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Danny Johnson
Episode 1
Wednesday, 7 January, 2026
Danny Johnson Danny Johnson is a seasoned clean stand-up comedian with over 15 years of experience, known for his relatable material and performances at corporate events, clubs, and churches. His career took off with his successful Dry Bar Comedy special, The Chusky Life, and has continued to grow with his latest self-produced special on YouTube titled Everything Bothers Me. Originally from Long Island, New York, Danny developed his comedic voice within a large, loud family where humor was the key to getting attention. After a “decade of excellence” in college and a brief stint in corporate life, he fully committed to stand-up, eventually moving to Florida and working his way up through the comedy club circuit. DannyJohnson.com https://youtube.com/live/Ogsqjac2918 Bad AI Transcript Hello, everybody, and welcome to a conversation with Danny Johnson. Go figure. Now, Danny, the Danny part sounds funny. The Johnson part, not so funny. Danny is a comedian, stand-up comedian. He is a clean stand-up. He likes to put that all over his webpage, just so you know. If he didn’t have it on his webpage, there’d just be the F word, and everybody would know that he was a clean comedian, right? He does corporate events. clubs, churches, over 15 years. He had a dry bar comedy special called The Chesky Life, which I love that title. And you have a new thing coming out called, and I’m already blanking on it here. You can tell me, Danny. Everything bothers me. There you go. I knew I was going to get you to say it, and I would say it as well. Danny Johnson. You can go to his website. We’ll just get this stuff out of the way. DannyJohnson.com.at Danny Johnson comedy. And we’ll visit those throughout the talk here, but I like to put everything up front so people don’t have to wait. Cause you know, they may get bored with this conversation. I really just want to know more about Danny. I don’t really care to listen to this other guy. So we’ll make sure everybody’s happy. Right. Look at that. I like that plugs up front. So yeah, everybody. Yeah, exactly. We’ll do that. I don’t want to, you know, you make, everybody makes people wait, right? Like it’s, Like they’re doing them a favor when they’re really not. Yeah. It’s the worst to watch a video where… And then sometimes they don’t get to the point ever and there’s another part. Right. In part two, we’ll finally tell you where to find these people. No, not for me. I’m done with you, buddy. Blocked. That’s right. No more part twos. Right. So everything bothers me. I mean, this could be everybody’s comedy special. Couldn’t it be? Yeah. I think… And it’s funny. The title of it was…created after we shot the special in Atlanta earlier this year. And it was really just a culmination of, I do actually mention that phrase in my special, but in just going through the material and the final cut, it was like, this was just a sort of a list of things that bother me that I was talking about. There you go. This is, your book’s coming out called How to Write the Easiest Comedy Set. just things that bother you. Yeah. And so one of the producers was like, he goes, it seems like everything bothers you. And I go, that’s a perfect name for. So let’s, that’s, that’s what’s happening now. Let’s go back 15 years and say, you know, young Danny, younger Danny, in your case, probably what teenage Danny is, is,going to be a stand-up comedian. I mean, how did that all come about? As far back as I can remember, I’ve always been interested in comedy. I grew up in a really large family in Long Island, New York. And we’re all loud. We’re all poking fun at each other constantly. And if you want any attention whatsoever at any giant family function, then you better have some sort of talent or be funny. And I remember… I remember starting to do like imitations or impersonations of my relatives at family functions. And it was getting a laugh. And I realized how powerful that was. Even at a young age, I’m like, wow, I’m getting positive attention. Just making fun of my uncle or cousin or whoever, you know, just kind of impersonating them. And then I’ve stumbled in my teenage years across Saturday Night Live, which of course is not stand-up, but just fell in love with those characters. And that led, staying up late,on the weekend led me to staying up late during the week and watching, uh, the late night TV shows and, and, uh, catching standup, you know, uh, Robert Klein and Jerry Seinfeld and Carlin. And, um, they were just talking for five or six minutes into a microphone and getting laughs. And I was like, this is really appealing. Um, and it’s baffling, you know, I didn’t understand or necessarily crack up at a lot of the jokes, but, you know, I was younger, but, As I grew older, it led to my first stage performance at 18 at a small