I’m a comedian who loves talking to comedians, so when I had a chance to interview Jordan Rock, I was intrigued. With an eight-year career that started when he was 17, he’s already received notable roles in TV shows such as Love and Brooklyn Nine Nine and will be featured alongside Andy Samberg and Josh Peck in a film about three guys going to a hip-hop show called Take the 10, which debuts on Netflix on Jan. 20, 2017.
Rock’s stand-up credits are piling up. In January and February of this year he’s headlining major clubs in South Carolina, Washington DC and Sacramento. He’s appeared on Last Comic Standing, @midnight and Totally Biased with W. Kamau Bell.
So bringing up the fact that he’s Chris Rock’s little brother feels like it makes me “that guy” who had to ask “that question,” but when I asked him who his biggest comedy influence was growing up, how could I not expect that it would be Chris? Twenty-five years his senior, Chris was already a superstar when Jordan was just a kid. His other brother, Tony Rock, is also a successful stand-up comedian and actor, as well.
But the comedy game is honest and as personal as it gets. Sure, some celebrities get into comedy already famous or with a connection, but after 30 seconds on stage, if you aren’t legitimately funny, you’re immediately exposed. It’s not genetic, and it’s certainly not easy. Jordan Rock will be headlining six shows at Punch Line Sacramento Jan. 19–22, 2017.
In anticipation of his upcoming, local stint, I talked with Jordan on the phone about his career, development and what it’s like to perform.
So how long were you performing in South Carolina before you moved to New York?
For a year and a half, but I wouldn’t count it. It doesn’t even count. I was in high school and I wasn’t able to move free, so I wouldn’t really count it. It really started in 2009 when I moved to New York.
How was that first year in New York?
It was the longest year of my life. It was horrible [laughs]. New York beats you up. The first year was very long, and the second year was cool. Everything else after that was fast. There’s not a lot of quality stage time. You just have to make the most of every set you have, and you have to really network because you don’t know anybody.
Do you have a really memorable bombing story that sticks out?
I followed Kevin Hart one time when Kevin Hart was … Kevin Hart! Two-hundred people walked out on me. They saw Kevin Hart and were like, “This can’t get any better.” Their checks came, I got on stage and then they were like, “Yeah, we were right!”
Who were some of your biggest influences in comedy growing up?
My brothers were my biggest influences, Chris and Tony. I really liked how they moved and how they lived life. I wanted to grow up and be like that. I want to work like that.
So as a kid, your brother Chris was already performing stand-up.
Yeah, he’s already becoming him.
Was there any consultation or advice from him when you were young that helped you decide to do that?
He told me to come to New York. Don’t go to Los Angeles, come to New York! He said you got to go to New York to actually develop, because in California, you go there with what you’ve got. They don’t really give you time to develop there, because everyone is coming out there. In New York, you can see someone bombing on Tuesday and killing on Thursday with the same exact jokes, because you can develop.
How would you describe your comedy?
My comedy right now is just straight up the middle. I’m trying to just observe all of these new things that are going on all around me and just be in the middle. I don’t really want to pick a side. I want to be in the middle of every argument. I don’t want to lean too much to the right, and I don’t want to lean too much to the left. I just want to be me. I talk about growing up. I talk about the little things that happen in society and my life experience.
Are you starting to get fans that are looking forward to you coming back, or seeking you out to go to your shows repeatedly?
It’s building slow and it’s happening, but it’s really a cool thing. I appreciate everyone that comes out, even if it’s at a small place. If only five people show up, I’ll still give five people the best show I can.
Yeah, I always feel bad when a comic performs down the crowd. Like they feel there’s not enough people here for a good show, and they treat the audience badly.
I’ll never forget when I was hosting a show for like 12 people. One of them walked out of the show and went to the bathroom and I asked them if they were enjoying it and they were like, “Yeah, we’re having a great time! We just wish the comics were having as much fun as us.”
On your Twitter page it says “The Solange of My Family” as your tagline. You’re doing your own thing, and your stage presence is really nothing like your brother’s, but it’s got to be weird having that connection. What’s it like having that bond as you’re following your own career?
It’s been interesting. People will put more emphasis on it than you will. I’m just like, “You are not going to make me feel weird for having a dope family.” Once I just got out of what everyone else was thinking and focused on myself, I feel like I’m doing alright.
How long have you been headlining?
