The Breakfast Club Sits Down With KevOnStage To Discuss 'Clean' Comedy, 20 Yrs Of Marriage, “Life from the Back Pew” Tour. Listen For More!
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Wake that ass up in the morning. Breakfast Club Morning.
Speaker 2 (00:04):
Everybody is stej Envy, Jess Hilarious, Charlamagne the guy. We
are the Breakfast Club Lone, the Rosa fhillin in for
just this morning. And we got a special guest in
the building. We have Kevi on stage. Yes, y'all, how
you feeling good?
Speaker 1 (00:16):
Morning?
Speaker 3 (00:17):
Good?
Speaker 1 (00:17):
I've been wanting to hear that for a long time.
How are you, my brother? I'm good man.
Speaker 3 (00:22):
Thank you guys for having me. You know, there's some
people who might know. I got a two part question.
Number one, who is Kevi on stage? And who is
Kevin Fredericks.
Speaker 1 (00:29):
Oh it's a good question.
Speaker 3 (00:30):
Uh, Kevi on stage is probably the performative version of
Kevin Fredericks. Kevi on stage is a comedian entertainer. Uh
pretty much do anything to make you laugh. I feel
like Kevin Fredericks is a father, husband, business person as well.
Speaker 1 (00:49):
You know that's it. I think it's two sides.
Speaker 3 (00:52):
When I'm when I'm at home, I'm Kevin Fredericks, right,
gotta make my family laugh.
Speaker 1 (00:55):
But I'm not like Yo, let me see this boo
booty boo, BITI boo.
Speaker 3 (00:58):
You know what I'm saying, But when I leave that house,
I'm kept on stage, you know what I'm saying. So yeah,
I think that's the difference.
Speaker 2 (01:05):
How'd you get into comedy, especially coming from the church. Yeah,
I think clean quote unquote clean comic.
Speaker 3 (01:10):
Yes. And when I say clean, I just don't cuss,
like yeah, because clean has different connotations, like you can
be clean where there's no vulgar material at all, you
don't touch certain subjects. I really just don't cuss. I
talk about everything else in my life, everything else that
I think is funny. I just don't cuss. I say
nigga too though, Like I just as a church kid,
(01:31):
I could not cuss. My mom would rather me bring
home a child than to cuss. Really, yes, cussing was
so bad, and you know a lot of church are
way worse. Well, what's a little baby amongst friends and family?
You have a baby, but cussing in the house. She
was like, absolutely not. And I didn't trust myself to
cuss at school and not cuss at home like most
of the church kids did. So I pretty much did
(01:53):
you know, I premrial sex. I just never cussed. But
don't practice bad habits, no, No, I just never I
felt like they would catch me slipping. And that's actually
really a tool for me in comedy. I think a
lot of times you got to work a little bit
harder if you ain't cussing. Sometimes cuss words are just funny,
so you just throw it out there and it's funny.
But to answer your question, my comedy started in church,
(02:13):
like making people laugh in church. After church, my Grandma'd
be like, do that thing Sister Daniel's did when she
fell over, do that, do that person's shower, do how
that person preached, And I would get to stay in
the living room a little longer around grown folks and
stuff like that. So once I realized, oh, this gets
me attention, this gets me perks, I started leaning into that.
And you know black churches where a lot of performers
(02:35):
get their first start. So I did a talent show
in church sixteen and I was like bitten by the
bug then, and then shout out to Nate Jackson, a
real big comedian. Now he had a comedy club in Tacoma,
and he let me do twenty twenty five minutes at
his club every Thursday for like two years. And that's
why I really really honed my craft. After college, I
was just going there every week and a lot of
(02:56):
time we had a lot of regulars there, so I
couldn't do the same material, so I'd have to like
do new jokes, get better, do new stuff. So I
think that's the church gives me the performance. The club
helped me sharpen my tool. Why do you keep saying, like,
what made you keep saying the N word? Because I'm
trying not to say the N word no more? So
what made you not curse but say the N word?
You know, that wasn't a cuss word to me, Like
(03:18):
there are certain words.
Speaker 2 (03:19):
That my mom say, sell them is saying it for
fifteen years. He's been trying to stop saying.
Speaker 1 (03:26):
Hard not You know what I'm saying, it's hard not
to use it.
Speaker 3 (03:30):
I think as a black kid, all my friends were
saying nigga. It was in black culture movies, TV. And
it wasn't a cuss word. To my mom, she wasn't
on the list like some people couldn't say lie, like
my wife. She couldn't say lie in the you know,
in the house my family, pissed off wasn't a cuss word,
and nigga just didn't really bother them. I didn't say
that a lot at home, but it didn't raise no flags.
(03:52):
So there was like the one curse word I could say.
So I said it so much.
Speaker 1 (03:56):
It's always a person telling you not to say lie.
That's the biggest lie. I don't want you to say.
They don't follow me out, and.
Speaker 2 (04:02):
We don't get we don't say live, we don't say fat,
we don't say ugly in the house.
Speaker 1 (04:06):
Yeah, those words.
Speaker 4 (04:11):
My mom cussed me out, like really what? Oh no,
she's a sweet, humble lady now, but.
Speaker 1 (04:18):
You should have led it with that part.
Speaker 4 (04:21):
Because they met her and they'd be like, what I'm
trying to know? It was yeah, she changed, Oh yeah,
and my grandmother was locked into the church now.
Speaker 2 (04:29):
So yeah, you know, I wanted to ask you about
you know, we had Big Mac Hash something producers and
he was talking about what you did during COVID. He
was very impressed of how COVID, who had everybody locked down,
you made it into a business and a successful business.
Speaker 1 (04:44):
He said, he's seeing you.
Speaker 2 (04:45):
Go from small house to medium house, the bigger house,
the different car to this, this, this, that and the other.
