Comedian Greg Warren, a native of St. Louis, is home for a weekend of performances at the Funny Bone (614 Westport Plaza, 314-469-6692, stlouisfunnybone.com/westport, with six more performances through Sunday, January 26 (click here for full schedule and tickets).
Before his shows, Warren agreed to chat with SLM about his latest CD, the ups and downs of being a comedian, and growing up in St. Louis.
Are you excited to start this new tour?
Well, I don’t know if I would call it a tour. I’m definitely excited to be back in St. Louis. My life is sort of one perpetual tour (I’ve been “touring” since 2001). I am excited for this week, though. It’s my favorite week of the year—I usually perform one week in St. Louis every year and it’s always great.
Will you be performing some of the material from your new CD, Running Out of Time?
It’s sort of an ongoing thing. I’ll go to a city one week a year, and usually the performance is somewhere between 50 minutes and an hour. I usually try and do half an hour of new material. I would say there is a good amount of stuff from that CD, but there is some newer stuff. The CD was recorded in the summer, so about seven months ago—there’s also some newer stuff about New York. I moved there two years ago and I do a lot of stuff about being from St. Louis and living in New York.
What is Running Out of Time about?
It sort of all started from this joke that I did back when I was living in St. Louis. I said—I don’t know how old I was at the time, but I’m 45 now—I said, “Yeah, I’m 45. If I want to have a family at some point in my life, I need to meet a girl, date her, marry her and get her pregnant by Thursday.” There was something about the joke, the way I told it in a self-deprecating manner, the joke itself, that all came together and almost formed the next hour of material. There’s other stuff on the CD about living in New York, St. Louis-type stuff—I usually have about 10 to 15 minutes on every CD about my ongoing battle with restaurants. I think it’s probably my most cohesive project, in that all of the material fits together in one way or another.
So you’re 45 now. Did you know if you Google your name, Google says that you’re 31 years old?
Yeah, somebody told me that once. Man…yeah, I’m not. I quit trusting Google or Wikipedia because for a while, it was really funny for all of my comedian friends to go on my Wikipedia page and say ridiculous things. So at that point, I decided it wasn’t worth it. But 31? Definitely not. I was better-looking at 31, but I was not a very good comedian at 31. I’ll take 45. But you know what I could do? I could drink more when I was 31. Now I barely drink, because I get hangovers every time I touch alcohol. I miss that part of it. I could also eat a lot of junk food that I can’t eat now, so I miss that, too.
Speaking of junk food…once upon a time you worked at Procter & Gamble selling Pringles.
Yeah, I was in sales for 10 years selling Pringles potato chips. I sold all kinds of stuff, but Pringles was the brand that I worked on the most. I also sold Crisco Oil, Duncan Hines cake mix, all that stuff, none of which Procter & Gamble even owns anymore—Folgers coffee, Sunny Delight (I’m not even sure what Sunny Delight is. It’s definitely not orange juice, I can tell you that.)
No, it’s definitely not. So from there, how did you get into comedy?
Well, I experimented with it when I went to Mizzou. One of the guys in the wrestling team signed me up for this contest at a comedy club called Déjà Vu. I never did it with any regularity at all. Then when I got out of college, I did it at the Funny Bone in St. Louis a few times. Then I got my job at Procter & Gamble and they sent me to Houston. Off and on for about 5 years, I would do open-mic nights, but I thought, “I don’t think I could do this for a job. The job I have is too good; I make good money.” Then when I moved to Cincinnati for Procter & Gamble, I started doing it a little more regularly and it started going better. And right around there, I started getting paid to do it. Then in 2001, I got bored selling Pringles, and I just wanted to go for it and try something more challenging—more challenging in some ways. It was more challenging in that it was completely risky. I wasn’t going to make a lot of money at first. It was very competitive. Then you’re getting up and performing in front of people and if it doesn’t work, you’re not going to be good at your job. But one great thing: I didn’t have to wake up early in the morning. Everyone says, “You made a very courageous decision,” but I always come back and say, “You know, I gotta be honest. It’s pretty amazing. I don’t have to wake up in the morning, I can stay out all night…” Some of my motivation was probably not that admirable.
I’m a little jealous of that. I mean, who likes mornings?
Exactly. Now though, when you start getting good at it and you’re a headliner, mornings come and you’re up doing radio interviews and it’s bad because I’m programmed: I can’t fall asleep until at least 2. So if I have to get up at 6, it throws me for a loop. And the travel can be challenging. But all in all, it’s a very fortunate way to make a living. I’m pretty lucky—it’s very fun.
If you weren’t a comedian, do you think you’d still be with Procter & Gamble?
I don’t know what I would have done. Probably. Sometimes in life you just do the next logical step. You know, I went to high school, then I went to college, and then after college you think, “Okay, I need a job.” So I got a job and it was going well. You get promoted, make more money…I probably would have stayed on that track, but I don’t know. Part of me wishes I had become a high school wrestling coach, like my dad. I think that’s a really neat job, and I would have been good at it if I’d put a lot of work into it.
Do you think growing up in St. Louis influenced you in any way?
When I was growing up in St. Louis, my sense of humor wasn’t born of standup comedy. I feel like a lot of young kids start today, and they’re almost standup comedy nerds, they know so much about standup. They watch so much—I didn’t watch any standup comedy. I think the first I watched, I was in high school and we got free tickets to the Muny, and Bob Hope was there. That’s the first time I saw any comedy live, I’m pretty sure. My humor was formed by the movies, I would say. I would go next door to my friends’ Matt and John’s house, and we would watch all these movies. Some of the movies that really shaped me were Blazing Saddles and Tin Men…I still remember when John and I found that movie at Movies to Go. Before Blockbuster, there was this place, one of the first video stores in downtown Kirkwood. We would go there on a Friday night, probably in the 9th or 10th grade (we were probably not having the greatest luck with girls). So we would go get a movie, and those are the movies that shaped my sense of humor. Midnight Run is another one, and Airplane I saw when I was about 12.
At Kirkwood High School, I was the sophomore class president. The only reason I wanted to run was because I got to get up in front of everyone and give a speech. And the whole time, I just tried to make people laugh. It’s horrible that I did; it probably wasn’t funny at all, looking back. But they laughed, and it was the greatest feeling in the world. I didn’t care about being the class president—I just wanted to give a speech. It was thrilling to me.
When you come do your show in St. Louis, do you still have family here that comes to see it?
Oh, yeah. All of my family is there. They come usually on the weekends. My brother Matt is one of the funniest people I know, and he rents this limo bus and brings about 40 people on Saturday night to come see my show. And then more family like my parents and other brother come on Sunday. And my cousin organizes an army of people to come on the weekend too. It’s a lot of fun and I really enjoy it. It’s my favorite place every year.
To purchase tickets for one of Greg Warren’s performances at the Funny Bone, call 314-469-6692 or visit http://stlouisfunnybone.com/westport/.