About three years now. I did it a little bit with one-night gigs and when comics produce shows, but this is my first time coming to clubs and nice rooms where I’m headlining for a weekend.
Yeah, a Thursday-through-Sunday run at a club like Sacramento Punch Line is a pretty fun set of shows. Plus you get the whole gamut of a light Thursday to the dreaded late Friday show. Why do so many comics joke about the late Friday shows?
Some people just like to be miserable. Some people just like to complain. Or maybe they just want to get out and party. This is my first time doing it, so I haven’t worked hard enough to complain yet [laughs]. I feel like I have to do these shows and do them good so they’ll invite me back so I can do them over and over again.
Doing a run like this, I’m looking forward to people coming out, telling their friends about it, and they’ll have time to come, too, instead of it just being a one night thing.
And it’s a gift to do that many shows in a short amount of time because you can tweak and modify and every show is just a little bit different.
It’s great doing longer sets because when I’m in New York, I’m doing 15 minutes. I want to stretch and it’s time to stretch to show what I can do.
And that’s part of what you’re talking about with that first year in New York, because you’re basically starting with three-minute sets while you’re trying to make a name for yourself.
Yeah, it’s the craziest thing because you’re doing the shortest of sets and you’re trying to make it work. But you grow and fight to get five, then 10, then a nice 15 set. Then you’re ready to put together a project so you can really tell people something.
Is there a comedy album in the near future?
I think 2019 would be a good year for an album. I think I’m going to let everything I’m working on this year go through so people can get a bit more acquainted with me. Then go back out on the road, build on top of that and then put something out. Plus my brother has a special coming out so I want to make sure I’m out of his way.
Do you have a good relationship with him when you’re on the road where you encourage each other?
Oh yeah, I text him all the time.
It seems like there’s more comedians working right now then ever before. What advice would you give a new comic starting out trying to carve out their place?
Do not try and impress me [laughs]. Don’t try and impress other comics. Try to impress people that buy comedy. That’s the problem that comics have. They want to be the comic’s comic. If you want to be the comic’s comic, you’re not going to get far!
You’ll have six chances to see Jordan Rock live at Punch Line in Sacramento (2100 Arden Way) Jan. 19–22, 2017. Tickets range from $15–$20, depending on date and time of the performance, so check out Punchlinesac.com for more details.
Dane Cook’s Art of Hustle
Dane Cook has reached the kind of stardom usually reserved for rock stars. It’s a height that most stand-up comedians never achieve, though not for lack of trying. However, it’s the sort of success that hasn’t come without its pitfalls.
Though Cook’s name has become ubiquitous in comedy circles, it wasn’t that long ago that he was a comic like many others, trying to figure out the best way to reach people. In the late ’90s, he began using the Internet as a tool to spread the word, and as it turned out, that word spread like wildfire.
“I really looked at it as a way to create a grassroots following,” Cook says about his first forays into using the Internet as a promotional tool. “You’re talking about 1998 that I started spending a lot more time on the computer. At that time, I was watching a lot of documentary stuff on bands in the ’70s and how certain bands took over. What I was really learning from it was the hustle factor of, like, getting flyers and what it means to paper the town”¦ The next thing you know, I’m sitting online, saying, ‘OK, if I create a Web site and add links to my comedy, maybe I can start reaching out to people.'”
Back then, the use of newfangled gadgetry as opposed to pounding the pavement may have made purists sneer with disdain. However, “Maintaining purity”—whatever that means—is not one of Cook’s main concerns. What he cares most about is putting his content in the hands of those who want it.
“I don’t really know what purist means,” Cook says. “I think it’s like the language of our country; it’s ever evolving. People say, ‘Oh, the way we speak now isn’t as articulate [as it used to be],’ but you know, the language we spoke when we first landed on Plymouth Rock was an abridged version of Old English. It’s an ever-changing thing.”
Those familiar with Cook’s work know that he’s taken the same non-traditionalist slant to his stand-up. Manic, absurd, perhaps downright goofy—Cook has run the gamut with his comedy, never lingering on a particular style. This is something the comedian takes great pride in.
“I talk to comedy—quote, unquote—purists, and I say that I don’t know what pure comedy is,” Cook explains. “Are you talking about standing still and delivering one line? Because Jack Benny may have done it one way—some guy holds a violin and the next guy does slapstick. I always seem to find the other side of whatever the purist’s conversation is.”
