Larry the Cable Guy: Tailgating king of comedy

by Dylan P. Gadino

Tailgate parties are no longer just for sporting events and giant rock concerts. It is now also the province of comedians, or, at least for one comedian: Larry the Cable Guy.

After 1987’s Farm Aid, the University of Nebraska vowed to never again host a non-sporting event in their legendary Memorial Stadium. It seems the Willie Nelson and John Mellencamp contingency didn’t leave the space the way they found it. So it seemed quite a long-shot that the powers that be would allow a comedian and his zealous fanbase to inhabit the holy sports ground.

But when you’re Larry the Cable Guy (real name: Dan Whitney) — a hometown dude with with a pair of gold and a pair of platinum albums, who’s entering his sixth year of selling out arenas nationwide — rules tend to break.

And so the stage was set for the top-selling comic to record his new album and DVD Tailgate Party in front of 53,000 people; it’s out in stores and online everywhere tomorrow. But the comedy juggernaut will take no break after the release. Rather, he’ll be touring through Dec. 12, prepping for his Nov. 20 CMT special Larry the Cable Guy’s Hula-Palooza Christmas Luau and working with his child advocacy charity, the Git-R-Done Foundation, to which he recently donated $1 million.

In an brand new, exclusive interview, Larry the Cable Guy talks to Punchline Magazine about how he says that show almost killed him, what he thinks of people calling him a fake and much more.

It wasn’t such an automatic thing that Memorial Stadium in Nebraska was going to hand over their place for you to record the new album, right?
My manager was talking to me and saying that we should just do one big show somewhere and I said, yeah, let’s do it, let’s make some noise. And he’s like we oughta do it at Memorial Stadium in Lincoln, Nebraska, your home state. And inside my head, I’m going it’s never going to happen. But I’m like yeah, that’d be cool, that’d be awesome, not even thinking there would be a prayer to do it.

Six weeks later, he says, ‘Ok we’re done, we’re set up. We’re doing a show at the stadium.’ And I was like, ‘Get outta here, how did that happen?’ You know how the Grand Old Opry is the Mother Church of Country music. Well, this is the Mother Church of football right here. The only thing they ever had that wasn’t football there was in 1987— Farm Aid with Willie Nelson. And after it was done they said never again will we have a concert in this stadium. The fans tore things up. So, I said there’s not a prayer they’d let me do the show there. Sure enough, we got it.

And as soon he said we got the stadium and we’re going to do a july 4th show, I got sick. I think I took a crap eight times and then about two months before the show, I started getting TMJ. My jar started popping and I couldn’t close my mouth. I needed a mouthpiece to sleep at night because they said I was grinding my teeth. My jaw was effed up. And I went to the dentist and he said it’s because of stress. And sure enough, I did the show and three days later my mouth went back to normal. The show almost killed me.

But I was thinking to myself that I sell good tickets in Nebraska. But, even if I sell 20,000, the place is still going to look empty cause it’s meant for 50,000. So now I think I’m going to embarrass myself. We sold 37,000 tickets in the first two days and then by the weekend the tickets were gone. And I said, ‘Holy shit.’ I couldn’t believe it. And now I’m really getting nervous. And plus, it was a TV taping for my special for Comedy Central. I get nervous for those just in a small theater. So now I have the stress of the show and TV cameras.

So how did you get through the show?
That morning I got up in the morning to do an interview for Biography and I did the interview. But the whole time I wasn’t there because I was thinking about the show. I said I was going to go over my act a couple times that afternoon. I couldn’t remember any of it. I couldn’t remember how I started, setups, segues— I was freaking out. And about two hours before the show I started hearing people yelling Git-R-Done and one whole section chanting Larry! Larry! Larry! And dude, I started getting fired up. My opening act went up and just killed and came off stage and said to me, ‘It’s just like a comedy club’ and I was like ‘It’s not like a comedy club.’

As soon as I walked out there and they started cheering and I got my first laugh I was so into the show, I don’t even remember seeing a TV camera. It went off smooth and the sound was unbelievable. And I’m a one-liner, timing guy and so I was thinking we have 53,000 people for a one liner, timing comedian, this is going to suck. But I really felt like I was working a small room. As far as the CD material itself goes, it’s the best CD I’ve done so far. I counted that there’s between 350-400 punch lines. And all of them hit huge.

It’s pretty funny to hear someone as successful as you would be so nervous over a show like this.
If you didn’t, there would be something wrong with you. I had the experience of doing it before. In 1997 I got invited to do Gator Growl in Florida, my second home. I actually lived there more years than I did in Nebraska. I was one of three other comedians. This is a show you would never ever see again. It was me, Dave Chappelle, Carlos Mencia and Ray Romano. I was the first one up. I was pretty much the up and coming guy. And so was Carlos. Dave just had Half-Baked out. Ray was really the big draw. I remember hearing that Robin Williams said that he threw up before Gator Growl, which is a big pep rally. And if you’re not funny, 84,000 people boo you. They booed Bob Hope. It’s a rough crowd.

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There’s a beer brewed in your honor— Git-R-Done American Golden Lager. Not many comedians, or people for that matter, can say that. How did that happen? And is the beer any good?
It’s really good. My wife’s side of the family is from Wisconsin and so they’re all huge beer drinkers. And my sister in law, who’s very picky about her beer, loved it. She thought it was great. And it is. They make it in my hometown. I worked out a deal with them where all the money that I make from that beer goes into a fund and I can allocate that money to go back into the town anyway I want. It was kind of a cool thing to give back to my hometown, because I love my hometown and it helps them get their name out there. They sell it mainly, I think, in Nebraska.