club in Long Island. And I only did well because we brought 63 of the 73 audience members to the show. So crowdsourcing was your friend basically at 18. You’re like, hey, everybody. Yeah. If you want a false sense of hope, just stack the crowd with friends and family.That was Danny Johnson reads his Rolodex. I think that was your act back then. You’re just, if you come, I will read your name on stage. Right. And then I finished up college in Long Island, my first two years of college. And I didn’t do standups. And from the time I was 18, I didn’t do standup until I finished my senior year of college. And by that time I’d moved to Florida and finished my college in Florida. And where I ended up residing in Florida wasn’t, right down the road from one of the biggest comedy clubs or the biggest comedy club in Northeast Florida. And they had a workshop of like how to be an MC or a host of a show. And it was free. And the club was open Tuesday through Saturday. I joined that workshop, started, I guess, learning from some of the current hosts that were there and eventually became a regular. And two years later, I was, you know, working Tuesday through Saturday, a couple of times a month,sometimes at this club hosting shows. And then, you know, long, longer, long story, longer, um, other comedians that I worked for started to bring me on the road and open for them and bump me up to the middle act. And then, you know, once you get enough material, you can kind of pitch yourself to bookers as a feature actor, a headliner. So, uh, it was the, it was a really long journey to get to have, you know, start headlining venues and whatnot. but I’m glad, and this is, you know, I started pre-internet or pre-social media, I should say, maybe not pre-internet, but pre-social media popular, you know, being popular. So my website was huge. You know, that was a big deal to have a website. Like, wow, you have a URL? Which is why I have Danny Johnson. Yeah. There you go. Here it is. This is it today. Which is why I have the .com, DannyJohnson.com. It’sof rare to have a dot com and uh i’ve had people want to buy it, which is interesting. Really? How much you can offer for that? I’ve gotten upwards of upwards of four grand. Wow. But it’s been, it’s been a good decade since someone’s tried to buy it. There’s two, there’s a semi-famous musician out of England. Um, and then there’s, there’s a few public speakers all with my name. So, um, like, uh, they’re not comedians, but they are, well-known speakers. Well, I mean, with a name like Johnson. There’s got to be several Dannys out there. It’s funny you say that. I remember I had the hardest time getting with this one particular booker. And finally, I got a hold of them on the phone. And this is after years of emailing or just trying to get in with them. And I go, what? Did I do something? And they go, yeah, I booked you and you didn’t show. And I said,I haven’t worked for you ever. And they go, you’re Danny Johnson out of whatever city they mentioned. I go, no, I’m in Northeast Florida. They’re like, oh my gosh, there’s another one of you. I was like, well, that’s not me. Why didn’t you at least meet with me and find out? So I ended up working for the Booker, but yeah, there was, there was like almost like a bizarro Danny Johnson. Now you just need to do the opposite and get more gigs based on this other Danny Johnson. Yeah, he needs to step up his career. Just answer. I had an email address where this person thought it was their email address, and they kept signing me up for everything. It was very aggravating. I mean, you could do the same thing for the other Danny Johnson. I do that too. I sign up people’s email addresses for stuff.If they wrong me in life, they get on everything. That’s your next special. Don’t tell me your email. You’ll get a bunch of crap. So you did this when you were younger. You went to college, which I’m assuming your mother said, finish your degree, please. Don’t just run off and do comedy. What was your degree in? Business management. I went to two years at State University of New York at Farmingdale. And then I finished my bachelor’s at University of South Florida in Tampa. And it took me so long. I jokingly refer to my college experience as the decade of excellence. That’s very good. Yeah. So it did take you a whole decade or no? No, not… It probably took me… So two years for the Associates in New York and then probably…three years and a semester for my to finish. Okay. I remember my count because I was away from my parents for the first time. They were still in New York and I was in Florida having a time of my life at this giant college. And I remember finally at one point in my second senior year, the guidance counselor that I meet with each semester was like, look, you got to finish up. you’re 47 years old. I don’t know how old it was but i was it was like van Wilder. I don’t