Jeff Foxworthy The King of Comedy

EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW: JEFF FOXWORTHY

...THE KING OF COMEDY

Jeff Foxworthy is largest-selling comedy recording artist in history, author of 26 books and a multiple Grammy Award nominee. Widely known for his redneck jokes and light canter among his audiences, his acts explore the humor in everyday family interactions and human nature. He is currently on tour and heading to several casinos along the way, including a stop at North Star Mohican Casino on August 20th .

Gaming and Destinations publisher, G. Douglas Dreisbach, caught up with the King of Comedy to find out about what makes him tick, how he comes up with his content and what makes playing casino and resort-style shows different than others. This is an excerpt of the interview edited for space purposes. Listen to the full interview at GamingandDestinations.com.

G. Douglas Dreisbach: Your list of accolades includes Grammy nominations, record sales of your products and books and so much more. Does hearing that long list of accolades ever get old?

Jeff Foxworthy: You know, it’s kind of funny. When you’re in the middle of doing all of that, it doesn’t really sink in, because I sit there and go, “26 books is a lot of books,” or “Yeah, that was a lot of records.” But when you look back, you’re like, “Dang, I was busy there for a while.”

GDD: Does it ever get hard to come up with new content? And where do you find some of your creative inspiration before you go out and use it?

JF: I think I’m one of the lucky comedians, because early in my career, I discovered what worked best for me. I trusted that if I thought of something, or if my wife says something, or my family does something, I’m going to trust that other people are thinking and saying and doing the same things that we are. So, when I am on-stage and see people laugh and then elbow the person next to them, or point to the person next to them, then I said something that was funny.

I did a thing on the last special working with Larry the Cable Guy where we were talking about the fact that we have a generation that doesn’t know how to get dog poop off their shoes. Growing up, we played outside every day, and every day somebody stepped in dog poop. So on the stage I went through what you did. You know, first you scraped it on the edge of the curb. Then you went back and forth in a puddle, and then you did the sweeping motion on the grass. Then you got a little piece of stick, and you sat down

on the curb and picked it out of the treads. As I’m describing this process, I was thinking that there is not one joke in this but people are gut-laughing, because they’re going, ‘Oh, my God, I’ve done that.’”

So that’s kind of what I’ve always done. I’ve talked about my life and if you go back and listen to an album or watch a special, it’s kind of a snapshot of whatever was going on in my life that year.

GDD: Would you say that most of your content is original from you? And has it always been that way?

JF: Yes, almost always. I’ve got a buddy in Nashville that is really funny but doesn’t go on the road. I will think of something and call him and say, “Hey, do you think this has merit to it?” And if he likes it, then I’ll go to a club and start working it out. It is kind of amazing that you never get to the point to where you know if something’s funny or not. I mean, if you and I were going to a club tonight and I had a stack of note cards with ideas on them, and you said, “Pick the four best,” two of them would probably die. I mean, I still don’t have it down. But that’s part of what amazes me. And I just keep coming back to stand-up out of everything I’ve ever done. I love the fact that you can’t figure it out.

GDD: How much of your show is scripted and how do you adjust the script based on the moods or reactions from the audience?

JF: I always know where I want to start and where I want to finish. But, as you get out there, it is like a boxer, like a little dance, and it’s never the same way twice. But for me, knowing where I want to start and knowing where want to end has always been kind of a security blanket. Sometimes it doesn’t end up that way, but that’s kind of my plan when I walk out there.

Foxworthy is one of the most successful comedian in history.

GDD: You were a founding partner of the Blue Collar Comedy crew that included you and Ron White, Larry the Cable Guy, and Bill Engvall. Tell us about how that came to be.

JF: Well, when the Kings of Comedy tour started up, one of the first stops was Atlanta, where I live. I was reading about it in the paper, and it said that it was a show for the urban, hip audience. I remember calling up Bill Engvall, and I said, “You know, urban and hip leaves a lot of people out. We need to do a show for everybody else.” And he kind of laughed, and he said, “What would you call it?” And I said, “Just call it the Blue Collar Tour.” So, we set three months aside, me, Bill, Ron, and Larry, and we were going to try this for three months. I think we ended up doing the first tour for three years. We just had no idea that it was going to blow up like that. But it’s still, to this day, one of the most fun things I’ve ever been part of.

GDD: Did you find yourself writing new content on that tour, bouncing ideas across the room with you four?

