‘CHUBBY BEHEMOTH’

Front Range comedian and novelist Sam Tallent on the pen, the mic and the future

BY CARTER FERRYMAN

If you’re making people think too hard on stage, Sam Tallent questions your chops as a comic. He’s in the business of belly laughs: pure and simple. The Colorado-raised artist points to the noise rock duo Lightning Bolt as an example of the kind of immediacy he strives for behind the mic.

“No one can tell you why Lightning Bolt is good,” Tallent says. “It’s a punch in the face: It’s loud, it’s frenetic, it’s an aural assault. You either like it or you don’t.”

That sort of direct confrontation is a big part of what he loves about the craft. Tallent’s first taste came through seat-of-your-pants improv performances and DIY rock shows at since-shuttered Blast-O-Mat and Rhinoceropolis. From there, he charted a path to becoming one of Colorado’s foremost comedians, podcasters and authors by leaning away from the cerebral and into the visceral.

Tallent, who grew up an hour outside the city in the quiet country town of Elizabeth, was soon drawn to the chaotic energy of mixed DIY bills featuring music, comedy and points in between. So when he and some friends founded Mouth House, a now-defunct house venue on California Street deeply entrenched in local lore, anything went.

“Our whole thing was like, if you want to play a show here, you can,” Tallent says. “We’re gonna have a guy that plays the theremin, followed by some Madball-style hardcore band from Baltimore, then we’re gonna have some white kids rapping.”

For around $120 a month per person, Tallent shared the space with more than a dozen other people, including his best friend and current Chubby Behemoth podcast co-host Nathan Lund. He’d conjure setlist of unlikely mash-ups, and just maybe, if people came for a show, they’d see a band they would’ve never encountered. Meanwhile Tallent turned out huge crowds for the Too Much Fun variety show at Deer Pile, a creative space above Capitol Hill eatery City, O’ City. He did so alongside fellow co-founders of the Fine Gentlemen’s Club comedy troupe, Lund, Bobby Crane and Chris Charpentier.

Three available comedy open mics across the city had turned into countless locations in just a handful of years. Garage venues hosting punk and metal bands soon dotted the Denver metro, spurred by the efforts of a creative community that included Tallent and his friends. The ethos was simple: You did it how you wanted to do it, and did so without hesitation.

“That’s just the way that I ran my businesses forever,” says Tallent.

“Touring non-stop, sleeping on floors, passing hats, making my own merch, booking my own shows in the old fucking nascent days of MySpace, booking your own fucking life — that all made its way into my standup.”

After the Mouth House closed its doors in 2013, Tallent headed west for Vegas with his wife, Emily, trading impromptu music and comedy nights for variety shows at supper clubs in dimly lit casino side rooms. The burning desire for stand-up had dwindled, but the urge to create had not.

“I didn’t have any friends and it was, like, a million degrees. It was so hot I literally couldn’t leave my house during the day,” Tallent says. “My wife was gone all day at medical school, so I was home alone — I’d fill up those empty hours with writing.”

Searching For Stillness

Tallent says he needs stillness to write — and in Las Vegas, the stillness was ever present. Day after day, he’d stack up the pages that would become his first book, Running the Light. A gutting, macabre novel about a washed-up touring comic named Billy Ray Schafer, the work has been hailed by critics as a true-to-form slice of life on the road.

“The more days that I can stack up back to back to back writing only [improves] the product because you get in that rhythm, that groove,” says Tallent. “I had that in Vegas. But now, I don’t have an address.”

Since July, Tallent and his wife have been living what he calls a “weird, vagabond” lifestyle. Nearly all of the time, they’re visiting family across the country or traveling abroad. Suffice to say, there hasn’t been much stillness for Tallent lately.

“I haven’t written anything since I was in Ecuador for all of May,” he says. “I have two books that have like 60,000 words in them so far — if I could just sit down for like two months, I could get one of them done.”

Tallent’s only time spent in Colorado this month will be to perform at Comedy Works Denver over Thanksgiving weekend. It’s a club that’s remained one of standup comedy’s most recognized locations.

“It is the benchmark, it is the gold standard. I love being a Comedy Works comic,” Tallent says. “It’s a killbox, you know: It’s 220 people in a low-ceiling, underground room, and they’re all knee-to-knee. It’s funny when people bomb at Comedy Works. The quiet is so pronounced.”

‘WAITING FOR A PUNCHLINE’

Denver is a city that loves to laugh. Tallent attributes this to a “comedy incubator” of sorts: The people are welleducated, but also a little drunk and