You’re married and have two kids now. Has that changed what you do onstage at all?
I wanna kill the son-a-bitches, to be honest with ya. They ruined my life. No, the only thing is, before I had kids, I could care less. People want to show you pictures of their kids; I don’t give a shit about your kids. Are they breastfeeding? I’ll take a peak at it. When you have kids, it’s a whole different thing. It changes your life. Now you’re a father. It makes you grow up a ton. But my act is my act. It didn’t change my material. The only thing it changed is that it added another good 12 minutes of laughs. It did change my character a little bit. When I first started doing this, it was complete theater of the mind, because I was on the radio. I would make up relatives, girlfriends, ex-wives.

Then when I started doing it onstage and people could see me, I still did things like, ‘My sister’s covered in moles.’ Well, I have a sister but she’s not covered in moles. Now since I have a family, I don’t do as much ex-girlfriend because everyone knows I’m married. They see me with my wife in pictures. So before, it was all made-up family and a made-up life. Now, I’ve incorporated my kids and it’s real stories. So it’s kind of like Seinfeld where the bizarro Jerry and the real Jerry are starting to mix. It’s made the act grow a lot. It allowed me to write other material that would probably bring in another type of fan base.

I like to be able to do reach other people and do other projects. I like doing Pixar, the Mate character [from the movie Cars]. I know kids like me, and when I’m doing a live performance, I’m also a parent. I like watching cartoons with the kids and going to the zoo with the kids. And now and again I like to go out with my wife and have some good adult entertainment. I like to be pretty universal onstage. So I do stuff for the kids but when people come to the shows, I’m not going to make sure my crowd is filled with kindergartners.

What’s the biggest misconception people have about you?
Some people think that I’m like this all the time— the way I am onstage. And then some people think I’m nothing at all even close to what I am onstage. Some people think that I grew up in an apartment in New York or LA and just decided to be a Blue Collar redneck comedian. Those are all complete misconceptions. Here’s my life in a nutshell: I grew up on a farm in Nebraska and I raised pigs. I grew up in the middle of nowhere. I moved to West Palm Beach, Florida when I was 15. I went to college at a Baptist school in Georgia. I started doing stand-up and when you do stand-up, you don’t know what you’re doing; you have to find your voice. It’s not going to happen over night.

So, I met [Jeff] Foxworthy back in early to mid ‘80s. We were both big Atlanta Braves fans. I really gravitated to Jeff because I went to college in Georgia. I can always go in and out of the accent any time I wanted. All my cracker friends were real southern. I don’t know about you but if you hang out with guys that are your buddies for 16 years, you’re going to start talking with their accent. And when you’re hanging out with your buddies that don’t have accents, you come out of it. That’s just how it is. And so me and Jeff would do nothing but riff on old country accents and tell jokes to each other that way. I found it to be funny so I started doing it onstage. All my cracker friends thought it was hilarious because we all knew people that talked that way.

So then you started incorporating those types of bits in your act?
Yeah, and I made them cable installers. It was a about a three-minute bit of my act and it was killing. So I started doing it on the radio. And when you’re a comedian, you wanna sell tickets. So that’s what I started doing. I found something that I could do onstage and I could do good. I started going out as Larry the Cable Guy, because it was fun for me to write for because I grew up that way. So I think the misconception was that I was a failed comedian and all of a sudden I hooked on to this redneck thing to capitalize on it, which is as far from the truth as you can get. I grew up that way. When I started doing stand-up, that’s the stuff that started working for me. The only thing I really did, was I put the accent on because at the time, it was hilarious. That’s how me and my buddies would talk. I’ve always been a country kid, a rural kid and when I go onstage, that’s my show, that’s what I do. I make up stupid one-liners about made-up relatives and real relatives.

Everyone tries to pick it apart as something political. It’s not. It’s just good fun with stupid one-liners— just good comedy fun. I don’t care if they think I’m that way onstage. I don’t care if they think I’m doing a character or I’m kinda doing a character. As long as they think it’s funny, that’s all I care about. I’m comfortable in my life to know what’s real and what isn’t real. And for anyone to say I’m not allowed to do country stuff, because I’m not country enough, they have no idea what they’re talking about. And I’ll take them into my hometown and show them.

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When Bob Simon did that thing for 60 Minutes on me, I took him into my town. And he asked me, ‘Will people recognize you, will they ask for autographs?’ I said, ‘Bob, I’ll be honest with you. You’ll be lucky to find anyone in town because they’re all farming.’ And sure enough we went there and there was nobody in that town. Bob Simon actually fell asleep as we were doing the tour of the town. I look over and he’s out, which I found to be hilarious.

So does it bother you when people misconstrue your performance?
People say I’m a fake. Whatever. Look, I’m doing stand-up. I’m doing what I love to do. I’m making people laugh in a really shitty world right now. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that. If people want to say I’m a phony, they can say I’m a phony. But all’s they have to do is look at my life growing up and they’d easily change their opinion. You can’t help what people say. It’s like what Bill Cosby said: If you try to make everybody happy, you’re never going to be successful. I’ve always, unlike some people, like to learn from the people that have been there.

For more info on Larry, check out his official site at larrythecableguy.com. Click the image below to buy his new album.