Trumaine Bradley Finds Himself Onstage

This week’s inter­view is a spe­cial treat because it’s akin to a two-for-one. Imag­ine get­ting to inter­view both Bat­man and Bruce Wayne, or Super­man and Clark Kent, or Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. That’s the kind of priv­i­lege it was to sit down with the artist for­mer­ly known as ​“Spike Miller”: Tru­maine Bradley.

It all start­ed with a script. A thes­pi­an at heart, Bradley began in the realm of stage plays and screen­plays. One day, in the midst of script­ing, he found him­self con­coct­ing a char­ac­ter with sug­ar, spice, pret­ty much noth­ing nice, and a whole lot of chem­i­cal X. Soon enough, Bradley felt com­pelled to bring this char­ac­ter to the stage in a dif­fer­ent way — by embody­ing him in stand-up; and thus, on a hum­ble Hous­ton stage, Spike Miller was born. Of course, unlike the Bradley we know today, Spike was a lit­tle less Dr. Jekyll and lit­tle more on the Mr. Hyde side of alter egos: Part of his modus operan­di was to end his sets by flip­ping the bird and telling the audi­ence to go fuck themselves.

The thing was, under all that rough Spike exte­ri­or (and behind that mid­dle fin­ger) was some­one with real promise as a come­di­an — a fact that Bradley hadn’t con­sid­ered until he was encour­aged by a close friend and men­tor to drop the whole being-a-dick schtick. ​“And [that encour­age­ment] val­i­dat­ed some­thing in me,” Bradley recalls. ​“That’s … why I try to val­i­date peo­ple when they first start because, in my mind [at the time], it was all a joke … I’m just an actor,” he mus­es, ​“but then I found out, ​‘Oh, wait, I can do this.’ So I dropped all the B.S.”

Still, Bradley held onto the Spike alias. After all, that’s how every­one in Hous­ton knew him. It was­n’t until Bradley’s move from Hous­ton to Austin that he final­ly shed the Spike name alto­geth­er. He was ready to be Tru­maine Bradley. “‘If I’m going to do this, I’m going to do this as myself,”” he explains of his deci­sion. “… I’m gonna do this from my true heart and my true spir­it.’” Still, Bradley main­tains that his time spent telling jokes in Hous­ton as Spike Miller was crit­i­cal to his suc­cess. ​“Yeah, I had this char­ac­ter,” he admits, ​“but you can’t fake the work.” Indeed, his comedic chops were par­tic­u­lar­ly honed by tak­ing up a job at the Hous­ton Improv. ​“I was there every day whether I want­ed to hear [com­e­dy] or not. I [was] being sub­merged with the best of the best to come to Texas and do it. … Iron sharp­ens iron,” he states. And that iron espe­cial­ly sharp­ened iron in a three-club town full of fierce com­pe­ti­tion and fear­some crowds akin to shark tanks.

Thus, when Bradley showed up to Austin — hold­ing all that expe­ri­ence in his back pock­et —he was ready to hit the ground run­ning. After all, he was con­fi­dent in just how much work he had put in over the past few years. ​“I was not one of those, like, won­der kids who just start­ed fun­ny,” he explains. ​“I was awful on stage in the begin­ning.” So, all the laughs he was earn­ing now were just that: hard-earned. 

Soon enough, Bradley was tak­ing the stage for the Fun­ni­est Per­son in Austin com­pe­ti­tion, per­form­ing his best set yet … only to not make it through. In ret­ro­spect, Bradley admits that this hum­bling loss was nec­es­sary; it taught him that suc­ceed­ing in com­e­dy is more than just being fun­ny. “[My new focus became] ​‘Why should they remem­ber you?’” he explains. “‘What do you have that peo­ple can grab on to?’ Because every­body’s gonna get up there and be fun­ny.” And it was exact­ly this new angle that led Bradley to cre­at­ing his sig­na­ture BBE (Big Beard Ener­gy) brand­ing, launch­ing him into a new era of Tru­maine Bradley — one with real polish.

Fol­low­ing this small defeat, Bradley spent two years prepar­ing to make his FPIA return … for the year 2020. Alas. But not all was lost; rather, the pan­dem­ic was just anoth­er piv­ot point. In the midst of quar­an­tine times, Bradley start­ed an online vari­ety show called Mon­day Night Tops, where he per­formed mono­logues, song par­o­dies, sing-alongs — any­thing to break up the monot­o­ny and engage his home­bound audi­ences. ​“It start­ed mak­ing my pen a lot sharp­er,” Bradley remarks.