know if you ever seen it. Yeah. Yeah. So I finished up just, she’s like, she goes, you can major in like three different things. You’ve taken so much, so many classes. So you had to make a decision. You took enough, but not quite enough, I guess. i had to have one more class in each.category or something to push you over the top. She was like, you can do business administration, you can do accounting, you can do anthropology. Basket weaving is just a tick away, Danny. A tick away. Fun fact, and I don’t mean to get your lady listeners all riled up, hot and bothered, but when I did my two years of college in New York, I was on a partial scholarship for bowling. Oh, yeah. That’s hilarious because I actually have a friend who was a bowling scholarship type. He was almost a pro bowler at one point, which that’s more of a Midwest thing, I thought, but you’re an East Coast guy. Yeah, I was actually cutting class bowling on campus, and the coach saw me and offered me a part scholarship to continue school and be on the bowling team there.Would you consider your style more a Weber style or a Flintstone style? I would say Flintstone. I’m not a trash talker like Weber. Okay. Because for many, many years, I’ve been in St. Louis, Missouri. And for many, many years, the Bowling Hall of Fame was downtown St. Louis. Oh, interesting. And Weber… Dick Weber and Pete Weber, his son, lived here. They had a bowling alley, Dick Weber Lanes. Yeah, Pete, I remember. My ultimate goal was to be a pro bowler and comedian and just either tour the country doing tournaments or comedy shows. I mean, they’re making a sequel to… Kingpin? Kingpin, right. Kingpin 2. I mean, this to me sounds like a spinoff. The comedian bowler… I think it’s a pitch. I think we were going to write it right here. Yeah. Danny Johnson is he go by, you know, in the afternoon, he’s a pro bowler. And at night he’s on stage telling jokes. We’ll call it a knock them dead or something like that. Well, okay. I was thinking strikes or something simple. Yeah. Yeah. Or stay in your lane or something. There you go. Got a ball. Yeah. Everybody loves that. Right. So,We’ll have to test it with some focus groups. Yeah, put that down. I feel a partnership brewing. Mark me down for that one. Gutter balls sounds good. Gutter balls sounds like an 80s comedy. But anyway, let’s get back to 80s. Which are great comedies, by the way. Yeah, exactly. Gutter balls. It’s like joysticks or one of those things. So you’re a pro bowler, comedian. So now obviously you finished your degree in, is this when you finally got serious about doing your standup after college or did you like make a job and you’re like, man, this is the worst. Yeah. I did the job and comedy at the same time. And that eventually resigned from the job. What’d you do? I, we worked for, Oh, when I, my first ever real job was, um, for landscaping, um,and irrigation company installing landscaping and irrigation on new homes. And then I went to Citi at a call center for Citi Bank credit cards. Oh, God. And then I remember they wanted I was interested in transferring from where I was to Tampa with Citi to help them open up a new site. And then I had a girlfriend at the time who was like, Why aren’t you doing stand up full time? You’re living at home. You have money in the bank. You’re young. So instead of going into the boss’s office and confirming I was moving to Tampa, I went in and resigned. And then my girlfriend broke up with me. She’s like, I cannot stand a person with this much gumption. I have to get out of this relationship. I can’t have somebody without a job. I was like, you told me this. This is part of her three-step plan. She’s going to destroy your life and then destroy, you know.Yeah, how can I get an excuse to break up with this guy? Well, he’s pretty funny. What if I encouraged him to improve his life? Usually the girlfriends that encourage you are the good ones. Right. I think this just got written into Gutterball. Yeah, this is… I swear, if you see Gutterball years from now, we never had this conversation, so don’t get your lawyers ready. That’s right. You’re going to shred this. I just saw a thing that apparently Seinfeld, when it became popular, got all these spec scripts and they literally just shredded all of them as they came in the mail. They didn’t open anything. They just shredded them so there would not be any kind of issues with people saying that was my episode. Anyhow, that’s a nice downer point there. That’s a downer thing. So your girlfriend encouraged you to do stand-up and then she dumps you. Yeah. But you…Like, well, might as well just keep doing it. Yeah, I mean, I knew I was going to do it eventually anyway. That was just a little shove, you know, a little push. And then, you know, having the benefit of living at home was great at the time, you know. Oh, yeah, definitely. I always tell my kids, take