Maybe it’s his willingness not to take the traditional route most comedians have taken, or perhaps it’s the level of fame he’s acquired, but Cook has become a controversial figure not only amongst stand-up fans, but also amongst his fellow comics. Nevertheless, he’s still packing arenas all across the country. The latest leg of his world tour, Isolated Incident Global Thermo Comedy Tour has just kicked off in Las Vegas. The tour is in support of his most recent comedy album, Isolated Incident, his fifth, which was released in May 2009. Cook says he wanted the album, which he calls “a bit of an homage to Steve Martin’s Wild and Crazy Guy,” to be a sort of push and pull between dark and light.
“I wanted it to be like, track one would be maybe something about my family, vulnerability, something really sweet, and then I wanted it to go to something really dark and vulgar, maybe sexual, and then I wanted it to go back to something about my pop,” Cook says, though he adds that the final product was a bit different than he had originally intended. Still the ups and downs of his rise to fame and the tumult of his personal life shine through Isolated Incident.
“I found that was my life for three years: dark, light,” he says. “Success: I’m on Letterman. The next day, boom, cancer, my mom just got sicker. Or, ‘I’m in Time Magazine, 100 most influential, how great is that? Who would’ve thought I would ever be in that.’ And the next day, it’s like, ‘These people are starting a rumor about you. They’re saying that you steal.’ How do you deal with the constant blow by blow? And that’s really what I wanted the whole album to have. I wanted it to make you laugh, but I wanted it to be light and heavy.”
The remainder of the tour will take Cook out on the road until a New Year’s Eve show in his hometown of Boston, where he will celebrate his 20th year of stand-up. Hate if you want to, but don’t be surprised if Cook keeps laughing anyway.
I watched the Isolated Incident special that aired on Comedy Central on Youtube. Someone had posted it up there. Coming up on the Internet, now that you’re established, does that sort of thing bother you at all?
It’s just another channel airing your content. It’s another way for people to discover you and have an opinion. This is the tricky—there’s a lot of layers to this conversation, because there’s money involved. The question becomes, OK, is it financially hurting artists? I don’t think that there is a right way, or just one manageable way, to have this conversation, because someone on the other side is going to say it’s hurting the artists, but at the same time, I’ve seen a lot of independent artists who may have not had the airtime, so to speak, if they didn’t have such a strong Internet crowd passing their stuff around. There’s value in all of it. The key really becomes, “What do I want from it?” If that’s the question that you’re asking, I’d rather have fans enjoy something than keep it to myself and feel that it’s only for sale”¦ Someone from a highly regarded band might say, “Oh, I’m losing millions of dollars.” And I understand that, but I think that it’s a great source for passing around material”¦ This is the way people share content. When you were a kid, you gave a cassette to your friend and you’d say, “Listen to this. It’s called Guns N’ Roses. There’s a song on there called ‘Mr. Brownstone,’ and I think it’s about drugs,” and 10 people are listening to it. The next thing you know, Guns N’ Roses is the biggest band in the nation. Maybe that ripple effect is from a couple of kids passing around a cassette.
Your latest comedy album, Isolated Incident, certainly seemed like a different side of you. You had to deal with the death of your parents a little while back”¦
A lot of my comedy over the years was outward, in: observational or absurdist or something physical that I saw that I could recreate and share. Isolated”¦ was the first time I was impacted so deeply in my heart by tragedy, that I realized, “OK, I’m not going to go around it, because then I’m a phony.” I’ve never had anything that heavy happen to me, to that extent. I had my dark periods when I was a kid—some family stuff like anybody that was pretty brutal—but for the most part, my comedy was about joy. There was a lightness, and even the twisted dark shit in there was almost from an optimistic slant. So, here it is; I experience these two years of hardcore, traumatic situations with my family, and I realized as it informed my stand-up that a lot of people had been through cancer and a lot of people had been through these backlash moments in their lives. I thought I would approach that, and this might be a great chance also to put the camera down in one place, confine myself to a smaller stage—less about movement and more about language—and let that camera, with its stillness, look right at my eyes. I can’t move around too much, because, you know, the eyes are the window to the soul, and I wanted people to see that pain and how I came above it and found humor even in the darkest spots”¦ This was an isolated incident in my life. You’ll never again lose both your folks to cancer; you’ll never again have your star rise as high as it did and also have the backlash and the innuendo. No matter how many times the roller coaster ride will go up and down during the course of a career, it will never happen for the first time again”¦ It informed my comedy, and I feel really fortunate that when I read the e-mails after it [the Isolated Incident special for Comedy Central] aired, a lot of those kids who were coming drunk to my college shows 15 years ago were saying things like, “Hey, I felt like you were talking to me 15 years ago, and I feel like you’re talking to me now.” It sounds weird to say now, coming up on 20 years [of performing stand-up comedy] that I feel like I’ve grown up with a generation of fans, and it’s probably the last great gift that my mom and dad could’ve given me in an impossible time to say that, “You know what, Dane? It’s OK to change and to mature a bit.” I can still be silly or off-the-wall and vulgar; I can still be pensive. I can still bring all those things to my stand-up, but I never brought vulnerability. It’s a good place to be.
