There is little doubt that Brian Regan has become one of America’s great stand-up comedians.
The nearly 40 -ear comedy veteran has killed in every venue from Johnny Carson to Netflix, and made a name for himself with refined and often clean observational comedy delivered from the perspective of an average guy. With a proud and growing catalogue of high quality specials at his back, Regan is still finding new topics to mine for material.
Regan’s quest for comedy excellence continues with a stop at the Bayou Music Center on Saturday, January 27. “Yes, there is a place that I always play in Houston,” he says. “I’ve played there a handful of times before. I’m looking forward to coming back.”
The high capacity of the venue doesn’t faze him, but it does tweak certain well honed processes. “Well, obviously like most comedians I started in smaller places in my career,” he recalls. “The goal, my goal anyway, is to make the audience one thing. I try to turn the audience into a thing. Even though I’m sure people in the audience would like to remain individuals. I’m making them part of a thing! I try to make that ‘thing’ – for lack of a better term – laugh.”
With a laugh himself, Regan happily mixes metaphors to get the truth of the comic’s purpose. “It’s like a musician playing an instrument: a musician can pick up and play a saxophone. I am trying to play this audience. I’m trying to get as much noise out of it as I can. The noise is the laughs! You try to unify the crowd and make them one entity.”
Delving deeper on the music analogy, though, the notion collapses as Regan admits: “If you gave me every instrument in the world, I wouldn’t know how to play any of them. Yet I’m doing music metaphors for some reason. But I do think there is a similarity to it. It’s sort of like… the jokes are supposed to get a certain reaction. But it does not always get the same kind of reaction every night, so you have to kind of adlib while you are up there.”
“I’m imagining a jazz band that can gel well together and sort of move with each other. Its sort of like that. Depending on what you are getting out of the audience, you are going to bring this up or bring this down or you might switch things up all together. If you’re in the middle of a bit, then you’ll go ‘All right, I’m getting out of this topic altogether once this joke is over and I’m gonna jump to a completely different part of my act.’ There’s a lot of winging it up there that people are not aware of.”
He shares that his mind is always going while onstage, and without naming names, says it not always true for other comics he’s seen at work. “Not everybody does that,” he says on how he gauges engagement with each bit as he’s performing it. “I’ve seen comedians that are really A to Z, and they are gonna do their act however they are going to do it regardless of what happens. I admire that in a way, but I also don’t think I could do that. I am too cognoscente of what is happening in the audience.“
Regan’s most recent special, the Netflix release On The Rocks, dropped in late 2021 and earned a warm reception from fans. The process of building a new hour after sharing the previous is always on the comic’s mind, he confesses. “I don’t have a place yet to do another special, but in my mind I am working towards another special. That’s always my mindset. Once I do an hour for a special or an album, then I start working away from that material and begin to replace it with a new hour. I think if someone said, ‘would you be able to shoot a special in six months?’ that I would be able to say yes.”
Regan calculates that much of his work comes down to simply living life with his eyes wide open. “I’ve never really tried to sit down and write. That just doesn’t work for me. I have always said if I sit down at a blank piece of paper to write, and hour later there will be a blank piece of paper. Things just don’t come out of me that way.
“I just have to go out and do what I would normally be doing and happen to occasionally see things, or feel things or experience things that seem funny to me. Then once I have the external source, then I can sit down at a piece of paper and come up with the basic idea. Then I can work on it, put words to it and that sort of thing. But that original idea has to come from an external place.”
It’s a solid reminder to comedians coming up that there has to be more to life than airports and greenrooms. The best inspiration may come from experiencing the new.
Since making his late night debut with Pat Sajak in 1989, Regan has had a unique front row viewing experience at the many talk show dynasties that have come and gone in the past 35 years. This love of telling jokes on TV, the comic reminisces, precedes even the dream to be one day be a joke teller himself.
“I used to be fascinated, even before I did those kinds of shows. When I was a kid, I was fascinated with watching those kind of shows. I would want to stay up late and watching The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson or when new shows would start like The Late Show with Letterman. I would be fascinated when a new talk show would start, who knows how long it would be out there. I used to really look at them to see what they did, who was the sidekick and how did they do it.”
“But as I’ve been out there for a while, my interests have gone off in other directions. I don’t pay that much attention. I will still do them occasionally, but it was such a big part of my life and a big part of my career – but its not something that’s as front of mind as much. Once you’ve gone through the experience, you go, ‘alright, what other experiences can I go through.’ You know what I mean? I have already lived the life of being a stand-up getting to walk out and go through the curtain and coming out to do these spots.”
“I had such a great thing with Late Show with Letterman,” he says. “And they let me do a lot of them, I did 28 of them. They are a lot of work. A lot of work goes together into putting on a five-minute spot for a late night set. I’m glad I did it. I’m glad I had the opportunity. But I’m at a place where I kind of want to relax a little bit and not being working quite as hard I’ve had to for decades.”
While the viewing data has clearly changed since the prime days of late night, the number of people you reach in just a part of how the medium’s shifting appeal. “It’s not as much as a game changer as it used to be,” Regan says. “It’s still a big thing, there are comedians who it is their dream to being The Tonight Show or one of these late night shows. I can understand that. But years ago, there were fewer shows out there. There were no podcasts out there! So if you did a late night spot, it was a huger experience not only for you, but also what it meant in the comedy world to say you’ve done that particular show. It was a big deal.”
Regan lights up at the idea of new adventures in the entertainment world. “Yeah, in fact I’m involved in these other projects that are so different for me,” he says. “There is a TV series called Loudermilk, which I am on three seasons. Three seasons are out, and it just got moved over to Netflix. It had been on Amazon Prime and people just weren’t aware of it. It just moved to Netflix, and now there is this big buzz about it. I thought this series was over and done. I had hopes that people want might there to be more, but I just thought ‘Oh well, I guess it didn’t catch on.’ But now it is catching on in like a big way. I’m like, this is going to be a bigger part of my life now. It gave me the opportunity to act. So the hope now is we will be making more seasons so that will be a bigger part of my career.”
Also on the horizon: animation and a new take on a format the comic knows so well. “I also recently pitched this animation project, and this studio likes it and we’re working together to make it. I am also helping to produce a talk show thing that we are hoping to get sold and I’m not even on it. It’s me behind the scenes and it’s just an idea that I think is interesting. I am a place in my life and my career where, as much as I still love stand up comedy, I want to feel and experience other things. And I’m very happy about it.”
Performances are scheduled at 8 p.m. on Saturday, January 27 at Bayou Music Center, 520 Texas. For more information, call 713-230-1600 or visit livenation.com. $59 – 238.65
This article appears in Jan 1 – Dec 31, 2024.