advantage. Take advantage of me while you’re here so you can just sop up all the free stuff and do what you want. Yeah, it was nice to be able to, like, not pay rent anymore. being gone so much anyway, it was just not, you know, and then it was nice to just be able to come home, you know somebody you still though, you still tour though, don’t you? Of course. Yeah, I do. Now I blend the stand-up with, uh, any kind of acting work i can get or voiceover stuff. Um, those three. And then i get royalties from my very first comedy special i did in 2019, the chesky life. You mentioned that earlier, which that’s a good name, by the way, Chesky.Is it like some kind of combo word? I’m assuming it comes with husky. Yeah, well, that’s where it came from. And this is in my very first notebook I ever… I still have it. Very first notebook I ever created for comedy was in like 8th grade, 7th or 8th grade. And I still have it. And it was just funny ideas I wrote down. And my mother would take me shopping for school clothes every year in 6th or 7th, 8th grade. I was in the mall and I do, sometimes I do this on stage and I try to get away from my mom in the mall just to be with my friends and, and Long Island moms are very loud. They don’t come to find you. They just yell until you come to them. So she would, she would, we’d be in a higher end store looking for clothes like Sears or pennies. And, uh, that’s all I hear is her yelling like, daddy, daddy, I’m over here in the Husky section.What’s your waist now? 42. And it’s tough skin jeans. They were called Husky jeans. And I said, Mom, not Husky. I’m chubby. I’m like chubby Husky. And that’s where Chusky came from. And who would know? 20 some odd years later, I would use that as a joke and make it the title of my first special. That’s funny. No, I figured it had something to do with it. I apologize. I did not watch the special. I’ll be totally honest with you. You’re with the majority of Americans. I wanted you to know I’m always totally honest with all my guests. Well, you should. And that one and this new one. I’m afraid the new one will just get me riled up because a lot of things bother me as well. And so then I’ll just be like, oh my gosh, this is like…you know, one of those things where it’s like one of those 12 step things that helps your life but if i just write down everything that bothers me yeah i will feel so much better. And then, you know it’s it’s very therapeutic. Comedy in general is very therapeutic it’s it’s writing down everything that that moves me in some way and then trying to make it funny. It’s like releasing it you know at night i would say 20 of the stuff i write makes it to the stage. 10 makes it permanently to the stage or long-term, right? Everything else is just therapy, just writing it down. Now, so you’re just basically, this was a whole self-help journey that you’re on and still not cured yourself after 15 years? Nope. No, I don’t think I’ll ever be. There’s no cure. There’s just a treatment plan. I’m like big pharma. There’s no cure. It’s just treating you.Repeatedly. We’re just helping you along. And if i had no problems, what would i talk about on stage i well i don’t know. I’m sure there’s a husky version of adult pants that you wear. I don’t know yes why are you married do you do you go out with your wife and have get your clothes or anything no i was i was married i have a i’m divorced i have a wonderful girlfriend. but yeah she gives me plenty of material I have all new stuff you know so I’m constantly writing and and and that’s that’s a cautionary tale to some folks that that I hang out with her or you know please don’t put this in your show or and then I of course say no and then I do but you knowI mean, you’re not going to be able to pack them into the places if you keep cutting friends off like this. That’s right. Eventually, you’re going to pass the break-even point. But hey, if I’m honest with them, it’s insulting to them because most of the stuff they say is so boring. It’ll be some situation and they’ll be like, don’t you put this in your comedy act. I’m like, this couldn’t be more boring. I couldn’t care less about what you’re talking about right now. There is no way this will ever make are you trying to make me bad? That’s right. Because if i want to fail, I will use it. Right. And then some people are the opposite. They go, hey, I read this joke on the internet the other day. You can use it in your show. But that’s not the way it works. If you’re a milton burl it did. But yeah, I heard that. Well, not the Internet, though. Not the Internet. Right. Well, you know, the so you’ve obviously had to be fairly tenacious.because this is not for the faint of heart, I would say. And so what is the motivator? I mean, I don’t see any pictures on your website. You’re driving around in a Ferrari with $100 bills up the top of it or something. So it’s not the money. What