Recipe for Becoming Keith Lowell Jensen

Let me lev­el with you all: My job here — curat­ing cool sto­ries from come­di­ans — is not ter­ri­bly hard. Think about it: For one thing, come­di­ans are pro­fes­sion­al sto­ry­tellers. For anoth­er, strange and fan­tas­ti­cal things hap­pen to them often. (I don’t know if that’s by mag­ic or just by virtue of inter­act­ing with drunk peo­ple on a night­ly basis, but I digress). That’s a pret­ty fool­proof recipe for cool sto­ries. The only prob­lem is, every so often, we get the priv­i­lege of talk­ing to a sea­soned com­ic like Kei­th Low­ell Jensen — some­one with so many inter­est­ing sto­ries and fab­u­lous cred­its, it becomes a strug­gle not to make the arti­cle sound like one long infomer­cial à la Bil­ly Mays. (“But wait, there’s more!”)

Seri­ous­ly though: Jensen has eight com­e­dy albums, a suc­cess­ful­ly pub­lished book called Punch­ing Nazis: And Oth­er Good Ideas and anoth­er one on the way, and he has opened for the likes of Norm Mac­don­ald, Robin Williams, and Doug Stan­hope. Hear­ing those cred­its — as a come­di­an and writer myself — I had to fight the urge to start furi­ous­ly tak­ing notes. Turns out, the secret to suc­cess was start­ing out as a punk ska kid in Cal­i­for­nia with four broth­ers, so I’ve already missed the boat on mul­ti­ple counts.

For those of you still inter­est­ed in the recipe for becom­ing Kei­th Low­ell Jensen, fol­low these steps: Start a band, but don’t play any instru­ments with too much skill. Instead, rely on your tal­ent­ed gui­tarist friend to help you turn your lyrics and ideas into some­thing tru­ly musi­cal. Pro­mote the band until you’re gig­ging reg­u­lar­ly. Then, watch help­less­ly as your friend leaves the band to be a dad. Whip eggs until light and fluffy. Wait, sor­ry, I’m get­ting my recipes mixed up.

Jensen reflects on the expe­ri­ence of los­ing the band, ​“You know, it was a lot of work. And then to have it gone overnight, because of some­one else … left me feel­ing a lit­tle bit pow­er­less.” For­tu­nate­ly, with the help of a local com­e­dy writ­ing class as his ​“train­ing wheels,” Jensen found a sur­pris­ing­ly viable sub­sti­tute in the form of being fun­ny on stage. ​“Com­e­dy was some­thing where I could again be putting my words out there, be express­ing myself in the way that I want­ed to and get­ting the atten­tion that I want­ed,” he mus­es. He even formed the comedic equiv­a­lent of a band: a com­e­dy troupe (with the added caveat that, this time, they would sail on if any­one jumped ship).

Sur­pris­ing­ly, Jensen was actu­al­ly not ​“the fun­ny one” grow­ing up; he was the art­sy one with the oil paints and the poet­ry. By the same token, he was also the only one allowed to have nudes on his wall, much to his broth­ers’ cha­grin. ​“Because their nudes, you know, came out of Play­boy, and my nudes were artis­tic,” Jensen says cheek­i­ly. ​“Mine were in black and white.” In the same vein, Jensen start­ed out on the art­si­er, weird­er side of com­e­dy, influ­enced heav­i­ly by Andy Kauf­man: ​“I was putting strain­ers on my head and per­form­ing my whole set as a fly, or doing a bit where I would­n’t come out on stage; I made the emcee bring the mic back­stage to me because I had ​‘stage fright.’”

Even­tu­al­ly, Jensen real­ized that his heart’s true loy­al­ty lay with telling sto­ries. From aspir­ing to be a graph­ic nov­el­ist, to want­i­ng to make movies, to just gre­gar­i­ous­ly swap­ping sto­ries at par­ties, every­thing was com­ing up sto­ry­telling. And yet, the first time that Jensen bombed was when he got up and told a reg­u­lar old sto­ry, instead of his Kauf­man-esque bits. (Grant­ed, the real rea­son it bombed was not the sto­ry itself, but rather that it was a com­plete­ly new, untest­ed joke.) ​“That scared me off of sto­ry­telling for a while,” he rec­ol­lects. Of course, too stub­born to sim­ply write the joke off as a dud, Jensen lat­er worked out the story’s kinks and made it the clos­er of his first com­e­dy album. In fact, turn­ing fail­ures into slow-burn, late-bloomer suc­cess­es is one of his obses­sions. ​“Some­times I’ll keep doing some­thing I don’t even like any­more for a real­ly long time,” he admits. ​“Just because, like, I got­ta win before I can quit.”

