Jeremiah Watkins Returns, 2018 Moontower Series

This is our sec­ond inter­view with Jere­mi­ah Watkins; be sure to check out the last time he sat down with us in 2017.)

In 2016, I became a reli­gious con­vert to the God­damn Com­e­dy Jam (GDCJ) which fea­tures mas­ter­ful host Josh Adam Mey­ers, a full back­ing band, and a cou­ple of hype men (think sport mas­cots with­out the fuzzy cos­tumes and with­out a t‑shirt can­non). Many of you have heard me go on and on about GDCJ and I refuse to stop. In that first Jam, one of the hype men, known on stage as Mosh Pit, caught my atten­tion — will­ing to take risks on stage, brim­ming with high ener­gy and fuel­ing the fire of the engine that dri­ves the excite­ment of the Jam. Doing my home­work, I found out that Mosh Pit was Jere­mi­ah Watkins, an LA com­ic who set­tled there after grow­ing up in Kansas. I was so inter­est­ed in get­ting to learn more about Watkins that I sat down with him before his 2017 Moon­tow­er shows after he had spent all day fly­ing with bare­ly any sleep. As you’ll hear in the 2018 edi­tion of my inter­view, being tired has become a sig­na­ture of our pod­casts together.

As a fan, I’ve been lucky to watch Jere­mi­ah shine on his var­i­ous high-pro­file shows — from the Jam, to being part of the Wave in Jef­frey Ross’ Roast Bat­tle, to Kill Tony (as the band­leader he picks a new cos­tume and joke theme each week). While these are all sup­port­ing cast roles, dur­ing this year’s Moon­tow­er, I caught Jere­mi­ah doing an impro­vised set dur­ing Jes­si­mae Pelu­so’s Sev­en Dead­ly Sins show­case and also on his own sig­na­ture show­case Standup On the Spot. My bin­go card of Watkins shows com­plete, I was thrilled to get my hunch con­firmed — every­thing is falling into place. The last year has felt like we’ve been watch­ing that class­mate that is capa­ble of being the star quar­ter­back and the debate team cap­tain, main­tain­ing a straight A aver­age, find­ing time to vol­un­teer at the local ani­mal shel­ter, hold­ing down a job, AND being the class clown. It’s won­drous to real­ize just how tal­ent­ed they are, so you either envy them or root for them. You can guess which camp I fall into.

Watkins launched his sec­ond pod­cast Jere­mi­ah Won­ders in Jan­u­ary of 2018 and this pod­cast com­bines bench­marks, char­ac­ter work and pro­vides insight into the com­e­dy indus­try. I liken it to the Advanced Course where Jere­mi­ah’s inau­gur­al pod­cast, The Build­ing Years, was the Intro­duc­to­ry course in build­ing a com­e­dy career in LA. A very unique ele­ment to his pod­cast is the week­ly Kind­ness Chal­lenge which encour­ages lis­ten­ers to be kind to oth­ers and share sto­ries of kindness.

Like a clas­sic infomer­cial, I feel like yelling ​“But WAIT, there’s MORE!!”. Jere­mi­ah and long-time col­lab­o­ra­tor, Pat Regan, are Regan and Watkins, a live com­e­dy music duo who per­form orig­i­nal par­o­dies. Regan and Watkins com­plet­ed record­ing their first album just before Moon­tow­er and are putting the fin­ish­ing touch­es on the 21 track album in hopes of a sum­mer release. If you’re look­ing for even more of Watkins, he was on the Sea­son Finale of Crash­ing on HBO as part of The Wave of the Roast Battle. 

When he looks into the crys­tal ball, Watkins is hop­ing that by this time next year, a show that he’s been devel­op­ing with Josh Adam Mey­ers and Avery Pear­son is up and run­ning. But, he clear­ly adores his time on Kill Tony and thinks that there’s some­thing so unique about that for­mat that he hopes he can help take it to new levels. 

The good news for us is that Jere­mi­ah has already com­mit­ted to com­ing back to check in on how things have been going in this upcom­ing year. He may be in his paja­mas and fuzzy slip­pers, but we know that when we catch up with him for 2019 Moon­tow­er, he’ll have achieved even more great things while con­tin­u­ing to be the nice guy advanc­ing the kind­ness chal­lenge every­where he goes.