pushes you? What’s driving you now? Well, first, I’m going to Google tenacity. Then second, I am. It’s the love of, I tell new comics this a lot when they ask for advice, I go, you need to be very comfortable with the word. No, you’re going to get no a lot in any, any business where there’s auditioning almost like sales, you know, you’re going to get more nos than yeses. So be very comfortable with that and know that this no is not a personal attack on you. Maybe it is in some instances, but it, it is just another venue. And, um,I love it so much. It’s hard to explain. I love to make people laugh, whether it’s an interaction in the supermarket one-on-one where nobody will know but that person or on stage. I like the idea that you can come to my show and for 60 minutes, you can forget about your problems. I’m not going to talk about politics or get overly, I’m not, I don’t do, it’s clean. So I don’t, it’s clean, but not cheesy. It’s original thought, original material. not sexual and, you know, it’s just not uncomfortable. You can bring whoever you want to the show and just forget about your problems and walk out in a better mood than you came in. And if I can accomplish that, I’ve done my job and I get the same, you know, I get the same return from them you know the the audience having a good time makes me have a good time. So it is a very addicting career andI would probably say if I was to detail out how much I’ve been paid for all my gigs, I probably have been paid zero more than any other amount because you have to get on stage relentlessly in the beginning for free at open mics to get any better. And I still do open mics for, yeah. I mean, I still do open mics for free now to work on new material. So, um, you know, two, three, four, five times a month, I’m out there doing a spot, five, seven minute spot for free. So I’m still doing $0 shows just to try out new material and work on it. So whenever you started, you’re crafting your jokes and so forth. Did you have like a template? So like, did you say, okay, I’m going to be like, you know, XYZ person, or I’m going to mimic, a lot of times people mimic thingsYou can definitely hang up. Yeah. How’d you do it? That’s yeah. I think that’s the wrong approach to do that, but you inadvertently do that anyway. You inadvertently, when you’re trying to, while you’re trying to find your own voice, you are, um, subconsciously mimicking your favorite comedians. So you might have the same cadence or facial expression or timing or delivery. Um, Until you find your voice, which they say, and I hate saying that phrase. They say, they say 10 years, 10 years or so, or 10,000 hours, you’ll find your voice. And it took me a long, long time. So my influences are Seinfeld. He’s my favorite of all time. Let’s say Carl ends up there and some others, but I’m definitely not maybe Kevin James. People say they see Kevin James and me from King of Queens.but yeah you I wouldn’t try to mimic anyone. Just go up there and be yourself. And you’ll find it’s very odd. And I heard Jerry Seinfeld say this. You as a comedian are the expert in funny. You are the primo expert in funny. And however, the audience tells me whether I’m right or wrong. So even though I’m the expert and I’m delivering this material because I’m the comedian, you guys tell me whether I’m it’s, it’s the ultimate instant barometer for, is this working or not? You know? So I, you, I would just say as a newbie, don’t try to be like, I mean, just be yourself and see where that takes you. And then it’s going to take hours and hours and hours to find. Whenever you do the new material, do you like have note cards or how, how do you, how do you go through it? And then like, if people laugh, do you like put a,checkmark next to the joke or something? Well, I record it, so I listen to it after. Oh my gosh, you listen to yourself afterwards as well? Yeah, it’s awful. You are committed, my friend. It’s a terrible process. I do not like watching or listening to myself, and I have to do it. I did what day is today? I did two shows recently, back-to-back. Oh, New Year’s Eve. And I recorded it, and I have yet to listen to it. It’s been couple days and because i’ve yet to watch it because i know that it’s not. There’s only a couple things that are new um that i really want to listen to and i just hate it so much um but i would say this. So in the beginning of my career and i would encourage new comics to do this. I would literally um type out my whole set word for word um and then i would highlight where i thought i would get a laugh and then. Listen to do the show and then listen.excuse me, to that show after, and then compare where you actually got laughs to where you thought you would. And you can make adjustments as needed. So now while I don’t write it word for word any more than once now, but I’ll still do bullet points on note cards. And I’ll