By Nathan Alexander
Dan Alten, a Louisville favorite, has released two stand-up comedy albums and headlined shows in 27 states. He will be headlining Planet of the Tapes Feb. 23-24.
Dan will be joined by feature comedian Cali Botkin and host Ali Gautier.
Get your tickets here.
Dan was kind enough to answer some questions for Louisville Laughs.
Louisville Laughs: How long have you been doing standup, and what made you decide to get on stage?
Dan Alten: I started at the end of 2012 after graduating college with a degree in Journalism and Folklore and having no career prospects or dreams or goals or ambitions or hobbies outside of making folks laugh.
So I moved to Louisville with the hopes of learning how to be a comedy writer/journalist/comedian, and because I’m a lazy procrastinator I got into stand up, because signing your name up for a mic forces a deadline on you, whereas there’s endless time to keep tweaking the next great American comedic novel. Was that last sentence too long?
Did you have any performance experience before comedy?
Dan Alten: I was a college radio DJ for 4 years and a general comedic relief around town, hosting various events and doing various duties and being a drunken clown. In high school I ‘coached’ my friends’ indoor soccer team called the Lava Tigers and I was essentially just a cheerleader goofball who got to interact with the overly serious opposing teams coaches at the coin toss.
When I did fake high school Congress I would introduce bills about how we should claim the moon as a National Park and protect it from future developers so as to not make the moon less romantic for evening walks. Stuff like that.
You tour all over the country in comedy clubs as well as record stores, basements, bars, train museums, etc. What do you like about headlining Planet of the Tapes specifically?
Dan Alten: Planet of the Tapes is great because the audience is made up of comedy fans. When you have a big 200+ club it’s hard to get 200+ comedy nerds in there every night, but when it’s 60 comedy nerds you can get more wild with folks’ imaginations and take more chances. It’s intimate but still big enough where it feels special. I love it. It’s a great room for riffing.
Also nice parking and the bartenders (Adam & Katie) rock.
You produce a monthly show at Kaiju called Good Standup Comedy with Dan Alten where you showcase fellow Louisville comedians. What do you like about the Louisville comedy scene? And what do you see as an opportunity for improvement?
Dan Alten: We have a lot of good folks at a lot of different levels so it’s very easy to put together a nice lil lineup of comics who can deliver a hot 5, 7, 11, and 15 minutes, and it’s great because I think it gives newer folks a thing to work towards.
In some ways Louisville is the wild west in that we have clubs, but no one really guides the newer comics and there isn’t a logical ladder of progress. It’s a very DIY scene, which is good in many ways and allows folks like me to develop unique styles and learn how to start our own shows and get our hands dirty for better or worse.
But it also makes it harder to give younger comics the necessary advice (and have them actually hear it) when you’re not the booker of a big corporate club with a nice carrot to dangle.
What are your favorite standup specials?
Dan Alten: I really like Me Doing Stand Up by Norm Macdonald and Stewart Lee’s Comedy Vehicle (and that Dane Cook one where he’s showing off his muscles).
Do you have a comedy horror story you’re willing to share?
Dan Alten: One time [in a state where this anecdote is legal] 5 minutes before going onstage an opener offered me a blunt of marijuana. I normally smoke when in states where it is legal, so this was no issue. However, I rarely smoke blunts and never smoke tobacco, so I did not realize that a blunt is wrapped in tobacco leaves and I now had basically tooken a big ole deep lung rip off a cigarette.
I instantly ran off to “get ready,” which was actually me puking in the bushes out of sight of the opener so as to not make them think I wasn’t cool. I then ran onstage with a wild tobacco head rush and having just thrown up for 2 minutes, and without even having time to do my stretches!
Had a good 35 minute set. Then threw up again while going out to my car to grab merch. That time I was seen by an audience member. That audience member did not end up following me on Instagram or buying a shirt.
You have a very unique and specific energy on stage. You seem to really feed off the room and bring the audience in to be your sparring partner. How has your relationship with the audience evolved over the years?
Dan Alten: I’m afraid all my jokes will bomb, and if the audience isn’t currently laughing they hate me, so it forced me to develop a very fast and fluid style so I don’t hear the crickets sharpening their pitchforks.
I’ve been doing stand up full time for over 6 years now and some of the money deals and venues I’ve played in the past have made me terrified of bombing, because if so, the Arkansas biker bar isn’t going to pay me, no one is going to buy a sticker, I’m not going to have gas money to get to the next gig, no one is going to let me sleep on their couch, and then my girlfriend will be mad when I get home and can’t pay rent.
My weird early hipster jokes wouldn’t always work so I’d need to find ways to get the job done under every circumstance, which made me a very malleable performer. My job is to pull the laughs outta the audience, and it’s easier to make someone laugh when you know them.
And as much as I don’t like crowd work in the sense of “What does everyone do for a living?” I do rely on the energy and specificities of the laughs to guide my performance.
And at the end of the day we’re all having a shared live experience, so as important as it might seem to get the words out in the exact order you wrote them in the notebook 6 months ago, the ability to mix it up is what makes the live element unique.
It’s like a jam band. I’ve got a repertoire of tunes but if the crowd does the wave I might play the next one in the style of surf rock. (or serf rock and its peasants complaining about the duke over cool guitar).”
Do you have a pre-show ritual?
Dan Alten: I do my aforementioned stretches and I write out my lil setlist and in my head I sing either the theme to Ken Burn’s The West or the sample from Enigma’s Return to Innocence of the tribesman they didn’t pay (you know the one). I also have a playlist I listen to on shuffle while driving to the shows of music that gets me jazzed up and silly.
A thing I tend NOT to do pre-show is bring in my merch suitcase. I feel bringing your merch into a venue when you could hypothetically be boo’d off stage and need to escape is a bit presumptuous, and the 9/10 times your fear is unwarranted you can jog to the car to get your merch while singing ‘I love selling merch’ to the tune of I Love Rock N Roll and feel even cooler.
What do you hope to achieve in a standup show? What do you want the audience to take away from the Dan Alten experience?
Dan Alten: My favorite compliment to hear after shows is folks telling me that watching my show felt like being on a really good psychedelic trip, which feels awesome considering I’m just talking and not playing guitar through a wah pedal with a laser show.
I genuinely just want people to have a good time and stretch out the fun part of their brain. The world can be quite harsh, and our thoughts can be even harsher. In my life I most appreciate the things that give me a break from that and let my mind have some fun.
A lot of comics have points or points of view that (they feel) are important and they use comedy to express them (which is great!), but what draws me to comedy is the sugar, not the medicine. Let someone else be your spinach, I wanna be your candy.
Don’t miss Dan Alten at Planet of the Tapes! Get your tickets here before they sell out!
You can find more Dan on his Instagram, YouTube, and Facebook. Listen to his podcast Funny Dinner and subscribe to the Patreon.