The Success to Zahid Dewji's Secret

In video games, it’s prac­ti­cal­ly tra­di­tion­al for the ​“last boss” to appear when a jour­ney is near­ing com­ple­tion. You can almost feel their pres­ence as you ford the secret path to their sig­na­ture lair, and you know you’re nigh unto an emo­tion­al experience. 

Giv­en that this week’s episode is the last of our Sum­mer Series, it’s fit­ting that our guest, Zahid Dewj, con­sis­tent­ly appeared on our Iso­la­tion Com­e­dy series from his very own boss lair: the edge of his bed­room mat­tress. It’s like that old stand­by riff, where every­thing is ​“bet­ter if you end it with ​‘in bed’”, but Dewji just book­ends the whole thing by start­ing there as well. 

Clad in his base­ball cap du jour, as is often the case on stage, Dewji imme­di­ate­ly grabs your atten­tion with his rum­bling bari­tone pitch. It’s a tone that lends itself to an expec­ta­tion for either a ses­sion of dry wit, or sharp jibes, and it’s oh-so-pleas­ing when that’s exact­ly what he often delivers. 

“The only part about com­e­dy that I don’t like is that an audi­ence is there,” Dewji jokes.“I would love to do a set ​‘John Lennon’-style: I sit in bed and peo­ple come into my room. I tell jokes and much like a king…then I motion for them for them to go away.” (At least we think he’s jok­ing, mostly.)

It’s a refrain Dewji has turned to before, and while it seems far­ci­cal, he feels there’s some­thing to it, even pitch­ing a ​“one on one” show: one come­di­an, one audi­ence mem­ber, rotat­ed in on 15 minute slots. As Valerie notes, there are quite a few of us that would buy that tick­et every time with Dewji.

With Dewji’s offi­cial back­ground in music, writ­ing and play­ing piano and gui­tar, he’s long had a feel for per­form­ing, with for­mal school­ing in act­ing as well. The yearn­ing for com­e­dy goes all the way back to a child­hood where he fell in love with leg­ends like John Leguizamo’s Freak (who he calls a genius). Dewji even still holds onto one of his ear­li­est jokes, promis­ing to close a show with it some­day. (I won’t spoil it here, but it has to do with yel­low traf­fic lights, and – as he admits – has zero payoff.)

The com­bi­na­tion of the­o­ries has enabled Dewji to deliv­er a unique vari­ety of per­for­mance styles, like the video mono­logue/send-up ​“Come­di­an Shuts Down the Re-Open­ing of Texas Dur­ing COVID-19”. With voiceover-per­fect pac­ing over innu­mer­able video clips, he smooth­ly piv­ots from earnest sound­ing pleas to aching­ly per­fect social and polit­i­cal satire; it’s hard­ly a sur­prise, then, to learn that he worked with friend and music pro­duc­er Ed Gard­ner to tune tempo. 

The sense of holis­ti­cal­ly form­ing a comedic con­cept – per­haps born of the musi­cal train­ing – is core to Dewji’s view of per­form­ing. Liken­ing the process to find­ing the per­fect melody, he doesn’t hold back on the opin­ion that it’s not some­thing every come­di­an gets right. ​“At a base­line level…some peo­ple I watch and I’m like, sure you can con­struct a joke,” he says, but feels that it’s obvi­ous when a com­ic doesn’t ​“feel it in their bones”. 

Cur­rent­ly based in Hous­ton, Dewji doesn’t hes­i­tate to affec­tion­ate­ly poke fun at ​“lib­er­al, hip­py” Austin and our com­e­dy scene, while read­i­ly admit­ting that it was the wel­com­ing cul­ture and comics that helped him get through the rough ear­ly days. Every 6 to 8 weeks he’d descend on our berg, per­form­ing (and even­tu­al­ly host­ing) at main­stays like The Velv, and get­ting point­ers from local favorites like (the also very musi­cal) Avery Moore.