That same per­sis­tence col­ors many of Jensen’s accom­plish­ments. Take his most recent com­e­dy album, for exam­ple; he orig­i­nal­ly wrote and pitched it to pub­lish­ers as a book, but to no avail. ​“To spend months of my life writ­ing some­thing and then not get any feed­back except a rejec­tion let­ter. Wow, that hurts,” Jensen remarks of the expe­ri­ence. ​“And so, I thought I was­n’t going to make it as a writer, just because the process was too painful.” But much like the sto­ry that first bombed, he refused to let the book die; instead, he brought it back to the draw­ing board, allow­ing it to meta­mor­phose into his suc­cess­ful com­e­dy album Not for Rehire.

As for pub­lish­ing a book, anoth­er oppor­tu­ni­ty pre­sent­ed itself rather serendip­i­tous­ly — in the form of a neo-Nazi get­ting punched in the face on Inau­gu­ra­tion Day. (Stay with me, here.) You see, Jensen became quite out­spo­ken in favor of punch­ing Nazis. Some­how or anoth­er, a friend put in a good word about his writ­ing to Sky­horse Pub­lish­ing and before he knew it, Sky­horse was ask­ing him for a punch­ing Nazis book. And the rest, as they say, was history.

“I did­n’t real­ly have faith in myself that I could write the book,” Jensen says, ​“or that any­one would get my style. I’m so influ­enced by graph­ic nov­els and mag­a­zines … so, it was gonna be short and all over the place. And some of the sto­ries weren’t going to have real clear plot lines; they were just gonna be lit­tle slices of life.” But the book was a suc­cess. (Plus, as a come­di­an, Jensen is basi­cal­ly on a nev­er-end­ing book tour, which always helps.)

With that book under his belt, Jensen now looks for­ward to the release of his newest book, What I Was Arrest­ed For. He is espe­cial­ly fond of the project because it’s not one that any­one asked him to write; it’s what he want­ed to write. ​“It’s me telling sto­ries, which is what I do,” he affirms simply.

That quote from Jensen might not sound so pro­found out of con­text, but giv­en the jour­ney (or recipe) sur­round­ing it, with all the piv­ots, pri­or doubts, and set­backs meta­mor­phosed, that quote sounds like the per­fect end to this cool sto­ry; we can’t wait to hear the ones he tells next.

Want to know more about com­e­dy in Sacra­men­to, California?

Kei­th’s rec­om­men­da­tions for comics to check out from Sacra­men­to include: John­ny Tay­lor, Ngaio Bealum, Becky Lynn, Park­er New­man, Chazz Hawkins, Mike E. Win­field, Kiry Shabazz, and JR De Guzman

If you’re in Sacra­men­to, check out the com­e­dy scene where comics gen­er­al­ly work at one club in town, but often head to near­by San Fran­cis­co to earn greater fame while main­tain­ing their home base in Sacramento.

Fol­low Keith

• Twit­ter — @keithlowell // @MaxTheTiger (his daughter)
• Insta­gram — @keithlowell
• Face­book — Face​book​.com/​k​e​i​t​h​l​o​w​e​l​l​j​ensen // Face​book​.com/​K​L​JPage
• Youtube — Youtube​.com/​k​e​i​t​h​l​owell

Kei­th can be seen and heard:

• Pod­casts Host­ed — Kei­th Low­ell Jensen Presents: The Kei­th Low­ell Jensen Show with Kei­th Low­ell Jensen
• Com­e­dy Albums/​Specials — Kei­th Low­ell Jensen: Bad Com­e­dy for Bad Peo­ple; Elf Orgy; Athe­ist Christ­mas; Not For Rehire (on Ama­zon Prime now)
• Books — Punch­ing Nazis: And Oth­er Good Ideas; New book com­ing out in late 2021