So telling people what you did during COVID, that was
something that was totally different.
Speaker 3 (04:53):
Yeah, there were some other things in there, but that
was the most visible. Shout out the spectrum, appreciate y'all.
Keep your distance comedy was our COVID comedy relief situation.
So what I did in La we obviously everything was
locked down during COVID, and then we got the notification
(05:14):
that you could have up to twenty five people outside
social distance two people here, six feet two more people.
And I could never do the zoom comedy. I could
never get into it because comedy is about timing and
that's short delay from zoom response. It threw me off.
Some people could do it. I just I needed instant reaction,
know if it's funny or not. So once they did that,
(05:34):
I have the idea of like, okay, if we get
people to come outside. Luckily LA is warm and it
doesn't rain that often, and we could split them up
and get twenty five people. I'll bring the comics, comics in,
we'll do COVID testing, put them up, and we'll live
stream the comedy. Because we didn't have nothing to do,
like we watching verses and you know, me and my
wife was like we was having like five parties for
verses I was like, we really, she's making nachos, you
(05:56):
know what I'm.
Speaker 5 (05:57):
Saying, We like really getting parties.
Speaker 3 (05:58):
Yeah, like them Verse was part of the early Verses.
That was the only thing to look forward to, like
new interesting. Didn't even care about the quality. It was like, oh,
Versus coming on. So I was like, what if we
do that for comedy And that's basically where the idea
came from.
Speaker 1 (06:12):
Did you run out an alley? It was like the.
Speaker 3 (06:15):
Back parking lot of our partner's studio, Like it was
a back parking lot. I mean, we literally had twenty
five thirty people max, maybe thirty five including the comics,
and we needed the comics. We were like, y'all stand
here too, so we have as much audience as possible.
We had to COVID test every single person. It was
like two hundred dollars a test. It was crazy expensive.
But yeah, I flew all these comics in and I
(06:37):
we livestream their sets. We have like six comedians, probably
did over one hundred and fifty micro specials over the
two year period. Introduced a lot of people to a
lot of comics, to a lot of different people, A
lot of people to a lot of different comics. A
lot of comics'.
Speaker 1 (06:52):
Biggest YouTube video is there to keep your.
Speaker 3 (06:55):
Distance special And it was like it was like my
proudest moment to create opportunities to see black comedians put
some money in their pockets, give them some tape to
show the comedy clubs. Like I was ask them like, yo,
can you send me your tape so I could market it,
and they like, bro, I don't have no tape because
most comedy clubs are drabbing dark and you know it's
not quality. So we gave them their specials to do
(07:16):
with what they wanted afterwards, so they put them up
on YouTube or chop them up and make reels and
it was fantastic. Dave Chappelle actually executed it first, like
I have the idea, and then I saw him do
it in Ohio, so that was like, oh great, now
I can say it's just how Dave did that, That's
how we're going to do it.
Speaker 2 (07:32):
So I said, you have no less than ten thousand
people on the stream each every other week.
Speaker 1 (07:37):
Right right, it was every other week. That was early COVID.
Speaker 3 (07:39):
So as guidelines relaxed, the ticket sales went down. So
at the top at the peak of it was ten
thousand tickets, fourteen thousand tickets, and we were averaging about
ten thousand tickets. And that's like just people who purchased,
but people were having basically five parties. They'd have ten
to fifteen people. So it was like almost closed closed
circuit TV parties. But as each state, once Atlanta was outside,
(08:02):
then it was less than Texas, it was less. But
we did it for about two years straight and it
was it was fantastic. And now that's on Amazon. You
can go watch those all those specialist on Amazon.
Speaker 5 (08:12):
First of all, your partnerships go crazy.
Speaker 4 (08:14):
Yeah, because you had for really Amazon then, So I
was gonna ask you after that. I know you did
something with Patreon with the women in comedy because you
forgot the women a lot in the pandemic.
Speaker 1 (08:23):
No, I did it. I didn't forget the women.
Speaker 3 (08:25):
I made sure there was at least one black woman
and often two or three on every single show.
Speaker 1 (08:32):
Okay, because I had.
Speaker 5 (08:35):
Well, I don't think I paid attention to that.
Speaker 1 (08:37):
Yeah, because y'all don't see black women. No, that's not
want to say.
Speaker 4 (08:43):
I know you from all that digital So I've seen
you work with so many women and like different people
I didn't think about that, but when I was researching
for this, I saw something in essence where you would
talk about one of your homegirls. Was like, yo, like
where the women that like? Can we like hello? And
then you did the partnership with Patreon.
Speaker 1 (08:59):
Yeah, so Patreon reached out to me.
Speaker 3 (09:00):
I was like, what do you want to do and
to continue my efforts to support black women because he.
Speaker 1 (09:05):
Was already already like black women don't see each other.
I understand this all the time. Honestly.
Speaker 3 (09:11):
The truth is the ratio of comics it's probably eight
to two men to women anyway. So to make sure
I had a black woman, I had to like, I
was flying them out. At first, I was only doing
LA comics, but after I ran out of LA Women,
I was flying them out, flying women from New York
and Atlanta, every women in LA Black Women comics.
Speaker 1 (09:33):
Yeah. But yeah, when Patron reached out there like what
do you want to do? You want to do a special?
Speaker 3 (09:36):
And I was like, I want to produce stand up
specials for the black women I think are funny. So
so that's what we did. We had an amazing time
and mel Mitchell, Tyd Davis para parasas. I think Grace
came from New York. Jarlyn indescribable did some time. And
there's one person I'm forgetting off the top of him. No,
I said, tie, all that might have been in. They
(09:59):
did great. My shout out to my Patreon, the stage crew,
they support keep your distance, they support Patreon, they buy
a lot.
Speaker 1 (10:07):
So you know what.