try to memorize that as best I can. But a lot of times for open mics to try out new stuff, I’ll bring it up on stage. and just read, you know, not read it word for word, but just kind of look down. Okay. Topic is whatever turtles. And then I’ll just go into my, my new joke about turtles or whatever. And, uh, yeah, I’m inserting my own turtle joke. So that’s the, that’s the process. I don’t,I don’t have that slide yet. That’s the process I used in the beginning, and then it’s sort of the same process I use now, just a little less detailed. Oh, okay. It’s interesting, though, because I always wonder… If you talk to any comic, they’re always saying, I’m working on new material. That’s always, constantly. There’s always a constant writing and mining for new material. It’s almost like bitcoin mining it takes a lot of energy and you don’t get a lot out of it uh you know initially but if you get that one little thing then everybody’s happy but then on the other side of it i always wonder what people do to know i mean obviously you know when you’re up there like oh that worked out well but you don’t necessarily know why it worked out well unless you’re really paying attention right because it could beit worked great because it was so relatable to what’s happening in the news now. But doing that joke six months from now might never get a laugh right um it could be, it could have worked well because it was a reference to geographical reference and you’re in that city or state. So you have to i i’ll try i’ll try a bit a hundred times before i really retire it and say, this is just not working. I can’t get this to work. And you still keep it on the back burner. And sometimes, down the road, it’ll fit into another idea. So, you know, it might be a line or two that’s sort of related to a new thing that’s really working well. And you’re like, oh, I can take that old thing that never worked, put it into this because it’s sort of related to it. And it turns out it works. So there’s sometimes a place for it down the road. Always keep your notes and re-review them from time to time. But yeah, I don’t know any comedian that just tries a joke once. And it’s interesting because so if you…If you get a chance to watch my new special on YouTube, everything bothers me. My opening bit is about the first and only time I’ve gotten a professional massage. And the bit is anywhere from eight to 10 minutes long, depending on the amount of laughter. And that joke started with two lines that lasted 30 seconds. So it was working so well as an opener and it was really just two punchlines. And I was like, I got home and I was like, this joke’s working so well. what else happened to me during that massage? And I just kind of wrote out the whole experience in minute, in such fine detail. And it turned out to be this long story about massage. And so that just goes to show you, just because you have a joke, it’s almost never finished. You can always build on it. So tell me, soI see on here, I put on the screen, Honest Fox Comedy, Danny Johnson, Everything Bothers Me. And you can watch the full special on your website there. And I can fill that up there as well. Yeah, it’s been a pleasant, it’s been an interesting, it’s very nerve-wracking to launch your own special on your own on YouTube. Because my first special was done through Dry Bark Comedy, a company out of Utah that produces clean comedy specials. And so they already have millions of fans. Mm-hmm. Um, so my first special from them is now also on Apple, Amazon, and Peacock because of its success. And it has millions of views across different streams of, uh, there it is, right? Yeah. The Chesky life. And then, so putting something out on YouTube with, I mean, honest Fox comedy is a pretty well-known media company out of Atlanta. They have relationships with Jim Gaffigan and Jeff Allen and Leanne Morgan and myself and others, but.They don’t have a built in platform of fans. They have an infrastructure, you know? Right. So I remember it’s I think it’s I think it’s two months in a day. It was released in the first night before I went to bed. My son was like, hey, you have 139 views. I’m like, OK, well, it’s only been a few hours. That’s fine. And then I woke up the next morning to seventy seven hundred views. And then now, two months later, it’s it’s almost at one hundred eighty thousand views. and climbing. So for someone you’ve never heard of, I consider it a pretty, pretty big success and it just continues to get thousands of views a day. It’s great. That’s fantastic. And so then that, so as far as, so dry bar essentially is like they produce everything for you, right? You come in, you’re the talent, right? And then they kind of handle the rest. It sounds like this is a little bit different where you’re kind of the producer as well in that sense.Yeah, I had a big hand in the creative process. It was shot at their