spe­cial With­out Brett Davis), and of course, you can hear them on sev­er­al pod­casts together. 

With so much hap­pen­ing for both Caine and Urbano, I would rec­om­mend lis­ten­ing to their ​“just do it”-style advice. Both seem to have the atti­tude that if you want to make it in com­e­dy you can’t ​“wait until …” to pur­sue your dream. That dot-dot-dot may come or not and a new excuse will arise. It’s a mat­ter of hard work and ded­i­ca­tion. For more jew­els of sage advice from Caine and Urbano, and a whole lot of laughs, you’ll want to lis­ten* to our interview! 

*Hat optional