Speaker 3 (10:08):
The reason I asked that is because a lot of
times we ask for things, but we don't support. Yeah, oh,
that's that's something black people do. We ask for things,
say well, we want more black women, But then do
you actually watch the Black Women, especially when she does it?
You watch your sitcom, you watch her cable news show.
Speaker 1 (10:22):
That I do.
Speaker 4 (10:24):
People support you though, like you get a lot especially online,
like you've mastered the comedian that comes from like the stage,
but like also is online. But people will take you
very serious and real sefely very serious. It's hard to
be in that middle space sometimes.
Speaker 3 (10:35):
Yeah, I think I totally agree. I think they're two
different skills and you need to know how to do
both of them. And for me, the internet's always been
a tool to get you to come to shows and
do other stuff. Like I'm just trying to get your attention.
But you have to be funny on the Internet and
you have to be funny in real life. A lot
of times comedians are on the Internet but they haven't
put the time and stand up. I actually did the reverse,
(10:57):
but I wasn't making videos on the Internet, so people
didn't know I was stand up. So then I was like, Okay,
I need to remind people. So a lot of times
people come to my show it's their first stand up
comedy show ever that they've ever attended. So I think
few people have mastered both because they both require immense
level of training in that discipline. You know what I'm saying.
Even if you're funny, it might not necessarily translate to
(11:18):
the Internet because you need to know how to be
funny on that specific platform. Each platform has their own identity.
Twitter funny is not the same as Instagram TikTok. They
all have their own identities and comedic abilities. Some stuff
translates to all five, but and it's all different budgets
of money. If you're able to do stand up, you'll
do your stand up. If you're able to do stuff
on social media, you do social media.
Speaker 1 (11:38):
You can do both. Get it off absolutely get brand deals.
Speaker 3 (11:41):
Some platforms pay use you know, brand deals, live show
money like that was the other thing about keep your distance.
It was like I went from touring and selling out
to not being able to tour. So I still got
my family, I got employees and stuff. So I'm like,
I need a way to generate this income because people
looking for me to pay their bills. So switching to that,
you know, keep your distance was also just that's the
(12:02):
Kevin Fredericks of it. That's the business mindset of like
we gotta pivot and also knowing that that business is
not gonna last long term. Some people can go outside again,
They're gonna go outside, you know what I'm saying that
nothing can compete with being able to go outside, have
dinner and go to a show or do whatever.
Speaker 4 (12:15):
Did your internet life start like with you figuring out
okay on the stage? I also should do internet? Did
that begin during the all depth digital time? Like what
was the first like internet breakthrough for you?
Speaker 3 (12:25):
It was prior, prior prior to even moving to LA.
It was back in the day. Had a group called
the Playmakers, me and my brother and my friend and
we used to actually do physical plays like ty We
were trying to be Tyler Perry, but we lived in Tacoma, Washington,
and you just not gonna be able to stand up
a play in Tacoma. There's not enough black people, there's
not enough stuff. Tyler starting in Atlanta, so he was
(12:46):
able to his audience was there more so. I remember
we were struggling. We had lost its investor. We lost
forty thousand dollars in his money, like he and first
we put up on ourselves. We're doing like high schools
and churches that adin't go nowhere, got investor give us
forty thousand dollars. We didn't make that man dying with
his money back. So next time we got twenty thousand
dollars and we flew this Tyler Perry promoter out. He
was like, Yo, this place is great, Like Tyler would
(13:07):
love to see this. You guys got to stand it
up in Oakland. We're like, okay, what do we gotta do?
Like you're gonna help us? He was like, yes, I'm
going to help you set up in Oakland. All you
need is three hundred thousand dollars.
Speaker 1 (13:15):
Three hundred thousand dollars, I said, brother, I mean you
might as well be three hundred million.
Speaker 3 (13:19):
At that point, I probably had seven hundred and fifty
six dollars in my account like be, and my wife
made just enough to pay those bills. So I remember
watching like Billy Currell's at that time. He did things
Black Girls Say. Matt already been watching YouTube, Lisa and Dormtainment,
Tim Chyna, wrong Suit, all those people. But it didn't
seem like a viable business for me because I didn't
(13:40):
know how that worked. But Billy Sorel's is a comedian
and I knew and he was the His video did
like nine million views. So I thought, if we can
go on the internet and make people laugh, then when
we go do our plays, then people will be like, oh,
I saw them on the Internet.
Speaker 1 (13:53):
I'll come to the place.
Speaker 3 (13:54):
Then as we started first two videos, he did things
Black Church Girl Say and Things Black Parents Say. Both
went really viral a million views at that time. That
was a lot of views on use still a lot,
but that happens more often now than it used to,
And at that moment, I was like, Oh, actually, the
Internet is a thing of its own, Like if we
just do that that we should focus on building that,
(14:15):
and then churches would bring us out. We would do
stand up all over the United States doing me and
my brother and aunt. And then after that, I was
like I need to do my own stuff. Like pretty
much instantly, I was like, I don't want to get
boxing and just doing church stuff because then that's all
people will.
Speaker 1 (14:28):
Let you do.
Speaker 3 (14:29):
So I started my kevil on Stage YouTube page, which
is almost at a million followers, which has been a
golden mine from the very beginning, but it's been harder
because the algorithm doesn't encourage you to subscribe like it
used to, because it's all just like recommended. But the
internet became the goal and since then I probably been
making a video every single day. So to answer your question,
it was those two videos and then all deaf. When
(14:53):
I moved to La I got a job there, and
actually that was kind of tough because I had to
take a step back from being town because they were like,
you are here to nurture the other people. You ain't
gonna build your channel, you ain't gonna do none of
that stuff. You do all that on your own time.
And I got fired from Boeing previously, and I was like,
I can't get fired from noo jobs no more. And
it was hard to get a job in LA, so
(15:13):
I made sure I focused on those talent company Boeing,
the playing company I was in there.