Unfor­tu­nate­ly, after hand­ing out thou­sands of face masks to peo­ple in need amidst the protests for equal­i­ty (in response to the mur­der of George Floyd) in Austin, Bradley fell seri­ous­ly ill with COVID. True to form, this reminder of his own mor­tal­i­ty only filled Bradley with a renewed vig­or to fol­low his pas­sions (while fol­low­ing gov­ern­ment man­dates and safe­ty pre­cau­tions, of course). Soon enough, Bradley was back in the sad­dle and per­form­ing a guest spot at The Vul­can, where he ran into Steve Byrne. Coin­ci­den­tal­ly, Byrne was one of the first peo­ple to ever offer Bradley a guest spot, back when he was ​“Spike Miller” at the Hous­ton Improv. (He total­ly bombed that guest spot way back then, but know­ing that fact just makes the sto­ry that much bet­ter.) See­ing his suc­cess at The Vul­can show, Byrne offered Bradley anoth­er guest spot and host­ing oppor­tu­ni­ty. As one oppor­tu­ni­ty fed into anoth­er, Bradley found him­self book­ing spots in North Car­oli­na, Geor­gia, and more. It was­n’t long before Bradley found him­self on a full-fledged self-made tour.

Feel­ing that he’d learned all the lessons he need­ed to learn from Texas, Bradley began itch­ing to chal­lenge him­self with an all-new mar­ket. He just need­ed to fig­ure out where. Luck­i­ly, the stars aligned yet again to give Bradley a sign … in the form of con­tract­ing COVID, again. You see, Bradley was mid-tour and thus had to can­cel his future book­ings for New York (a wor­thy loca­tion for his poten­tial move). But, he had just come off the tail-end of two ​“life-chang­ing” shows in Chica­go, as well as his first stand­ing ova­tion in Indi­ana. ​“So, I didn’t need New York,” Bradley explains. ​“It was almost like the uni­verse or God or what­ev­er was push­ing it out, like, ​‘No. Obvi­ous­ly, this is next. This is what you need. Do this.’”

The uni­verse, as it turns out, was insane­ly right. Like, get­ting-to-fea­ture-for-Rachel-Fein­stein lev­els of right. Yup. You see, after Bradley’s move, Steve Byrne came to Batavia, and he knew that he want­ed to offer his good friend Tru­maine Bradley a guest spot. Bradley wasn’t exact­ly psy­ched about dri­ving in the snow (espe­cial­ly after a trau­mat­ic ice expe­ri­ence dur­ing the infa­mous Austin freeze), but he braved it regard­less. Once again, his per­for­mance set off a chain of oppor­tu­ni­ties that left him on great terms with the Batavia club, Com­e­dy Vault. ​“I looked on the web­site and saw Rachel Fein­stein was going to be in town … and, I mean, you miss 100% of the shots you don’t take,” he recalls of his deci­sion to ask for the fea­ture spot. Sure enough, he made the shot; and then he straight dunked by get­ting asked to come back and headline. 

Despite all his brag-wor­thy suc­cess, Bradley remains stead­fast about want­i­ng to inspire and lift up oth­er wor­thy tal­ents. After all, iron sharp­ens iron. ​“I’m try­ing to be a light­house for the rest of the world,” he states sim­ply. ​“I want the next Dave Chap­pelles, the next Richard Pry­ors, the next George Car­lins of the world to hear my sto­ry … I want you to think that you’re bet­ter than me, so that you get on stage and do what you’re meant to do.”

As he con­tin­ues to be that shin­ing bea­con, we can’t wait to see how the stars will align for Tru­maine Bradley next. We just hope that it’s not in the form of COVID again, preferably.

Fol­low Trumaine:

• Link­tree — linktree/​trumainebradley
  
• Twit­ter — @TrumaineBradley
• Insta­gram — @trumainebradley
• Face­book — Face​book​.com/​t​r​u​m​a​i​n​e​b​r​a​d​l​e​ypage

Tru­maine can be seen and heard:

• Lots of shows com­ing up! Fol­low him on social media for updates