JF: Absolutely. Part of the reason it was the four of us was that we all kind of started around the same time and we were buddies back in those early days when nobody was making any money. At first, when we pitched the idea of the four of us doing the show, the promoter wanted to do a big number at the end, something like a silly song or whatever. Being a fan of comedy, I grew up watching the Carol Burnett Show, and my favorite part was when they made each other laugh. I thought, “People never see a comic laugh. If we do our job right, we keep a straight face, and the audience laughs.” So, I said to the promoter, “Instead of doing something big, can we just bring out four stools and tell stories and try to make each other laugh?” And they were like, “Well, we can try it. We’ll see if it works.” There was no way to rehearse it, so that first night of the tour, we were in Omaha, Nebraska, and there were 9,000 people in the audience. I was the fourth one to perform out of the four of us. At the end I said, “Hey, let’s bring the other three guys back and tell a few stories.” We had no idea if it was going to work or not, and we got to the end of it and said good night, and 9,000 people stood up and we got a standing ovation, and we kind of looked at each other and went, “Oh, my God, it worked.”

GDD: You mentioned Carol Burnett as an early influence and exposing you to comedy. Who were some other early influences you liked?

JF: Well, it’s probably politically incorrect, but Bill Cosby was a huge influence, not accounting for what he did in his personal life, but as a stand-up, I liked him. He talked about family stuff. He was funny without being dirty and he was an influence. Bob Newhart was an influence. Later, it was Carlin and Pryor, but that was after I got headphones, so my mom couldn’t hear what I was listening to.

When I got into comedy, Rodney Dangerfield was great about helping younger comics and he helped me a lot and even put me on one of his HBO Young Comedian specials.

Jay Leno was fabulous. I mean, I remember being an open-mic-er, and Jay would sit there with me at the Waffle House at one in the morning and tell me what I needed to know.

GDD: Was there an “aha” moment where you realized you had the knack for entertaining?

JF: I do think that you are either born funny, or you’re not. I mean, I think you can get better at it, but you must be born with the talent. I remember as a kid I knew I could make people laugh but I never thought that being a comedian was a career option. I’d save up my allowance, and I’d buy comedy records. I’d memorize them. I’d go to school and do them and always got in trouble. Every report card was, “Jeff talks too much in class,” because I was trying to make people laugh. I actually had a real job and worked at IBM for a while. I was the guy that was always in the break room doing impersonations of the boss, and turn around, and the boss is standing in the doorway. A bunch of guys I worked with used to go down to a local comedy club in Atlanta called The Punchline. They kept coming back to work, going, “Foxworthy, you’re funnier than these people. You need to do this.” And they

entered me in a competition, not like an amateur night, but a competition for working comedians, called the Great Southeastern Laugh-Off. And I’m like, “Oh, dadgum, I’ve got to go write something.” I wrote five minutes about my family, and I went down there and did it, and I won the competition. I just remember I was scared to death, but a minute and a half into it, I’m like, “This is what I want to do. This is it. This is what I was born to do.” I still remember telling my parents I was quitting my job at IBM. My mother’s first question was, “Are you on the dope?” Whatever the dope was. And I’m like, “No, I just really think I could do this. I just have such a passion for it.” And five years later, I was on Johnny Carson, and the same mother said, “You know, you wasted all those years at IBM.” And I’m like, “OK, whatever, Mom.”

You know the crazy thing about it is, I’ve been doing it now for 37 years. I still love it just as much. I am so blessed to have made a fabulous living doing something I would have done for free, and after three and a half plus decades, I still love it. I still enjoy it so much.

GDD: Over those years you played many different venues. One of your upcoming stops includes North Star Mohican Casino Resort in Wisconsin on August 20th, as well as several other casino stops. Do you find the mood of the audience changes based on the venue? Is a casino show different than a comedy club or corporate event?

JF: If it’s just a regular concert, then you know people paid to see you. They want to see you. It is the same at a casino, except at a regular concert, you don’t have people sitting out there that may have just lost $10,000. At a corporate event, nobody pays to see you. You are just the entertainment. So, with one of those, I’ll start slower and a little more deliberate, because I’m thinking, “Well, there’s people here that may not even know who I am.” But at the end of it, I always find that if I’m having fun, then usually it ends up that they are having fun too.