Speaker 1 (15:21):
You did quality control them.
Speaker 3 (15:22):
I have nothing to do with them flying, I have
nothing to do with them crashing.
Speaker 1 (15:26):
I was doing a little bit of working there.
Speaker 3 (15:28):
I ain't do much in there, but All Death helped
me to develop other talent and help me to develop shows.
Speaker 1 (15:34):
Like my job.
Speaker 3 (15:35):
I was ahead of talent and head of talent and
head of creative at All Death at the same time.
So I helped, you know, bring talent in, develop them
and also help develop in those shows. So roast me
great taste. All those shows were developed underneath me. They
were not my ideas, like Patrick and Teddy and to
hear in all those groups, you know Meg, they would
(15:56):
create the shows, but we brainstorm and stuff like that.
So you have to wrestle. Was Russelling at that time.
He's the one who hired me. Russell hired me. He
called me. I had a meeting with him and I
was pitching a movie and he was like, we don't
want to do this, but why don't you come run
talent for me? Called me as I left his house
and I started like within two weeks and now.
Speaker 4 (16:14):
We're the guy there too. Like I did a couple
episodes of The Cooler Yeah, and like I remember like
people just the way that they talked about you and
just y'all team in the office. I was like, Okay,
if you do this, like you make it next and
then you see like to hear like everybody's everywhere.
Speaker 1 (16:29):
Now.
Speaker 4 (16:29):
How impactful was Russell Simmons on your career then and
just being at all that digital.
Speaker 3 (16:33):
Oh, I think the opportunity that he gave me was
life changing.
Speaker 1 (16:38):
Like skill wise, I should not have had that job.
Speaker 3 (16:42):
Absolutely lied in my interview about the teams I ran,
oh man, I had thirty tailers here, people that Boeing,
I had this many people working under me.
Speaker 1 (16:49):
Nobody reporting to God thought that. I mean, you know
what I'm saying. He probably like, you gotta get it,
how you fit in? You know what I'm saying. He understood.
Speaker 3 (16:56):
I might not have been his proudest moment of me,
but you know what I'm saying, I gotta be kids,
you know what I'm saying. So, but I was a
firm believer. You give me this job, I'll do this job.
I might not be prepared but I went in there
and got it together. But yeah, without that job, it
was like digital media college for me. Like I learned
how to make six episodes in a day.
Speaker 1 (17:17):
It's funny.
Speaker 3 (17:17):
We just went to WrestleMania last night, I mean raw
wrestling last night, and we were early and I saw
them taping other shows ahead of time, and I was like,
that's that's efficient, Like that's how we would have thought
of that. You got these people here, you can shoot.
They shot I think speed before they shot Saturday night
to Maine event. You have all this talent here cycling
them through. We was making great tastes, were making six
eight episodes a day because we didn't have a lot
(17:39):
of money, so we had to learn how to maximize
our time and our budget efficient, be efficient with content,
with ideas, how to make more with less. So that
type of thinking is what trained me to be more
successful eventually start my own app Patreon. Like that's how
I was taught to do that. Actually, before that, I
was working at Awesome, this TV, which is the kid
(18:00):
version of All Death. My kids were Jaz and Jojo.
They had to show on Awesome. It's called crazy, I say.
So I learned from them unpaid. I went and sat
in their staff meetings when we moved down and I
was like, hey, can I just come sit in the
staff meetings. So for two years before or like a
year before I got to even at All Death, I
would be at their staff meetings every day, just taking notes,
seeing how they thought about stuff, seeing how they did
(18:21):
brand deals. So when I went to All Death, I
had all that knowledge from awesomeness, So I knew what
I was talking about in the interview, and I actually
knew how to do the job.
Speaker 1 (18:28):
I just had never done the job.
Speaker 2 (18:29):
Who was your inspiration as comedians coming up?
Speaker 1 (18:32):
Uh? Stand up wise?
Speaker 3 (18:35):
Uh? Probably my biggest was Arnest Jay's probably my favorite comedian.
He's just so physical. He didn't care whatever. He was
gonna make you laugh. Sindbad was gonna make you laugh.
He didn't cuss, But Simbad doesn't cuss, but you don't
notice he doesn't cuss, which was what my goal was.
I don't want you to like be like, oh, this
is non cussing guy's funny. I wanted people to leave
(18:55):
and be like.
Speaker 1 (18:56):
I don't think I even heard him cuss.
Speaker 3 (18:57):
And that's how Simbad was. Ernie Mack probably made me
laugh harder than I ever did his death comedy Jam special,
and me and my wife saw him in Kings of Comedy,
and that set is probably the most flawless stand upset
to me, Eddie Murphy as a goal of how big
a comedian could be. And then more recently Kevin Hart,
like Kevin Hart is funny, and Sony disciplines so to
(19:20):
be funny on stand up podcast, TV movies like that's
how I see myself with the regular conversation just interviewing. Yeah,
Like to me, his offhand comedy is some of his
best work.
Speaker 1 (19:31):
Cod is Balls.
Speaker 3 (19:32):
He's funny, but you get him in the interview sion
scenario and you realize just how funny he is.
Speaker 1 (19:37):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (19:37):
So I think all those people, probably even Jonathan Slocum
was probably the first one, though he's a black church comedian.
He had a tape called laugh Yourself to Life that
my parents listen to all the time to and from church,
And that's the person who probably made me think that
you could even do stand up related to church things
and it could be funny. When did you start noticing
the comedy in the church, Like do you remember that
(19:58):
first thing that you saw in the church that you
found funny. Oh manly, there's so many things. Sister Lewis
was Sister Lewis in our church. She might have been
not laughing.
Speaker 1 (20:10):
You ain't say God, bless God rest her. So I
didn't want to bring it down.
