Kandace Medina Levels Up

For Valerie’s 198^th inter­view, she and her guest both thought this episode was a buck­et list item. For Valerie it was get­ting to know one of the stand­out per­form­ers of the 2020 Com­e­dy Wham Iso­la­tion Com­e­dy shows. For Kan­dace Med­i­na, doing the Com­e­dy Wham Presents pod­cast was some­thing that marked a lev­el of accom­plish­ment in the Austin com­e­dy scene and recog­ni­tion for her hard work. Miss Purry was also very excit­ed about Med­i­na’s vis­it to the Purring­ton stu­dios (as she can be audi­bly heard through­out our conversation).

Med­i­na made the task easy. Give her a ques­tion and she gives of her­self in spades. Which is what we had hoped for when we planned her episode as the first release of 2022. Raw, bare, and hon­est, we thought that with the dif­fi­cul­ties of the last 2 years, we need­ed some­one to hon­est­ly depict the hard times as they piv­ot to a new chap­ter of their lives.

Med­i­na pro­fess­es that for many years she felt unful­filled — in school, out of school, in life, in gen­er­al. Com­e­dy played an impor­tant role in her child­hood, she states ​“Com­e­dy was a way for me to do mul­ti­ple things, it was a way for me to fit in, a way for me to hide…whatever was going on with me, it was a way for me to kind of get by in life and be liked…” As a sur­vival tool for her to get by, she could hide behind jokes, deflec­tion, and affirm her self-declared sta­tus as a loner. 

One can apply some arm­chair psy­chol­o­gy and sur­mise that drug and alco­hol use in her life as a com­ic were man­i­fes­ta­tions of that state of mind. Med­i­na opens up about extreme­ly dark moments in her life, includ­ing being in an abu­sive rela­tion­ship and hav­ing sui­ci­dal thoughts. After grad­u­at­ing from col­lege, she did­n’t know what to do, she land­ed a job that she did­n’t care for, and while she had friends (shout out Shan­non!), a con­trol­ling abuser imposed iso­la­tion which turns a lon­er’s life even more difficult.

She bears no shame about those moments and thoughts, she’s learned that by being open it helps heal her own dark­ness and makes it pos­si­ble for oth­ers to relate and per­haps grasp on to some hope if they are going through sim­i­lar feel­ings. This is why she fre­quent­ly declares dur­ing our con­ver­sa­tion, ​“com­e­dy saved her life”. As you’ll hear, cook­ing may also have saved her life. A life-long self-taught cook, before mov­ing to Austin she land­ed an audi­tion to be in Mas­ter Chef. Of all the dif­fi­cult things Med­i­na opened up about lead­ing up to this part of the inter­view, it is in this moment that she tears up. For her, the audi­tions gave her “…this new sense of expe­ri­ence, like grat­i­tude, and just being so grate­ful for the lit­tle part of me that just kept going because…I’ve done some cool shit and I’m final­ly able to say that that’s due to my sense of adven­ture, abil­i­ty to take risks, will­ing­ness to learn and grow and work through the hard stuff like go to the edges of the dark­ness and con­tin­ue on and expe­ri­ence great things that not every­one is will­ing to make that leap.” While we haven’t got­ten to see her on TV (yet) as a chef, it does­n’t seem too far-fetched that we may one day get to. Her comedic sen­si­bil­i­ties, her charm, and her new­found con­fi­dence may be just the right ingre­di­ents in the right mea­sures to get her there.

One of Med­i­na’s most pro­found lessons from her return to Austin after the Mas­ter Chef audi­tions in Cal­i­for­nia and then jump­ing into the restau­rant indus­try are lessons that apply no mat­ter what you’re chas­ing after: ​“I and so many oth­er peo­ple are so much more capa­ble than we believe that you just have to take that risk. Because in that gap, you will grow, what­ev­er you don’t know, you will grow and you will learn. ” So for 2022, go ahead, say ​“fuck it”, take the risks, you just might learn some­thing from it and grow as a per­son. Even­tu­al­ly, that growth for Med­i­na brought her to com­e­dy and she was deeply com­mit­ted to grow­ing as a new com­ic. If Austin had the equiv­a­lent of JFL’s Fresh Faces, Med­i­na would have earned a spot as one of Austin’s Fresh Faces. But, for all the splash she was mak­ing in the scene, the dark cloud that had fol­lowed her her entire life, seeped into her com­e­dy pres­ence, too. The demons would not stay away.