facility. They have a studio and a club itself. So they have all the equipment and cameras and stuff. It was just in partnership with them. So they filmed it. I helped edit it, which surprisingly to me, I only took out one joke. I didn’t add a joke. I didn’t add audience laughter. Because it was such a great couple of shows. What they put together was I just wanted to eliminate one joke and kind of going back to what I just mentioned, it was a joke about Jacksonville, Florida. And I was like, get that out of there. And that’s, I don’t know why I did that. It’s too, you know, too targeted, but, um, I, I, I’m really happy with the results cause it, I can’t imagine sitting here today and saying, well, I have 500 views after two months and I have more friends than that. You know, these, these weren’t the 63 people I drug at 18 over to, uh,And it’s also a special that I’m proud of because you can listen to it with anybody you want, your grandparents, your parents, your kids. It’s not geared towards kids, but it’s something that you can have on without having to worry that something’s going to be talked about that you have to mute it or whatnot. So let’s talk about that. So the clean comedy angle, right? Because that’s something that, I mean, I suppose… you know, now 30, 40 years ago, everything was kind of clean comedy unless you went someplace that it wasn’t. And then we had a transition, I think in the seventies and eighties to where everything was not really clean comedy. If you went to a show in the nineties and so forth. And now in the two thousands and on, now we’ve got this whole thing where, you know, people list themselves as clean comedy and it’s become,tag, essentially. Give me a little thought process on that. You want to be there because… I think it’s just several reasons. One, it’s just an extension of my personality. I’m not an overly vulgar person in real life. When I first started comedy, I may have cursed a time or two or a dozen times or two in the very, very beginning. I started to realize that curses that i was doing on stage were meant to elicit a response in lieu of a laugh um and i remember seinfeld uh you know, in an interview being like, that’s it’s sort of if you’re using a a a curse word as a punch line to get a laugh, then you’re not writing. And I love other comics that are not clean. I mean, I love comedy in general. But I’m against it. It’s just not for me. I want to be challenged. If I think of an idea where the punchline is inexplicative, I’m like, I need to do better. I need to write better. So I love that challenge. Can I be funny and original? Because a lot of people equate clean comedy to cheesy. And there’s plenty of them out there.So I like to try to be as original thoughts to me and my family and my experiences as possible. I got a big compliment from this very well-known talent manager who watched my special, second one, and just called me. I’d never talked to them before. Just got my information, called me, and said, it’s really nice to see a super clean comedian that has a bit of an edge. you know, while you may watch and go, well, that’s not edgy like Bill Burr or Chris Rock or so. That’s right. It’s not. But I’m not the family cheese ball. You know, there’s some stuff in there that people might roughly might ruffle some feathers, but it’s just done in a, I think, a well-written, you know, original way. And it has a little bit of a ticked off edge to it. And I like that compliment from that person. And I think that’s what people will get out ofOh, that’s fantastic. Yeah. So let’s wrap up here, Danny. Where’s Danny in the next, you know, five, 10 years? Well, I just, as a result of the special, I signed with an agency in Los Angeles. So I now have a manager and agent in LA, which is on the complete opposite coast. And, you know, currently kind of submitting me for some bigger opportunities, you know, get me some more exposure and more um nationwide exposure. So I think in the next five years i will, regardless of what happens, whether i get those things or not, I will continue to tour and tell jokes wherever they’ll have me um and try to bring some funny and some happiness into folks lives so i i you know, I jokingly tell people my last show will be when when i’m 100well you get george burns it is this what you’re trying to be? I would love to. I don’t think, I don’t know that i’ll ever stop. I’ll be, I’ll be the guy in the old folks home holding an open mic or something i i love it so much. And I love the challenge of finding something i find funny and then translating that to 300 strangers in a room and us all laughing about it. That’s my favorite thing in the world. Well, Dan, I wish you, I hope it all comes true. I have a feeling you’re going to have a pilot, you know, like a pilot for some kind of sitcom show on, well, nowadays it’ll be Netflix or Amazon or something. Are they doing