Speaker 2 (20:14):
But I'm like, she got to be about one hundred
and five Lewis.
Speaker 1 (20:18):
God, Sister Lewis went on to be with him.
Speaker 5 (20:21):
But it is so tabbern at.
Speaker 3 (20:25):
But she worked like two jobs, but she loved church
and she could never stay awake, so to wake herself up,
she would yell out.
Speaker 1 (20:32):
So she fell asleep.
Speaker 3 (20:33):
God is amazing like that, and everybody would look me,
it's your sister Lewis. But she'd do what when you're
preaching in the most inopportune moments, she would wake up
and scream out. And I was like, nobody is saying
anything about this. So when we get home and be
like yeah, and then we'd be eating, then I'll be like, ye're.
Speaker 1 (20:48):
Never Sister Lewis, God.
Speaker 3 (20:49):
Is amazing and my grandma and then would bust out laughing.
And she did that from like my whole childhood, like
ten years straight. Nobody ever stopped her. Nobody ever said, hey,
it's okay not to come. You can, you know, rest.
So that's probably the first thing I noticed that was funny.
And that's the first thing I I copied.
Speaker 1 (21:04):
Did you do that joking for the house? Oh? Yeah?
And she thought it was hilarious. And she could never
pronounce my name. My name is Kevin. She'd be like.
Speaker 3 (21:10):
Coln and I would always be like cow. And they,
my family thought that was hilarious. My great grandma was hilarious.
She had a little, you know, five o'clock shadow. Yeah,
she was. She was big, prickly. She had George Clooney,
same beard like that. Yeah, she was bearded up.
Speaker 1 (21:27):
You said you had that, dude, No, I had aunts
like that.
Speaker 4 (21:29):
I had like a I don't want to call him. Well,
they're not here no more. Had I had great great
when I was younger. I remember my great great aunts
down in Virginia. They were all very prickly. O, this
is not supposed.
Speaker 5 (21:39):
I always was a little confused.
Speaker 3 (21:40):
Yes, so I make for my grandma like grandma, you
you got this, you got a beard. And my my my,
that was my great grandma, my grandma, my mom. My
whole family thought that was funny. We had a family
of nine in a three bedroom house. So laughter is
what kept us like saying, I guess. And we had
a dog too. It was like, we don't have enough
money to feed us while we got the dog. But
(22:03):
that was that was not unusual, you know what I'm saying.
So we were poor, but we didn't know we were
poor because we were full of love and laughter. And
that's kind of how I saw the world. So that
was that was my approach.
Speaker 2 (22:13):
Now, your wife has been with you, y you'all been
together twenty years. Over twenty years, twenty years.
Speaker 3 (22:17):
May When I'm watching you tell your story, she's she's exciting,
Like when you said the forty dollars things, she.
Speaker 4 (22:24):
Was like, y'all are one of my favorite husband and
wife content duo. I mean, and I know you got
your own things that you do, but like y'all together
and it's separately. It's just like like I bounced back
and forth time.
Speaker 1 (22:36):
Thank you. She always believed, always believed God. You both
always believed. I don't know if she.
Speaker 3 (22:46):
Was always believing in my version of how to get
to things, because like when I went, for example, when
I wanted to move to La, I was like I
had written this whole plan that I submitted to her.
Speaker 1 (22:55):
I submitted to her.
Speaker 3 (22:56):
Yeah, yeah, that's crazy. Listen, we submit to each other.
So I was like, I want to move to La.
Here's my plan. And part of the plan was, let's
give our house up for foreclosure. Like, who cares, I'm
gonna get to La. I'm gonna get I'm gonna make
it back in cash, you know, let the house go.
Because it's during the housing crisis. I was like, everybody's
house is foreclosing. I'm gonna get it back. And she
was like, or we could rent it out. And I
was like, oh, snap, that's that's genius because it was
(23:18):
upside down at the time by like forty thousand dollars
and that.
Speaker 2 (23:23):
Forty thousand numbers stuff a lot of money.
Speaker 3 (23:27):
Yes, we couldn't even sell it, but we rented it
out and lo and behold, it's up over its value now.
So I think she she's helped me to steer those
things into a foreseeable thing. But she's never been like no.
Speaker 1 (23:41):
Now.
Speaker 3 (23:41):
The first time when I got fired from my job,
that was the first time I showed this. This is
when I got fired from Key Bank back in Washington, Jesus, how.
Speaker 1 (23:48):
Many time you got about it? Once? I quit? I
quit boring here.
Speaker 3 (23:52):
I got fired from Key Bank, and I deserved it,
Like I wasn't a good employee. I was making color
copies of comedy show flyers I left there, you know,
in the glass. I was doing all type of stuff.
Have my feet on the desk. Told my era of
retail lead manager. She was like, what are your goals
here at the company? And I told this woman who
oversaw all the banks in the PG sound, I don't.
I don't plan on working here. I'm just working here
(24:14):
till I make it. And she was like huh. And
I came home and told my wife that.
Speaker 1 (24:18):
She was like, why would you tell that lady that?
And I was like, that's that's the truth.
Speaker 3 (24:23):
Fired ninety days from that day on the dot. Literally,
I got put on a performance in planning that next monday.
Was fired ninety days from that that monday.
Speaker 1 (24:31):
Kevin moving in another direction, dreams.
Speaker 3 (24:36):
That's what they told me. They were like, you don't.
The lady was like, you don't. You don't need to
be here. Somebody who needs to be at this job
needs to be here. You're not You're not focused on that,
so I forgot where I.
Speaker 1 (24:46):
Was going with that.
Speaker 5 (24:48):
How your wife is your saving Oh yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 (24:50):
My wife is my saving girl.
Speaker 5 (24:50):
Thank you.
Speaker 3 (24:51):
Uh So that was when I told my wife I
don't actually want to do a job.
