The H.A.G.S (Have A Great Summer) Tour with Joe Kelley & Mary Jay Berger at Spiffy Squirrel stand-up comedy show at The East Room 7/3/2016.
The H.A.G.S. (Have A Great Summer) Tour with Joe Kelley & Mary Jay Berger kicks off at Spiffy Squirrel comedy show July 3rd and runs throughout the south east until July 21st.
MARY JAY BERGER is an awful person (her mom says she’s sassy). She hates sharing and loves telling people that she’s a doctor. Mary is not a doctor, but she does know more about Harry Potter than Neil deGrasse Tyson knows about anything.
Mary’s credits include: the Mary Watches Movies web series and being kicked out of a Titanic museum. She produces the monthly ‘Flying With Jaybird’ stand-up comedy show and tours the midwest and south east. See the reason Mary Jay Berger’s mom cries every day.
JOE KELLEY left Flint, Michigan in 2009 with 3 diplomas; A high school diploma, a graphic design diploma, and a radio diploma. Those 3 diplomas led him to Nashville, Tennessee where he began doing stand-up comedy.
Joe has a unique perspective on life, combined with a mid-western charm that makes audiences love him and comfortable with opening up to different ideas.
SPiFFY SQUiRREL is an independent, underground professional weekly alt comedy show featuring touring comedians from all corners of the earth, plus outstanding local regulars who are worth paying attention to. Sundays at 6:30pm at The East Room. Produced and hosted by Nashville’s Chad Riden.
Sean Rouse was one of the breakout stars with Dave Attell, Greg Giraldo, and Dane Cook on Comedy Central’s Insomniac Tour. He was in Men in Black II and also on HBO’s critically acclaimed Down & Dirty with Jim Norton. He’s irreverent, even though he looks innocent. He’s likeable even though he’s highly obscene. But most of all, he’s extremely entertaining.
“Rouse is one of the best comics working on this planet. Dark, evil, extraordinarily smart, relevant and adorable” – Doug Stanhope.
There’s nothing more embarrassing than writing your own biography for your website. Should I try to make it funny? Just list my credits? Tell a coming of age story of how I dreamed to be a comedian as a kid, then I got hit by a car, my dad died, and I started telling poop jokes and it all changed? I don’t know. I’m no storyteller, so I’ll just get straight to the point. I’m from Chicago and I started comedy in 2005. I bombed. Boy, did I bomb a lot, and still do. After endless times going to open-mics and local stand-ups shows, I caught a break when I was a regular at the defunct Lakeshore Theater opening for amazing comedians such as Doug Stanhope, Jim Jeffries, and Al Madrigal. Stanhope decided to take me on tour with him, and he bragged about how much little he paid me, but I thought I was rich at the end of it. I’ve never even been in a hotel room before and had to learn how to pack a suitcase. Yeah, I’m that out of touch. After I got off tour with Stanhope, I got a huge break when Dave Attell and Comedy Central invited me to perform on Comedy Central’s Underground with Dave Attell. Since then, I was invited to perform on Last Comic Standing Season 2015, and Norm MacDonald even gave me some of the best praise I’ve ever had during my career.
When he’s not on the road, his free time is spent marathon running, streamlining vigilante justice, and enriching the lives of farm animals. He also comes from a long and triumphant line of Freemasons, who founded the fair city of Eugene, Oregon. Although he is 1/32 African American, he made the choice long ago to forgo racial material in his repertoire. This triple threat will soon be a licensed real estate salesman, in the hopes of parlaying his selling adventures into comedic gold. Favorite color is yellow.
The Basement East
917 Woodland Ave.
Nashville, TN 37206
615-645-9174
Win FREE tickets to the “Sick of Stupid” Tour at Zanies 1/20/2016 with Tom Simmons, Stewart Huff and Cliff Cash!