sitcoms yet? I guess they are. Yeah, Leanne Morgan has a sitcom. That’s true. I actually just saw hers. I was looking, flipping through things. You’re right. Not as much as it used to be. Peacock has all kinds of them right now that they’re doing on Peacock, like paper and so forth.Yeah, you’ll be that. You’ll be this guy who I have a feeling it won’t be gutter balls. Okay. No, it’ll be a guy who’s helping. He lives with his mom, but he’s still trying to do something in Florida. Right. I think this has got potential. Now I got to think of a name for this one. Yeah. Why don’t we call it Swamp Land? Okay. Yeah, sort of like Florida. He didn’t like that at all. He’s like, this is stupid. Why am I listening to this? No, I mean, believe you me, it will be funny one day if you email me or something like, buddy, we talked about this. Where’s my cut? Don’t worry about that. I was just thinking, yeah, Swamp Land, you live down there, you’re trying to sell irrigation systems to people who live in a swamp. It just doesn’t work out. And it’s like one of those sweet shows where you and your mom don’t get along, but then you take care of her and it’s a whole thing.It’s bowling night, mom. Let me go out. You’re 45 years old. Where’s my dinner? Right. Yeah. All right, Danny. Well, you want to plug anything other than the website? Well, first of all, thanks for having me, man. I enjoyed this conversation. I love talking about comedy and I love people that are interested and you asked some great questions and I would love to come back anytime you want. I wrote nothing down, Danny. This is the great thing you met you that was the best compliment. You’re like, oh, it sounded like he was prepared. He asked a good question. Well, you could be writing stuff down as we go you’re i’m talking to a cartoon right now that’s right weirdest the weirdest podcast i’ve ever done so really oh my god i’ve never talked to an avatar before. Well, it’s the future, my friend. Wouldn’t that be funny if i later found out that you don’t even exist? It was all ai that’s right exactly yeah it’s all ai they’re like hold on i’m doing a quick search gutter ballYeah. Eventually it will be. That’s a whole other conversation for us to have, Danny, about AI and so forth. I talked about that on stage at this comedy club, and I had AI write jokes about this city for me. And I said, you know, people ask me, are you worried about AI taking over the entertainment business, the comedy business? you know, stand up comedy. And then I, I had, I said, Hey, I wrote these jokes to me and I read these jokes and they were so, they were terrible. And I go, you know, I rest my case. Can I continue with my show now? But yeah, so I would say, uh, to promote, uh, dannyjohnson.com, all my social media links are on there and truly the best gift you can give a comedian that you enjoy, uh, that you’ve never heard of, uh, a gift, the best gift is to follow them on social media. Unfortunately,Everything is based on a lot of stuff. It’s just the first question I get is how many followers do you have? So Facebook and TikTok is at Danny Johnson comedy. And, uh, I put out, I put out what I think is good content and it is entertaining, you know, feel free to follow like comment, but my new special, I hope to hit a million before the middle of the year. Um, and that would really open up a lot of doors that for whatever reason, that number on YouTube is pretty special and I’m almost at 200,000. you know, give it a shot. I think you’ll like it. You’ll be very surprised. One of, and I’ll leave with, I don’t want to keep you any longer, but the best compliment I got on a comment on my new special, and it goes to show you the power of what people perceive as quality and non-quality based on follower count. This comment was what one would call a backhanded compliment. I did not take it that way. I knew what the guy’s intent was. Hiscomment was something to the effect of wow this special is not only hilarious and having me laughing out loud but the production quality is amazing it’s nice to see this on such a small platform so his expectation based on my follower count his expectations were low and i think that goes for a lot of you know people just assume high follower count talent and sometimes that’s true um but Give the little guy a shot, and you can quickly move on. No one will know. But I think if you give me a shot, you’ll like what I put out there. There you go. Give me a shot. You’ll like it. Danny, thanks so much. I really appreciate you being here. Everybody, check it out. Everything bothers me. It’s totally relatable. I can tell you that right now. Check it out on YouTube on his website at DannyJohnson.com. Yeah. Thanks for having me.Yeah, thanks for being here. Give me just a second. I’m going to hit a button. Stick around for just a moment afterwards. And everybody else, we’ll see you next time.