Speaker 1 (24:56):
I want to do stand up.
Speaker 3 (24:57):
So she was like, well, this is the first I'm
ever hearing of this, Like how we supposed to feed
these kids because in Tacoma that wasn't a feasible option.
Speaker 2 (25:07):
How many kids that time?
Speaker 3 (25:08):
We had two boys, two under four. I think my
son was three and one when I got fired, or
four and two somewhere around there. And she did not believe.
She just didn't see how that was feasible. So what
she said was, let's work on a plan to get there.
Part of that work includes you getting a job and
show me how you can do stand up and how
that can be feasible. But until then, let's do it.
(25:30):
So that's what we did. We made a plan. I
went and got a job. That's how I got the
job at Boying, worked on my craft, worked my job
at Boying, then didn't stand up at night. Nates became Thursdays,
and then I would do a show on Thursday, and
then somebody else on Friday, and then Thursday, Friday, Saturday,
and then Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday. And now I'm like, oh,
I'm making not much money but a couple hundred bucks
here and there, which at that time was still a
lot of money. Still today's a lot of money. Now
(25:52):
comedy's paying for a bill here and there. First it
was just gum, then gas, then the cell phone bill,
then the electric bill. So then when the Internet came
in and Austin This TV offered us, offered me a
contract to write, direct, produce, shoot and edit my kids videos.
Now comedy became income and she was like, Okay, now
(26:12):
I can see it. So that's when we moved to LA.
Works her awesomeness, got another job with Tracy Edmonds eventually
led to the job to Tracy.
Speaker 1 (26:18):
Yeah out to Tracy. Tracy Trady don't get the credit
she deserve. She doesn't another black person. She gave us.
Speaker 3 (26:23):
Actually, the fifty thousand dollars we used to move to
LA was split between the three of me and Jay,
but that's the money that we used to move to LA.
She gave us fifty thousand dollars to make ten videos
for all Right TV, which was her YouTube, her version
of like all deat Digital, which was like a faith
based thing. But then she also taught us the game, right.
She taught us everything she knew. She invited us to
the house. I ain't gonna tell your story. I ain't
(26:46):
gonna tell your story as a husband. There was a
great funny story there, but that's your story to tell.
She put us on the game. She kept up for
as long as she could. The company run out of money.
You want to tell the story, pull up a seat.
Speaker 5 (27:00):
Are so good together?
Speaker 3 (27:01):
So yeah, and then all Bright TV fell apart, and
then she was like, hey guys, it did the best
I could. And she moved on, which was actually a
lessoning of itself. It's like people can help you, but
when that money ends, it's every man for themselves. Like
she it's no hard feelings, she said, brother, they no
more money.
Speaker 1 (27:15):
Like I made the investment. She made the investment. She
moved on to her other projects.
Speaker 3 (27:18):
At that point, I learned, oh, it's not even no
heart feelings, like brother, I did what I could did
we did business. I helped you as much as I could,
but I'm not gonna reach in my personal pocket to
help you like we do business together, we shake hands,
we go our separate ways, So that was very valuable.
And also shout out to her. I don't think we
would have been able to move to LA without Tracy
Edmond because we didn't have the hard cash to move families.
It was three families, me my family, my brother's family move,
(27:39):
and Ant's family all moved. We split that fifty thousand
shot and edited the videos ourselves. Kept that money, paid
off this credit card that we had that was ten
thousand dollars that was built on stupid mistakes.
Speaker 1 (27:51):
I could take twenty nine percent interest. Oh I'd love
to have Tracy on Breakfast Club, but no, no, hit
her up.
Speaker 3 (27:57):
She's amazing like she and I agree, she doesn't the
credit she deserves for what kind of brilliant producer she is.
And just like a solid person, like she was a
solid individual. She did more than she had to for us,
and I'm eternally grateful. Still sends us Christmas cards to
this day, Like that's how solid a person she is.
Speaker 1 (28:16):
So yeah, shout out to her. You know, damn I
want to.
Speaker 3 (28:20):
Oh, you know you were talking about working at Bowing,
And the reason I think that's so powerful is because
one thing I always tell people is that there's one
hundred and sixty eight hours in a week. That's more
than enough time to chase your dreams and deal with
your reality. Yes, absolutely, I so boeing. I by the
grace of God, that job was very easy and didn't
take a lot of time. So I studied YouTube at
(28:41):
that time. That's when I really learned how what makes
a good video. I spent my time studying there, and
then when I left Boring in my first tour, I
worked at all death Monday through Thursday. I worked remote
on Friday, did stand up Friday in one city, another
city Saturday, another city Sunday, then flew back to la
on Monday morning and went to work Monday through Thursday
again for a whole year. Like I worked my job,
(29:03):
And I tell people like, you don't have to rush
to quit your job to do this, Like it should
be so obvious that you can't keep up with both.
I think a lot of people stun their growth because
they want content to be their job so bad, and
content is up and down, like how much money U
is up and down? Brandos is up and down. That
nine to five is your first real investment into yourself
and into your company. It allows you to have health insurance,
(29:25):
pay your bills, and allow your money from your business, content, comedy,
whatever to be excess money as opposed to build money,
because then people get frustrated it's not the money.
Speaker 1 (29:34):
Then you lose creativity because you're.
Speaker 3 (29:36):
Worried about survival and as you and you gotta survive first.
So if your stability is rocky, creativity can't flow if
you can't think about I'm hungry, where am I gonna eat?
Where am I gonna sleep? So once that's taken care of,
then you can flow creatively. In my opinion, and I
was not afraid to work hard, so at Boing, I
would go to the breakroom and find a nondescript wall
(29:57):
and make my video, or walk all the way to
my car on my lunch break, make a video, shoot it, edit,
edit it, post it, and then go back to my job.
