Nick Swardson Quotes

Stand-up is live, so I'm used to being live for most of my career. It's interesting.

I can pretty much guarantee that if I do a show in a comedy club, there will be someone who will come out of the audience and tell me the worst joke ever. It's just a guarantee.

I do love live performing, but I'm not a stand-up naturally, and I don't like the lifestyle of working just in the evenings at clubs and stuff - not a natural gig-er.

Live performance really terrifies me. I haven't done it, really, in years. I think that's why I retired from my brief career in stand-up.

You know, my first album, some of those jokes I'd done for twelve years because I couldn't throw 'em out.

I don't really do stand-up.

I can't claim to ever have done stand-up.

The first time I did a show, I definitely didn't get any money. My friend just let me do this show. I was so nervous: my mic didn't work, and I was like, 'Urgh.' It was terrible. It was a dingy club off of the highway, but all these people came. It was packed out.

I should also say, in general, I just drank a lot. I shouldn't characterize it as "to get the courage to perform." It was just an in-general nighttime activity. It definitely made it easier when I started doing stand-up. It was just much simpler to do a couple of shots. It made my nerves go away, for the most part. It just was something I sort of relied on for about the first four years.

Ok so there's no TV shows, no movies going on fine, but I love going on stage and performing stand up so my situation is a little better than someone who's strictly just an actor or actress.

For about three years I was performing at one bar in East Los Angeles that was like a mean dive bar. You're in there performing for drunks or bikers, not the most flattering people. I think it helped build my confidence, because you have to get their attention, then make them laugh.

Sometimes I'll go out into the crowd and keep singing, but I'll get maybe seven rows out and I'm out of synch, I'm a couple seconds behind the band and then it becomes chaos.

I don't personally feel comfortable performing in a comedy club, mainly because as an audience member, I've never enjoyed that experience. It feels a little bit theme-park-ish to me, in that it's a club whose product is comedy. I find that weird. It's like those specialty chocolate stores, where everything is chocolate. It's too specific. I like going somewhere that specializes in variety.

It's depressing sitting at a comedy club all night, waiting to get on to do your five or ten minutes of material.

By the way, to perform in front of Don Rickles, it 's not nerve-wrecking. It 's enjoyable, i am enjoying Jeff Garlin. I hope I perform in front of Don Rickles every night of my life !

I feel like you've gotta be able to get up every night in front of a live audience. Whether it's 10 people or 50 people or a hundred people, whether you're in a rock band or doing the comedy circuit.

As soon as you just walk through the curtains and the crowd's there, everything's good after that.

Stand-up is an amazing art form, I think, because it's all about you having complete control of the situation, but absolutely none.

There might be two or three songs I'm trying out. I've been singing these songs (on the new album) in the studio, but I haven't really done them live. It's intimate to sing them in a studio. Now, I've got to be on a stage and be in front of a lot of people.

That's a lovely experience when you make an audience laugh. Then the nerves go away for a bit. And sometimes you do things then that you've never done before that are really funny.

On Friday night, it was fun [to know] that if you bombed, or whatever was going on, that you'd be on TV at 11. It was a cool feeling, and you'd get a couple hundred dollars.

It's good to do stand-up. It kind of wakes you up and makes you feel like you're doing something. You got the crowd right there. That's all fun.

A comedian who starts talking to himself becomes his own audience. This is fatal.

If I tell a joke on stage and the crowd laughs for a minute, I stand there for a minute and enjoy them laughing before I go on to the next joke. On TV, if I stand there for a minute while they laugh, I look like an idiot who can't remember the next joke.