“Sick of Stupid” is an intelligent, comedic look at all things southern. We believe that people are thirsty for an intelligent voice with a southern accent. “The South” is made up of Miami, Austin, Atlanta, The Research Triangle, New Orleans, Nashville and so many more wonderful, cultured, beautiful cities and those cities are full of intelligent, progressive young people who don’t want to grouped in with Duck Dynasty or Larry the Cable Guy. The south has somehow garnered a reputation that lumps us all into wearing camouflage and hating gay people. There exists a large portion of the population that doesn’t want to be lumped into those categories. Those folks are our demographic. We believe they will love what we have to say. We believe that the antithesis of the “Blue Collar Comedy Tour” is something that hasn’t been done yet and the first people to do it successfully can expect a windfall. Intelligent southern comedy exists. We aren’t the first to do it. It is a genre but it is a genre and a concept without an owner. No one has claimed it. No one has mastered it successfully and no one has branded it or taken it to the mainstream and pop. We believe we can be the guys to do just that.
Here’s more info about the comics in the show:
Tom Simmons was born in New York and raised in Atlanta, Georgia. He is married to the love of his life, Serena, for more than a decade. Together, they have a son named Owen. “We figured, that’s what we would be doing for the rest of our lives.” Before Owen’s birth in 2004, Tom and Serena toured the continent in their RV, devoted to perfecting Tom’s stage act and putting their relationship to the test. The Simmons now live in Greensboro, North Carolina, the “epicenter of comedy”, as Tom describes it with a huge grin. “We bought a house from the seventies, and there’s lots of work to do. All I need now is a husband.”
Winner 2009 San Francisco International Comedy Competition
Two time finalist at Boston Comedy Festival
Montreal Just for Laughs International Comedy Festival.
Comedy Central- Live at Gotham
Showtime- White Boyz in the Hood (pilot episode)
BET- Comic View (multiple seasons)
Bob and Tom radio show regular
Stewart Huff was born in Campbellsville, Kentucky and grew up in Knoxville, Tennessee. He has been performing comedy for over 15 years, beginning when he decided to drop out of college to become a writer. Currently touring theatres, comedy clubs and special events across the country, Huff reaches past the norm for his genuine — and genuinely unexpected — comedy. His knack for embracing the foibles of humanity and his refreshing originality make him as likeable as he is hilarious. A storyteller at heart, Huff continues to amaze with his clever material and personal wit.
Huff has performed in comedy clubs nationally and internationally, including the Improv in Los Angeles and New York, the Punchline in Atlanta and the Funny Bone in Omaha, as well as countless others.
A finalist in the 2006 Boston Comedy Festival, Huff was also invited to perform in the HBO Las Vegas Festival, where his act can be viewed on pay-per-view. He’s been featured in/on the Wall Street Journal, NPR and Nuvo and invited to festivals and conventions all over the country.
He currently lives in Atlanta, Georgia with his girlfriend. There he drops off the various items he collects while on the road, including an antique barber chair, countless vintage photographs, and an extensive collection of LP’s. She likes this.
He is featured in the documentary Road Comics: Big Work on Small Stages, which was released in Fall 2009.
Cliff Cash comes from the religious and conservative south and adds a new twist to stand-up that you won’t soon forget. Finding absurdities in everyday culture, media, politics and dogma; Cash draws comparisons that others miss. Whether it’s through one of his characters or voices, an angry rant or a satirical rap song, Cliff will make you question what you accept as normal.
A rising star on the comedy circuit, Cash is quickly climbing the ranks. He is featuring all over the country with multiple sets and hours of material, being accepted to the Cape Fear Comedy Festival three years in a row, the Norfolk Comedy Festival and winning Port City’s Top Comic 2013, Comedy Zone’s Almost Famous competition 2013 and chosen as one of 30 semifinalists nationwide in Comedy Central’s UpNext competition/talent search.
He’s opened for comedy all stars like Rory Scovel, Kyle Grooms, Todd Glass, Michael Che, Judah Freidlander, Moshe Kasher, Lachlan Patterson and many others. Cash has also recently been heard on XM radio and seen on Laughs tv show on FOX. Pull up a seat and enjoy the show because Cliff Cash has found his home in standup comedy.
The Sick of Stupid tour is doing ONE SHOW ONLY at Zanies Wednesday, January 20th at 7:30pm. Tickets are $12 online, at the door or at 615-269-0221. However, Nashville StandUp has a handful of FREE tickets to give away! All you have to do to register to win a pair is fill out the form below. Winners will be notified either by email or via telepathy, whichever you get first.