Never talked about none of my videos. I wasn't gonna
make the same mistake. I made a key bank, and
I took that money and built my comedy career on
the internet and stand up.
Speaker 1 (30:13):
And worked that regular job. All at the same time.
Speaker 4 (30:16):
I see that your YouTube channel is Kevi on stage studios.
Speaker 3 (30:20):
Yeah, I have two. I have Kevi on stage, which
was the first one. Then I have Kevin on stage
studios as well.
Speaker 4 (30:24):
At what point did you understand why you needed Kevi
on stage studios? Do you get what I'm saying.
Speaker 3 (30:28):
Yeah, So it was actually there was I don't know
if y'all remember this, but Logan Paul went to this
suicide forest in Japan. Yeah, and they called what people
called the ad apocalypse. Everybody's revenue dropped. All these advertisers
pulled their money out of YouTube. So that's the first
thing that I realized. I was like, oh, this can
(30:49):
go away. And the second thing that happened there was
some sort of like child trafficking pedophile situation on YouTube,
and they had they were like doing these playlists in
finding kids, like basically kids doing innocuous things, going swimming,
and they would put like numbers in the comments. So
basically everybody who had children on their channel, all their
comments got blocked, right, and that kills the engagement, kills
(31:12):
the views. So in order to get comments back, I
started Kevin Stage Studios just to keep the engagement back
right and also to get rid of that. Logan Paul situation.
I was like, maybe I saw a new channel. It'll
be getting different ads, and then I realized, I'll just
do long form content kevil on Stage studios and things
that are not just me and Kevi on stage will
just be my personal point of view. So Kevil on
(31:34):
Stage Studios actually is much more of a healthy channel,
even with less subscribers, because that's where I put my podcasts.
Here's the thing. Shout out to that chick Angel and Joshi,
they're my co host. And here's the thing. When we
were doing bigger shows, I would put them on Kevil
on Stage studios and things like that. So that was
really the difference. So people know, if you just want me,
it's Kevin stage. You want me, or other people or
(31:56):
things that don't have me, then that would be Kevin's
Stage Studios. Which is my goal eventually to be able
to produce content for other people, not just for myself
or not featuring myself. So that's what Kemon Statee Studios came.
Speaker 1 (32:08):
Don't looks like him and Drewsy could be like brothers.
Get a lot absolutely that, No, didn't die.
Speaker 3 (32:17):
All the time, Juiceky was bald, and you know we're
both heavier set individuals. So I do get that a lot,
and also get that I look like a lot of people.
People like, look at this person like you, keV. If
you light skinning beard, nobody famous, you know what I'm saying,
Just a lot of there's a lot of light skinned,
bald men with beards, and pretty much anybody who looks
(32:37):
like that, they'd be like, you look like keV.
Speaker 1 (32:39):
You and Juicy definitely got.
Speaker 3 (32:40):
A yeah something Yeah. Shout out to Juice ky Man.
He's an amazing, amazing talent, just cultural anthropologists through comedy.
Speaker 1 (32:48):
Absolutely all the time.
Speaker 3 (32:50):
He has a way of capturing culture through his yeah
sketches one thousand percent, and it's not just black culture.
He I first saw Hi when he was doing Kyle
Rogert for frat videos and I.
Speaker 1 (33:02):
Went to a PWI.
Speaker 3 (33:03):
Yeah, I went to Washington University of Washington, and I
was like, them white boys be just like that, and
you almost forget he's acting like he is the black
dude in that white fraternity, Like we knew those guys.
But you know, the the Yan videos, the London video Tide, Yeah,
roll Tide, Like he look he could be a really
good comedic actor. I think he has the ability and creatively,
(33:27):
it's just genius to me. Like what he's done with
the Internet is amazing, very impressive. The life from the
back pew, Yeah, why'd you call it the back pew.
Speaker 1 (33:35):
The back pew, the backpew tour.
Speaker 3 (33:37):
I called it that because, like I wanted to differentiate
my style of humor versus like just church humor, because
there's a lot of reverence and you know, there's a
lot of sacrilege in church. I was a kid who
was in church every not just Sunday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday.
We literally were in Bible study, evangelistical service, prayer, choir, rehearsal,
(33:58):
then church and we always had a sittle, a black pew,
and the back pew was like we in church, but
we also plan, you know what I'm saying. So the
way we saw stuff, that's like the vision I had
of church was from the back pew. You had to go.
You don't have to sit in the front. You didn't
always have to participate in every service, but you had
to go. And so my mom actually maybe participate, but
I had to play drums or singing the choir, gir
(34:18):
all that type of stuff. But the back pew is
so people know, like, I'm gonna be in church, but
it's not gonna be every joke's not gonna be about church.
I have a whole set segment where I just talk
about regular stuff. I knew want of people to know
it's for church kids, but black people. Even if you
didn't grow up in church, you have a concept of
black church. But even never been to church, you can
still come to this show because if you've only been once,
you might probably sat on the back pew. So I
(34:39):
wanted people to have an idea of what show they
were coming to, so they would know, like, it's not
gonna be every joke about God, but it's also not
gonna be so ridiculous that you're like, I shouldn't even
be in the church. So I kind of walked that line.
So that's why I call it Life from the back People.
Are you trying to get people into the church with
your comedy? I believe that is probably one of my
subconscious goals. I don't think that's the intent, but I
feel like it is my way where I feel like
(35:01):
there's a lot of different types of ministries. There's music,
there's preaching, there's pastoring, and I think comedy is one
because a lot of black people are hurt by the church.
They have negative feelings about the church, and like, man,
this take, it's only fifty bucks and it's keV. Maybe
maybe I'll give it one more shot and then they
if they just come in and don't have a negative experience,
maybe they'll be interested in coming back. So I think
(35:22):
that's probably one of my sub goals, is to just
do my part, you know what I'm saying. Because black
church number, church in general numbers are dwindling, especially post COVID,
and I don't want the Black church to not exist anymore.
