‘Like speaking to a superb good friend’: Comedy Wham podcast will get to know comics offstage

Valerie Lopez, the chief producer, podcast host and an interviewer with Comedy Wham, turned an excellent fan of the Austin comedy scene about 10 years in the past.

“I obtained divorced, and I wanted remedy – and I wanted low-cost remedy. And I began going to comedy exhibits on a regular basis,” she stated. “I began turning into curious concerning the lives of comics offstage simply as a lot as what they have been sharing with us on stage. And that’s how the podcast was born.”

Comedy Wham began off as a weblog to advertise Austin comedy exhibits, then in 2016 grew right into a podcast that has now interviewed over 200 visitors. It’s additionally an occasions web page for comedy exhibits in Austin, Houston and Dallas-Fort Price.

“It’s actually a dialog. I’m curious, and I need to know what has it been like for comics and their profession, how they began out, reaching milestones and the way that’s affected them,” Lopez stated. “It’s all the time a really optimistic dialog. And I need the comics to really feel like, you already know, they’re simply speaking to a superb good friend.”

Lopez stated a number of the conversations have been very critical, and he or she holds these near her coronary heart.

Valerie Lopez and Scott Thompson in 2019.
Courtesy Valerie Lopez

“I obtained a chance to speak to Scott Thompson of Youngsters within the Corridor; been a giant fan of Youngsters within the Corridor,” she stated. “I couldn’t imagine that I obtained to speak to him, and he shared some fairly heavy, emotional issues about his expertise as a queer comedian within the comedy business.”

The pandemic was actually painful for comics as a result of they sometimes work within the service business once they’re beginning out, and so their sources of earnings fully dried up, Lopez stated.

“And then you definately noticed the the cropping up of Zoom exhibits all over the place. Some comics latched onto that as a option to carry out, and others simply couldn’t do it,” she stated. “It’s a really divisive matter to speak about, the Zoom comedy exhibits. Some individuals have been all for it; some have been very in opposition to it.”

Throughout the pandemic, Comedy Wham got here up with the thought of doing a web-based comedy present to ask for donations and put a little bit bit of cash again into the comics’ pockets, Lopez stated.

“We have been working with an awesome host, Colton Dowling, and he had an enormous nationwide community of comedy followers,” she stated. “So we have been in a position to get comics not simply from Austin however throughout the nation to take part.”