Brian Gendron - Building a Legacy

Imag­ine a camp­fire set­ting in the woods of New Hamp­shire (com­plete with s’mores, if we’re hon­est) with friends gath­ered around the fire. Now imag­ine a gui­tar and songs all helmed by a young Bri­an Gen­dron. Tak­ing reg­u­lar songs and turn­ing them into par­o­dies to enter­tain the friends gath­ered. Now, put a pin in this vision because we’ll come back to it. This is Gen­dron’s first mem­o­ry that came to mind about some­thing fun­ny he remem­bered from his ear­li­er days. 

Mix in some mis­guid­ed dis­trac­tions, and fast for­ward to a serendip­i­tous move to Hous­ton because it was the win­ning city in the debate about the most liv­able city between he and his now-wife about where to set­tle for her work. (Full dis­clo­sure, as an Austin based com­e­dy enti­ty, we clear­ly would have made a dif­fer­ent choice).

As Gen­dron set­tled into Hous­ton liv­ing, he turned his new home into a play­ground for his busi­ness. He joined Toast­mas­ters (an orga­ni­za­tion that yours tru­ly has long been a mem­ber of), and used what he learned there – com­bined with his mar­ket­ing expe­ri­ence – into valu­able skills for orga­niz­ing cor­po­rate events. The learn­ings, plus a bit of chance, result­ed one day into Gen­dron tak­ing a 5 minute stroll to a com­e­dy venue: his first attempt at per­form­ing standup. 

One of the things he learned dur­ing Toast­mas­ters is the skill of eval­u­a­tion. In the for­mal sense of Toast­mas­ters, an eval­u­a­tor pro­vides an encour­ag­ing, spe­cif­ic, and help­ful cri­tique of a speak­er’s speech. Ide­al­ly, the speak­er adopts the sug­ges­tions for improve­ment and con­tin­ues on a tra­jec­to­ry of improve­ment. I men­tion this because Gen­dron spoke of hav­ing just recent­ly rewatched that very first set so he can mea­sure his improve­ment in the time since. A ded­i­cat­ed stu­dent of com­e­dy does this rou­tine­ly, but Gen­dron shares a tip I’ve nev­er heard before — study a par­tic­u­lar joke you’re work­ing on for at least 3 dif­fer­ent sets, to eval­u­ate what works over time and to make nec­es­sary tweaks. 

Using this for­ward look­ing, self-improve­ment ethos, Gen­dron has made good work of his 2 years (yeah, I could­n’t believe it either) as a standup com­ic. Rack­ing up a Katy Com­e­dy Fes­ti­val win­ner accom­plish­ment, and 2019 semi-final­ist spot in the Fun­ni­est Com­ic in Texas com­pe­ti­tion, Gen­dron was a ​“win­ner”, but he want­ed more. Pro­duc­ing shows came nat­u­ral­ly with his vast expe­ri­ence orga­niz­ing cor­po­rate events, so The Riot was born. If you take a look at the Com­e­dy Wham event cal­en­dar for Hous­ton, you can see the show is bring­ing top tal­ent to Hous­ton; cre­at­ing a good expe­ri­ence for audi­ences is key to this suc­cess, Gen­dron says. 

All of these endeav­ors point to Gen­dron being a leader and stew­ard in the Hous­ton com­e­dy scene, and of this he says ​“There’s a need for lead­er­ship in the com­e­dy scene” and that can be seen in any city. Any thriv­ing com­e­dy scene needs play­ers who know how to treat comics and audi­ences with respect and with their best inter­est at hearts. It is not a lead­er­ship of one, either, it is a lead­er­ship of many that can guide a scene.

Gen­dron spends a lot of time think­ing about phil­an­thropy, and for sev­er­al years he meld­ed com­e­dy events with fundrais­ers for local char­i­ties. Due to Covid, he put a pause on his largest fundrais­ing event, HaHa for Hope, last fall, but has his eyes set on a relaunch in late 2021. The event has raised over $14,000 for non-prof­it orga­ni­za­tions focused on chil­dren. Keep an eye out for that — you can be sure Gen­dron will be a pro­mo­tion machine for the good cause.

Did Gen­dron rest on his lau­rels dur­ing the pan­dem­ic? No, of course he did­n’t. He launched a pod­cast, Break­ing Down Bits where he and co-host Drew Jor­dan talk to comics break­ing down the writ­ing and per­for­mance ele­ments of standup. At 24 episodes young, you can eas­i­ly binge lis­ten and learn a lot about how dif­fer­ent comics approach standup. With still more time to fill dur­ing Covid, Gen­dron also launched an online mic, where comics from around the world gath­er to get feed­back on their writ­ing, and cre­ate a sense of glob­al com­mu­ni­ty.

Besides a strong for­ward tra­jec­to­ry, Gen­dron is about leav­ing a pos­i­tive lega­cy, whether it’s for his kids, the Hous­ton com­e­dy scene, his fundrais­ing events, or what­ev­er else he sets his sights on. He even helped kick off a new ​“lega­cy” for Com­e­dy Wham. On a recent trip to Austin, some­one on Face­book alert­ed him to the Com­e­dy Wham events cal­en­dar and he replied with ​“I wish there was some­thing like that for Hous­ton.” Being oppor­tunis­tic as well, I start­ed talk­ing to Gen­dron and – along with our great web guru Richard Good­win – we launched the Hous­ton events cal­en­dar. So, Hous­ton, you can thank Gen­dron for hav­ing a sin­gle place to see what shows and open mics are hap­pen­ing around town.

We have lit­tle doubt that Gen­dron will reach more and more suc­cess­ful heights no mat­ter what he takes on. If the last 2 years is any indi­ca­tion, if his quest for self-improve­ment is any sig­nal, if his gen­eros­i­ty with chil­dren-mis­sion ori­ent­ed non-prof­its is any clue, there will be more from him in the near future. You might even hear a hint of it dur­ing the podcast. 

While his gath­er­ings have grown up from the cozy camp­fire set­tings of his ear­ly days, you can rest assured that the warm wel­come, laughs, and feel­ing of being with a close friend who nur­tures the fire, have all been part of Gen­dron’s suc­cess and will con­tin­ue to do so. All we ask is for some s’mores.

Bri­an Gen­dron can be seen and heard:

• The Riot Standup Com­e­dy Show
• Break­ing Down Bits Podcast

Fol­low Bri­an Gendron

• Web­site — the​bri​an​gen​dron​.com
• Twit­ter — @thebriangendron
• Insta­gram — @thebriangendron
• Face­book — Face​book​.com/​T​h​e​B​r​i​a​n​G​e​ndron
• Youtube — Youtube​.com/BISB Media
• Pod­casts Host­ed — Break​ing​Down​Bits​.com
• The Riot Standup Com­e­dy Show — The​Rio​tHTX​.com
• HaHa for Hope Char­i­ty Events — hahaforhope​.com