JF: A couple years ago I invented a card game called Relative Insanity. I wrote 500 punchlines, and 100 setups about relatives and family. So, the set-up might be something like, “Right before we walked down the aisle, Daddy leaned over to me and whispered _____.” Everyone playing has seven punchlines, and they throw the card they think is going to get the biggest laugh. It ended up being the top-selling game on Amazon! So, when COVID hit, I decided to write four expansion packs for the game that will be out this summer so that will be a lot of fun. I also have a couple TV projects in the works, but everything kind of slammed to a halt during the pandemic so hopefully by the fall, we can start doing at least one of those.

GDD: Probably one of your biggest successes is the You Might be a Redneck series. How did that come about? And were you surprised at how well it did?

JF: I was shocked! It started because I’ve got this thick Southern accent, and I grew up out in the country, hunting and fishing. So, when I got into comedy, the only advice I got was, “You know, Jeff, you’ve got to take some voice lessons and lose that stupid accent you got.” And I’m like, “Well, where I come from, you have a stupid accent.” So, I was stubborn about the accent. I drove a truck. I wore blue jeans and cowboy boots. I talked like this. It seemed that everywhere I went people said, “Oh, Foxworthy, you’re just an old redneck from Georgia.”

As I traveled around the country, I found out that accents and ‘rednecks’ weren’t just a Southern thing, they were a 15-minutes outside of every city thing. So, one night, I was playing in a club in Lavonia, Michigan, and after the show we were sitting around the bar at the club and the guys were kidding with me about being a redneck. Well, the club we were playing in was attached to a bowling alley that had valet parking, so I said, “Wait a minute. If you don’t think you have rednecks in Michigan, come look out the window. People are valet parking at the bowling alley.”

I went back to the hotel that night, never thinking it was going to be a hook or books or whatever, and I wrote ten ways to help people tell if they were a redneck or not. I went back to the club the next night and tried it. Not only were people laughing, but they were pointing at each other too! I thought, “Well, if I can write 10, I can write 50. And if I can write 50, can I write 300 of them?” So, I put it into a book format and got turned down by the first 14 publishers that I sent it to. Then, the fifteenth one I sent it to said to come in and we would talk about it. I went in and he said, “You know, this is kind of funny and I think we might try to publish this. How does $1,500 sound?” At the time, I didn’t know if he was asking me for $1,500, because I didn’t have it, so I asked him and he said, “No, no, no, we’ll pay you.” I’m like, “Well, then, yeah, let’s do it!”

I remember saying to him, “How many do you think we might sell?” And he said, “You know, I wouldn’t be surprised if we didn’t sell 5,000 of them.” I think that first book sold four and a half million copies. So, from then on, every time I saw him, I would say, “Hey, I’m glad you don’t know anything more about the book business than I do!”

I never saw it coming. He never saw it coming. They were one-liners. They were easy to remember. They were easy to retell, and I think that was what made people gravitate to them. I quickly found out the true ones always got the biggest laughs. So, when people would say, “How do you come up with these?” I’m like, “There’s no research. It’s my family and my friends!” JF: Just be you, and learn to write everything down. Too many times after shows, people will come back to the dressing room, and they’re like, “I’ve done that,” or “I’ve thought that,” or “I’ve said that.” So you have to learn to grab these thoughts. I always have five or six note cards in my back pocket and have learned to write them down because you think you’re going to remember it later, and you never do. So, learn to write everything down, and just be you. Don’t try to be Jerry Seinfeld. Don’t try to be Jim Gaffigan. Just be you and talk about the things that you know about.

Quick Hits with Jeff Foxworthy

Hobbies: Painting, drawing, looking for arrowheads and hunting and fishing on his farm and spending time with his granddaughter.

Pets: A four-month-old Pomsky dog. It’s half husky, half Pomeranian.

Sports teams: Atlanta teams. Braves, Falcons, and especially, the Georgia Bulldogs!

Musicians/Bands: Grew up listening to Elton John, Springsteen, Billy Joel, etc… Now he listens to everything from the ‘60’s to current.

Books/Podcasts/Mini-Series:

Watching Queen’s Gambit right now. Reading a John Grisham book now and reads about one book per week. For podcasts, he likes the true crime subjects and Elvis.

Place to vacation or visit? Hawaii and Italy.

Place you have not visited that you

would like to? Galapagos

Brand of blue jeans? It has been Levi’s, but lately it has been the Buffalo brand because of the stretchy waistband.