Hosting Hambones

Hey friends,

As you may already know, I hosted the Open Mic Comedy night at Hambones this past Thursday! I was very honored when Derek Minto asked to host the show for him. I was excited to host this room. I usually go to Hambones almost every Thursday night, and enjoy that room every time! I went down there with my girlfriend, Carrie and hung out with a few comics while I waited for everyone to sign up. By the time we started the show as 25 Comedians deep. For the first half of the show we had a packed room that was ready to laugh. It definitely was a great show!

I got a bit of advice from Ron Placone about making sure my set wasn’t talking about a heavier subject such as race, religion, politics, etc. Not to say that you can’t, but I definitely didn’t want it to be the sole basis of the opening set. I took Ron’s advice and built a short narrative set about my girlfriend and transitioned into a bit or two about race. I think it set up the stage for anyone working on material that was relating back heavier topics! I was glad that the audience was with the material and came in ready to laugh. Hosting the show I was definitely paying attention to everyone’s sets a lot closer to make sure I could try and do a short joke relating to their set. The Comedians were fantastic!

Hosting this show gave me a bit of a different experience than hosting and running my own show. This was obviously a lot more fast paced than running a showcase. Not only that for the beginning of the show I had to make sure the audience members were still with the Comedians, still warmed up and didn’t need a reset. It’s relatively easy to keep things high energy and running during the beginning of the show till about 14th Comedian going up. Past that people were trickling out a bit and everyone had started to get tired. It was doubly hard when Carrie had to leave too, but she had to wake up in the morning to save children’s lives so I don’t fault her. I think towards to the end of the show I was starting to lose it a bit too, since I goofed up about 3 or 4 Comedians names. I apologize if you were one of those Comedians I didn’t mean to do it, I either couldn’t read the list or I was delusional. By the time I helped Jeff Holt clean up and put the Mic away and left, it was 12:30 am, and I was definitely ready to see my bed.

All in all, it was a great show and I had a lot of fun with the show! I gotta give a big big kudos to anyone hosting Open Mics and continue to do it every week. Big thanks again to Derek Minto for giving me the opportunity to host! I hope all is well with you, Derek!