And we are grate­ful to all of Med­i­na’s com­e­dy friends who begged her to return to com­e­dy after quit­ting. Yes, that’s right, she start­ed com­e­dy, but in 2020, she quit com­e­dy ratio­nal­iz­ing that com­e­dy had saved her, she learned what she need­ed to, and she was done. The tough thing for Valerie to hear was that Med­i­na quit fol­low­ing her final per­for­mance on (gasp!) one of our Iso­la­tion Com­e­dy online shows!! Admit­ted­ly, this brought a tear to my eyes because Med­i­na was bril­liant online and our mis­sion was always to sup­port and give comics a way to get their com­e­dy mus­cles flexed in the time of Covid. Med­i­na focused on the restau­rant busi­ness and things were going very well for her in that busi­ness, but her com­e­dy friends want­ed her back. They saw things in her that she could­n’t as cap­tured per­fect­ly by this obser­va­tion “…all the val­i­da­tion I was get­ting, I would con­vince myself that peo­ple were lying to me that peo­ple were try­ing to fuck with me or play tricks on me…” Between ther­a­py to tame those dark demons and the encour­age­ment of her friends she did it. She came back and real­ized she missed it. A new ener­gy and com­mit­ment to per­form­ing hit and she start­ed allow­ing her­self to accept the praise and she gained a nat­ur­al con­fi­dence in her­self that had elud­ed her. Does she have thoughts on that? Of course, she does, ​“It’s also impor­tant to trust our­selves as enter­tain­ers — to know that inher­ent­ly we are fun­ny, and just being human is fun­ny and fuck­ing up some­thing is fun­ny. Trust fall into your­self, like you are your own safe­ty net on stage.” Know that you’re your own safe­ty net is a huge step for any com­ic and for Med­i­na that means know­ing that she will be suc­cess­ful no mat­ter what she pursues.

This is one of our longest inter­views yet, but we want to encour­age any­one read­ing to lis­ten to this one because there is a sto­ry that Med­i­na tells about a moment in her life recent­ly where every­thing comes crash­ing togeth­er — the anx­i­ety, the imposter syn­drome, the crush­ing self-doubt, and then, like a phoenix, the tri­umphant pre­vail­ing over all of those dark demons that haunt her mind. It’s one of the best long-form sto­ries we’ve heard. At the end of the sto­ry, we heard this gem from Med­i­na, ​“I’m just not afraid any­more. Like noth­ing is real­ly that scary” and that’s an amaz­ing moment for any per­former to achieve, one she admits she wish­es she could save in a bottle.

Hav­ing observed Med­i­na’s standup com­e­dy for the first time in Decem­ber since last see­ing her dur­ing the Iso­la­tion Com­e­dy Shows, I can admit I was blown away by the matu­ri­ty and self-assured­ness she dis­played on stage. Make no mis­take, she was hilar­i­ous, her comedic instinct unaf­fect­ed by a recent com­mit­ment to sobri­ety. It is hap­pen­ing more fre­quent­ly that comics are ditch­ing the chem­i­cal crutch of alco­hol or drugs and in no way is that an easy task. For Med­i­na, it has allowed her to grow and accept the cur­rent ver­sion of her­self that loves cook­ing (her alter ego as cater­er can be fol­lowed on insta­gram @the.hungry.otter) and loves per­form­ing and hav­ing fun.

So here we are, with a fresh new year and I knew that Med­i­na was the per­fect choice to kick us off 2022. A dark time (Covid) and com­mit­ment to self (cook­ing, sobri­ety, shed­ding old defense mech­a­nisms) bring us a new Kan­dace Med­i­na. Make no mis­take, we loved the ver­sion we saw on stage, but this new ver­sion is brim­ming with pos­si­bil­i­ties both on and off stage that only a mas­ter chef is capa­ble of.

Fol­low Kandace

• Twit­ter — @chunkerKnugget
• Insta­gram
  • Kan­dace @chunkerknugget
  • Back­yard Sluts @backyardsluts
  • The Hun­gry Otter @the.hungry.otter

• Do512 — do512​.com/​k​a​n​d​a​c​e​-​m​edina
• Youtube — Youtube​.com/​K​a​n​d​a​c​e​-​M​edina

Kan­dace can be seen and heard:

• Host of Banana Phone — Open mic every Sun­days at The Creek and the Cave, 10pm
• Co-host of Back­yard Sluts — Month­ly show­case with Arielle Isaac Nor­man