A Quote by David Copperfield
Later, when I was at Caesar's Palace, and [Joe and Gil Cates] were trying to get me to have opening acts for the show, they gave me a list of people, and Rosie O'Donnell was one of them. I said, "I don't really need any opening acts. I have funny stuff in the show, and I do a lot of comedy and stuff."
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I've always taken a lot of cues from comedy minds. The guy that discovered me in the very beginning was Joseph Cates. Joe and Gil Cates were the Cates brothers. Gil produced the Oscars for many years. Joe produced a lot of comedy specials, Steve Martin specials, and he discovered me, this 18-year-old kid.
The Gong Show was the greatest scam of all time. It was simple: We wanted to do a talent show. There weren't any venues for acts back then. We were gonna have a show of new, fresh, good acts. But we couldn't find any; they were all lousy. So rather than throw away the idea, I said, "Let's reverse it. Let's do lousy acts." Now, is that a scam? I'm telling you.
Johnny Duncan was one of the first opening acts I hired for my show, and he is the one who initiated me into astrology. I got hooked. It made a lot of sense to me.
In every show that you see, there's some stuff that's funny and some stuff that is not, or there might be stuff that you find funny and I don't. That would be true for any show, however funny or popular.
To go from working with a group of people in a sketch-comedy show on a small network, where it was all about just creating funny stuff, to being on a network show, and the pressures of that, and getting to know the new people who were involved in it. There was a learning curve for me. But it was an education.
That was the biggest thrill, going over to these guy's houses and having them want me to practice with them and they would show me a lot of stuff, which was really advanced stuff to me at my age.
I did a standup show called 'Show Me the Funny,' so from that I got some TV stuff and people would book me for gigs. I wasn't really good enough at that point, so had to catch up with expectations.
When I was a teenager, my biggest lessons came from Kenny Chesney, Tim McGraw, George Strait, Rascal Flatts and Brad Paisley. I learned so much from opening up for those artists, and it also taught me how to treat your opening acts and make them feel like they're part of a family, not just a tour.
Comedy Central wanted to do a show with me, I had a couple failures under my belt with them already, but they still wanted to try something else. They came to me and said they wanted to do something that was internet focused and created original content on their site, so they could compete with the funny or dies and what not. So that was the premise, and they gave us a small amount of money, $5000, and from there it turned into the show.
There is a very palpable difference for me between some of my earlier songs and where my later work has gone. If I were making my dream set list for tonight's show, I'm probably not going to include a whole bunch of stuff from the album that I made when I was 23.
But, sooner or later I'd love to do a comedy. I mean I think that, you know, people don't think that that's in my wheelhouse because I've sort of played a lot of dramatic stuff and that's certainly a side of myself that I want at some point in the right context, in the right stuff, that I find really funny.
I remember going onstage on Broadway in this Leigh Bowery thing for a track like "Ich Bin Kunst." I've got breasts, this latex dripping down on my head, and I come out in a box. I just remember the audience looking really horrified because Rosie [O'Donnell] was trying to sell the show as sort of Pippin and Annie. She was saying it's a family show.
Loretta Lynn, Tammy Wynette, Dolly Parton and I were the first female headliners, where we would book our own opening acts. Before that, it was a standing joke that it was more like we had 'pretty little girl singers' opening for a male headliner.
That's what David Caruso said to me. We were talking about the whole Emmy thing, and he said that one of the things about awards in this town is that a lot is about the drama - like the drama of the performance. And he said "Your show, The Wire, looks so real, it almost looks like a documentary. And people who aren't artists - a lot of people who vote for this stuff - don't get it."
Voice-over stuff is so much fun because you don't have hair and makeup and wardrobe. You get to show up. And there were some talented people, and we don't even know them. And they're so gifted. They can do all these accents and voices. It's really fun to do that stuff. It's really like actor camp.
Over the years, I managed to develop this comedy career, went from opening act to headliner at comedy clubs, to playing concert halls, and had an off-Broadway show with 'Sleepwalk With Me.'
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