Jessica Watkins is a New York City based standup comic, actress, and writer. Originally from East Nashville TN, she moved to Los Angeles at the age of 18 to attend the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. Following her time at acting conservatory Jessica became involved in her first feature film, Bad Batch of which she helped produce and starred in. After 6 years in Los Angeles, Jessica moved to NYC to focus on writing and performing standup. She has spent the last five years developing her style of comedy, a bit of personal storytelling with a satirical look into politics, religion, and the world as a whole. Most recently at Chicago’s Women’s funny Festival Jessica is preparing for her first comedy tour. The tour will be on foot and cover more than 3,000 miles.
Jessica has launched a Kickstarter campaign to fund her tour and a film documenting a standup comedian who walks across North America in search of material, finding a fresh perspective on her country.
Here’s what Jessica had to say about the film:
This March 2014 I will start walking across North America. I am a standup comedian, actress, and writer who lives in New York City. For the better half of a year I will walk over 3,000 miles in pursuit of material for my first comedy special, creating a documentary film in the process.
My life is that of a full-time waitress and comedian. I spend my days serving pizza and writing jokes. As night falls I perform at open mics and in the back of bars and small comedy venues. For more than 6 months I will leave behind my day job, boyfriend and dog, for hiking shoes, a camera and cart. Setting out on a pilgrimage, walking from the East Coast to southern California, writing and performing comedy along the way, in search of gaining a fresh perspective on my country, the people in it and what they feel affected by.
Each comedy show could be weeks apart in distance. I will walk anywhere from 10 to 30 miles a day. I will stay with comics on the road, or sleep in locals’ homes, camp in yards, in beautiful national parks or in the middle of the desert. Sometimes I will wonder where I am going to lay my head at night and sometimes I will be like… What the f*ck, where am I, why did I do this, my feet HURT!! The journey must continue, as does life, ol’ FDR said “Only Thing We Have to Fear Is Fear Itself”. So, I decided to film it.
The feature length documentary will follow me as I travel through the changing demographic of this vast land. It will capture the many comedy shows I seek out at the end of a long day, the interesting people that I meet, the unique places I visit. Burning Daylight is a collaborative project where I’ll meet up with local film makers, and they will help me capture the journey. The ambitious project will compile over a hundred hours of footage. To properly store the information, post-production will begin as soon as I leave New York City. Every two weeks I will send the footage I have gathered to my editor for safe keeping.
The cameras won’t stop rolling in Cali. A few weeks after my arrival back in NYC (flight) I will film my first standup special. The special will tell the story of my adventure, and that will be the beginning of the documentary. The film will be partially narrated by standup, as some jokes flashback to the walk and you get to see footage of the events at hand. You will see the evolution of a joke, the evolution of a journey, the evolution of a country.
$15,000 would cover the bare bones expenses to get me on the road, with some basic equipment and an editor to help retrieve footage from the road.
Go to Jessica’s Kickstarter page and chip in a few dollars to help one of our own do something interesting and fun.. and stay tuned for news about Jessica’s journey. She plans on passing through and doing shows in Nashville, so who knows? You might even be able to sneak your way into the film.
Nashville-native comedian / author / lecturer / Vanderbilt graduate / funny person Jeff Havens is currently touring with his “How to Get Fired!” lecture / presentation / funny thing. The Kokomo Perspective recently wrote up his upcoming appearance at IUK:
Jeff HavensComedian Jeff Havens will bring some unconventional advice to the Indiana University Kokomo campus with his presentation, “How to Get Fired!”, on Thursday, April 8, at 1 p.m. in Kresge Auditorium.
Filled with the satire Havens has made famous in his stand-up performances and his corporate presentations around the country, “How to Get Fired!” is a hilarious discussion of exactly what not to do in the workplace.
Some questions Havens will ask his audience include, “Does the idea of working for a living depress you?”, “Would you rather play video games and update your Facebook profile than suffer through a lifetime of stable employment?”, and, “Does paying your rent seem like just too much of a hassle?”
[read the rest of the article here]
“How to Get Fired!” is also available in the quaint “book” format (an archaic form of communication involving something called “paper” that does not work at all on your iPad), available on his website, JeffHavens.com. NashvilleStandUp only wishes Jeff would have told us how not to get fired 10 years ago when we were still “employable” – now, we’re just damaged goods. Way to go, Jeff. Way. To. Go.