The one bit I liked from the special was when you were talking about finding your mom’s number in your cell phone’s address book, which is such a uniquely modern dilemma. How did you go from that moment to eventually be able to find the humor in it and turn it into a joke for your act?
For a situation like that, it really came to me so simply. I had my mom and my dad’s number in my book there, a year after I lost them both, and it was this weird moment that I was looking down at the phone and I was”¦just having this conversation with myself: Is it OK to delete them? Those numbers”¦there’s nobody there anymore”¦ It just occurred to me, “What if I called it? What could happen?” And suddenly I’m laughing to myself over this silly little conversation that I’m having with myself, and then of course, like most things that I think of that I think are funny, I say to myself, “I bet a lot of people might understand this.” I bet there are a lot of people who have lost somebody special and don’t know what to do in that moment, and it’s hard and heavy and sad.
It’s such a simple joke. I remember somebody saying to me, “It could have gone so many different directions. Why didn’t you build on it this way or that way?” It was almost like this person was saying that they were let down by an opportunity to turn this into an extravagant bit. And I was like, no, that’s the simple beauty of it. It’s just a moment we all have, and what if she answered? That’s what I said to myself, and that’s what made me laugh and feel lighter, and that’s what people—most people—appreciate about that joke. It’s a timeless joke, if I can toot my own horn. A hundred years from now, somebody’s going to hear that, and whatever form of communication we’re using, we’re always going to lose somebody, and there’s always going to be somebody’s time to let go.
You mentioned the backlash against you, and not only did you have to hear it from fans, but also from your peers. How does it feel to get that sort of backlash from your peers? Does that affect the way you go about your business?
It’s a little bit of a mixed bag. There’s a lot of innuendo, and there’s a lot of stuff that people put up on the bathroom wall that’s just myth. Haters are vocal; we all know that. The people who blog negativity aren’t sitting there in their three-piece suits with a smile on their face, enjoying their lovely lives. People who are relatively happy don’t carry an axe around waiting to bury it in somebody’s back. But that goes with the industry. I understand that that’s the dog eat dog mentality, and also from my peers, comedians are some of the most fragile and fascinating people I know—and very competitive”¦ So you look at a guy like me, who shot to this new level—or new, old level, not since like a Steve Martin or Dice—and you realize these are the guys who are going to try to take my legs out from under me. They’re going to be the ones who are going to say a lot of shit, and you know what? I’m not going to fight back”¦ History will unfold the way it’s supposed to, and I will continue to keep on doing what I do, which is listen to the fans. On the other side of that, I’ll say that when you do talk about my peers, the people who I could talk about with you are wonderful and reach out to me. Chris Rock has called me and said some of the most incredible things, and I admire him. I had lunch with Steve Martin, my hero, about three weeks ago. I’ve sat with Bill Cosby and talked for 45 minutes”¦and he said some incredible things about my stand-up, and I could go on. So, my peers, the ones who I admire, have reached out, and they’ve been very supportive. Eddie Murphy sat next to me at my Good Luck Chuck premier. I don’t know Eddie Murphy; I’d never met him. He just showed up at my movie, and in the darkness of my movie, about 10 feet away from me on the other side of the aisle, I heard [imitates Eddie Murphy’s laugh]”¦ I heard fucking Eddie Murphy laughing at me. So if you want to talk about people who are talking crap about me, or how I feel about that, bro, I heard Eddie Murphy laughing at me. Whoever these minions are who want to picket me or be envious, let them. If that’s what got me to where I’m getting, that I can sit next to Eddie Murphy or Chris Rock or have lunch with Steve Martin or Bill Cosby, I’ll take the hits.