As Dewji built on the basics, 3 years into his com­e­dy career, a chance con­ver­sa­tion with friend Steven Bran­deau birthed the idea of start­ing their own club in Hous­ton. While it seemed a joke at the time, Dewji’s pass­ing agree­ment to join the endeav­or turned into real­i­ty bare­ly a year lat­er, and he’s frank about just how unpre­pared they felt. ​“It was like, ​‘we’re try­ing to save the Rec Cen­ter’, from one of those movies,” he laughs, recall­ing how he didn’t yet have the skills to design the posters, much less run an entire busi­ness. ​“It was like com­e­dy boot­camp,” he says of the expe­ri­ence, accel­er­at­ing years of indus­try learn­ings into one-quar­ter of the nor­mal timeline. 

The club the team built, Houston’s The Secret Group, has quick­ly become a pre­mière name. Despite Dewji’s insis­tence that they ​“built it too big”, with an 80-per­son black­box and 250-per­son the­atre, it was that ear­ly naïve enthu­si­asm that posi­tioned the club as a cru­cial venue for per­form­ers and fes­ti­val cir­cuits. When we expand­ed our com­e­dy event cal­en­dar to Hous­ton, The Secret Group rapid­ly became a main­stay, and shows no signs of slowing. 

Part of the suc­cess has to be attrib­uted to Dewji’s devo­tion to grow­ing the Hous­ton com­e­dy scene, and he effort­ly calls up mul­ti­ple hand­fuls of tal­ent­ed names when Valerie asks who we should be watch­ing in that area. Just a few of the many tal­ents he calls out: Andrew Young­blood, Radu Bon­dar, Dusti Rhodes, Andy Hug­gins and recent Austin trans­plant from Hous­ton, Mykal Dédé. 

For a self-described ​“real­ly mean per­son”, Dewji has a seem­ing­ly sin­gu­lar focus on mak­ing peo­ple laugh, and mak­ing it pos­si­ble for oth­ers to do the same. When describ­ing his future as ​“loaded” ( he jokes it’s either ​“bull­shit” or ​“pos­si­bil­i­ties”), I think it apt­ly cap­tures the core tal­ents that brought him this far: cer­tain­ty in his capa­bil­i­ties, and readi­ness to admit that he might well also be clue­less, or in over his head. 

It’s the pair­ing of the two that makes for many a suc­cess sto­ry, and, for Zahid Dewji, it seems the secret is out. 

Want to know more about com­e­dy in Hous­ton, TX?

Zahid’s rec­om­men­da­tions for comics to check out from Hous­ton include: Andrew Young­blood, Tre Tut­son, Vic­tor Tran, Grady Pruitt, Radu Bon­dar, Mykal Dédé, Dusti Rhodes, Bob Mor­ris­sey, Jeff Joe, Bob Big­ger­staff, Tess Ver­gault, Kaylee White, Royce Moore, and the Hous­ton list isn’t com­plete­ly with GOAT Andy Hug­gins. (He apol­o­gizes in advance for all the peo­ple he for­got and vows to nev­er name peo­ple on the spot ever again.)

If you’re in Hous­ton, Zahid says be pre­pared for a dif­fer­ent type of com­e­dy than what you may be used to in Austin. Let’s just say that Hous­ton comics like a good fight. It’s best heard in Zahid’s words

Fol­low Zahid

• Web­site — zahid​dewji​.com
• Twit­ter — @zahiddewji
• Insta­gram — @zahiddewji
• Face­book — face​book​.com/​z​a​h​i​d​dewji
• Youtube — Youtube​.com/​Z​e​k​e0609

Fol­low the Secret Group:

• Web­site — thes​e​cret​grouph​tx​.com
• Twit­ter — @SecretGroupHTX
• Insta­gram — @secretgrouphtx
• Face­book — Face​book​.com/​S​e​c​r​e​t​G​r​o​upHTX

Zahid can be seen and heard:

• Head­lin­ing The Creek and the Cave on Sun­day Octo­ber 17, 2021 — click for tick­ets
• Bad Idea (Host) — The Secret Group Fri­days 8pm 
• Trash Fla­vored Trash (co-host with Andrew Young­blood) — The Secret Group Tues­days at 10pm
• Come­di­an Shuts Down the Re-Open­ing of Texas Dur­ing COVID-19

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