Brendan Gay - Resolutely Focused on Standup

In the course of one’s life, it’s rare you get lucky enough to meet peo­ple like Bren­dan Gay: peo­ple who are so sin­gu­lar­ly focused on their mis­sion that noth­ing, and we mean noth­ing, can dis­tract them from their mis­sion. A bit like watch­ing a ded­i­cat­ed com­peti­tor on Wipe­out, or Amer­i­can Nin­ja, who res­olute­ly takes every punch, jab, or stum­ble in the mud, in their quest for the fin­ish line. Except in this case, Gay is not seek­ing a fin­ish line, he is sim­ply focused on his career as a standup comic. 

Grow­ing up in Eden Prairie Min­neso­ta, Gay thought he knew what he want­ed: to be wealthy. He felt like an out­sider in his own com­mu­ni­ty because he saw oth­ers with wealth dis­parate than his own. He set about on his course to find the best pay­ing job based on his col­lege degree, land­ing a seem­ing­ly promis­ing posi­tion as a med­ical equip­ment sales representative. 

Despite the poten­tial upsides (in terms of the chase of the Amer­i­can dol­lar) Gay quick­ly grew weary of the role, and learned a first valu­able les­son: ​“imag­ine you get some­thing that you want so bad, and you’re unhap­py”. For­tu­nate­ly, all those hours on the road afford­ed him the chance to lis­ten to count­less hours of pod­casts, all by house­hold names in the com­e­dy world — Burr, Maron, Rogan. It was then he real­ized ​“I was chas­ing some­thing that I thought I want­ed, which was mon­ey. And once you get some­thing you chase, you say you always want to do, you start think­ing okay, what do I actu­al­ly like?”. Armed with that bit of insight, and the free­dom of know­ing what he did not want, he changed course.

The new course took him to Chica­go, a city that many (includ­ing yours tru­ly, admit­ted­ly) did­n’t real­ize was a standup com­e­dy pow­er­house. For Gay, it was a trea­sure trove of standup com­e­dy oppor­tu­ni­ties and, despite the big city vibe, friend­ly and wel­com­ing fel­low standup comics. 

He dab­bled in improv class­es at Sec­ond City, but his call­ing was clear: standup was it. In a true tes­ta­ment to the mantra that igno­rance is bliss, at the 15 month mark of his standup career, Gay set out on some­thing not often attempt­ed so ear­ly on: a ​“52 cities in 52 weeks” tour. 

The tour brought with it many a valu­able les­son that year. Every­thing from logis­ti­cal plan­ning, to the impor­tance of build­ing a fan-base (a les­son he learned in hind­sight), to the impor­tance of car main­te­nance. He was test­ed sev­er­al times dur­ing that 52-week peri­od, but none more than when his car broke down on the way to his appear­ance, and his on-stage per­for­mance suf­fered from the stress. Resilien­cy to move on despite set­backs comes up in the con­ver­sa­tion sev­er­al times and Gay offers ​“When I talk about that resilien­cy in the past? Dude, you had to keep going. I had no oth­er option.”

After the gru­el­ing year of lessons (and com­mit­ment to standup) what do you tack­le next? A move to the biggest of big cities, nat­u­ral­ly. Liv­ing in New York City cement­ed sev­er­al things for Gay, includ­ing that ​“in order to get bet­ter, in order to get stronger, you’ve got to take some pain.” But through that ini­tial pain, Gay accu­mu­lat­ed sev­er­al impres­sive cre­den­tials, includ­ing Final­ist on TruTV’s Com­e­dy Break­out Ini­tia­tive, Final­ist in Make Me Laugh USA Com­pe­ti­tion, and Semi-final­ist in NBC’s Standup Diver­si­ty Show­case in 2017. While they opened doors for him, he admits that the impact of such cre­den­tials dis­si­pates over time. He appre­ci­ates that it makes it eas­i­er to get booked, but he does­n’t let it dis­tract from his mis­sion of per­form­ing standup. 

Dur­ing his time in New York, he dou­bled-down on his com­mit­ment to standup. As he observed friends and peers ded­i­cate their lives to build­ing pack­ets, writ­ing pilots and com­pet­ing for cov­et­ed writ­ing jobs, he real­ized that for him none of that moti­vat­ed him like per­form­ing standup did. 

There was a lot of free­dom in that real­iza­tion, which was to Austin’s ben­e­fit when Covid shut­down hit across the coun­try. Imag­ine being in New York City and not being able to do the one thing, the one sin­gu­lar thing against all the oth­er things you had set out to do. Gay pon­dered a change of locale, and ruled out a num­ber of oth­er cities until the prover­bial dart land­ed on the prover­bial inner bulls­eye (yes, I googled it, I thought it was just the ​“mid­dle cir­cle thingy”) that was Austin, Texas.

We were for­tu­nate to land Gay’s fresh face and obvi­ous tal­ent to our city’s ranks. He took full advan­tage of the plen­ti­ful stage time (com­pared to the ful­ly shut­tered NYC stage time offer­ings) and began land­ing head­lin­ing gigs not only across Austin, but across the state. Gay & I spent a few moments talk­ing about a recent local news sto­ry about the ​“rise of com­e­dy” in Austin as the city emerged from Covid lock­down. (Which we find an incred­i­bly poor rep­re­sen­ta­tion of how com­e­dy – includ­ing Austin – was before Covid, almost sug­gest­ing it did­n’t exist at all.) 

While I was focused on the poor research rep­re­sent­ed by the news sto­ry, Gay want­ed to focus on the pos­i­tives of the Austin com­e­dy scene. Of those that jumped on the oppor­tu­ni­ty to per­form on stage or cre­ate stage time start­ing with the fall of 2020, Gay said ​“when every­thing else is slow, and some­one else is push­ing for­ward, they’re gonna move a lot faster”. 

It’s cer­tain­ly true that those who took advan­tage of the ample stage time have more room to grow, but those that have been bid­ing their time and play­ing it safe dur­ing Covid are hun­gry to return to stages; that means the Austin com­e­dy scene is about to be hit by the return of the well-estab­lished comics of the Austin com­e­dy scene, whose tal­ents built the Austin com­e­dy scene. Gay’s hope for the scene is that ​“hope­ful­ly we can cre­ate a cul­ture in this scene, you know, the peo­ple that are in it, where it’s like, let’s all win. Yeah, let’s all be bet­ter. Let’s all get time. Let’s all lift this up.” We could­n’t agree more.

What’s on the hori­zon for Gay? Well, if you’ve been read­ing and lis­ten­ing along to the pod­cast, you know the short answer: standup. But he’s also got some excit­ing news on the hori­zon for his pod­cast Send It, which will be mov­ing to Andrew Schultz’ pro­duc­tion com­pa­ny based in NYC. And he’s rack­ing up more and more head­lin­ing spots over the next few months. 

Per­haps most excit­ing on the hori­zon is the release of his as-yet-unti­tled debut album. A labor of love he’s been work­ing on for years. The release is immi­nent but not set in stone; he’s in the process of putting the fin­ish­ing touch­es on the 30 minute album. You can almost hear a tinge of sad­ness as Gay reveals that – like many oth­ers who release albums – the release will mean the retire­ment of the jokes that have seen him through times both good and the bad of his standup com­e­dy career. But if we’ve learned any­thing from our talk, it’s that the deter­mi­na­tion to find those new jokes are just anoth­er sign of his resilien­cy. And that’s all that mat­ters for Bren­dan Gay.

Bren­dan can be seen and heard:

• Send It pocast
• The Creek and the Cave — Head­lin­ing April 15, 7pm and 9pm
• The Riot Standup — Head­lin­ing April 16, 7:3pm, Rud­yards, Hous­ton, TX
• Rough­cut Com­e­dy — Co-host of week­ly show­case on Tues­days 8:00pm, Bak­er Street Pub
• Debut Album release — stay tuned!!

Fol­low Brendan

• Web­site — www​.kpcom​e​dy​.com/​b​r​e​n​d​a​n-gay
• Insta­gram — @brendangay
• Face­book Face​book​.com/​B​r​endan Gay
• Youtube — Youtube​.com/​B​r​e​n​d​anGay