So I think absolutely that's probably part of my goal.
I think it's because of the Internet too, though, Like
I do bedside Baptists every Sunday, I'm in a Potter House
(35:43):
on Sunday morning.
Speaker 1 (35:44):
Okay, yeah, I don't think you negative.
Speaker 3 (35:46):
I think the pandemic made people realize, oh, I can
actually watch church from here and a lot of and
listen Potter's House Transformation Church. They have top tier production,
like you feel like you're watching TV. It's not just
like one guy the back with an iPhone like they have.
They have the whole team hundreds of thousand dollars in
sound equipment, video equipment, top of the line production staff
(36:08):
and services, their internets, Instagram social media is up to
par like any NFL team as well. So I do agree,
Like I don't think you have to physically go in
the church anymore. I think there's so many different ways
to engage with people the Bible app, YouTube, like Pastor
Yepj's one my favorite preachers, and I engage with him
on Instagram in two to three minute bits. Sarah Jake Roberts,
who I know you're a fan of. She's great online
(36:32):
on digital. I think she's actually so important to the
Black Church because especially how her journey started and where
it is now, Like a lot of people need to
see the Sarah Jakes Roberts at the poolpit, person who
wasn't perfect and who was outcast like I was growing
up remembering how people were talking about her, so to
see where she is now and the fact that she doesn't,
you know, shy away from her past, and how good
(36:54):
she is at speaking and communicating you know, God's word.
I think she's super important, but also be simone's an
important voice right like her turning to God, my niece
is a hood little sweet baby, and she got a
face tattooed, and she she loves be Someone's comedy. So
(37:17):
when Be Simone says I'm giving my life to Christ,
my niece sees herself in more Be Simone than Sarah
Jake's or TD Jakes. So I think everybody's journey is important,
not just the pastors. It's everybody has a role to play.
So I just want to play my role and do
my part. Now I love it because, you know, I
feel like we got to bring I know this sounds crazy,
but you got to bring God. You gotta meet people
(37:37):
where they are basic. Yeah, you know what I'm saying, Like,
you know, you can't just think people are going to
come into the church or go on YouTube. And there's
certain people like yourself, like Sarah Jakes who know how
to connect with culture. You know, Like I got Sarah
Jake's headlining the Black Effects Podcast Festival that I do
every years on April twenty six, and it's for that
reason because I know she knows how to connect with coaching. Absolutely,
(37:58):
I think you need people who speak that language. I believe.
I'm gonna tell you what really messed me up. As
a young Christian, I thought we were all playing by
the same rules. Like they said we're not drinking, were
really not drinking, and nobody's drinking, right, So I'm thinking
that's the truth. And then I'm not even talking about
the church. I'm talking about my actual family. I remember
I was eighteen, came back, I went to visit my
grandma's and there was some zemas in the refrigerator. I
(38:20):
was like, yo, it's demas. We don't drink, and my
aunt was like, you don't drink.
Speaker 1 (38:25):
I was like, what, No, our whole life it was this.
Speaker 3 (38:27):
She was like, well, we don't talk about it, but
keV come on, we drink. And then when I started
working in the church, I realized pastors are like, well,
this is how I live my life, but I don't
want to mess up to the flock, so I do this.
And I think most people's problem a lot of problems
with Christianities. People have one life they live as a
Christian and one life they actually live.
Speaker 1 (38:44):
So I refused to live two separate lives.
Speaker 3 (38:46):
So I got in trouble with the Christian community because
I went to the reunion concert which was at the Forum,
and I was drinking and I made a realio brother
of Kirk, Franklin, Delana and the Addams. They were at
the Forum and I was drinking. I made a video.
I was like, oh my gosh, I'm drinking it at
the gospel concert. This is incongruent. And I was I
thought it was funny and they were so, man.
Speaker 1 (39:05):
How dare you drink? How dare you?
Speaker 3 (39:07):
I was like this, this is at the Forum. Like
I saw Bruno martinet two weeks ago. The line was
long at the bar. She said, oh my god, it
was water thirty seconds ago, but now it's wine. Jesus, Yeah,
I didn't think of that. But I'm like, I'm not
gonna act like I don't drink. You don't like I'm
(39:28):
not gonna present one way and then be a different person.
I'm not gonna act like I don't say nigga. Because
the people be like that behind the scenes, behind the
pool pit, but they think people can't take it, so they,
you know, they present one way. So now you have
two different versions of people that are there. And I
was I was a kid, you know, when I was
young and saved. My whole Christianity was trying to be
more saved than everybody else. That's how I found my Christianity.
(39:50):
That's what I was taught even forget like sinners more
save than other save people. So I've let all that go.
This is how I live my life. I'm a Christian
who's also come to be not a Christian comedian. And
the difference there is, like, I don't every joke's not
gonna be about God, church and all that type of stuff,
because what I've learned is even if you do that,
it's still not gonna be enough because some people don't
think you should make jokes about God at all. So
(40:10):
you'll never be saved enough, You'll never be good enough.
So forget it. I'm just gonna live my life, do
my thing. If you like it, you like it. If
you don't, you don't. You know man, the reason I
love that, and I just thought about this for whatever reason,
I often wonder, like how much can faith stifle somebody's
creativity Because.
Speaker 1 (40:26):
God gave you these gifts?
Speaker 3 (40:27):
Yeah, but then if you look at the structure of religion,
the structured religion, it'll make you think like you're not
supposed to express those gifts. But what if I express
those gifts for God one thousand percent. That's why PJ.
Morton was so instrumental in me as a comedian, because
he had that exact problem. He wrote a book called
why Can't I Sing About Love? Because he's played the keyboard.
His dad's a big Bishop, Paul Morton Senior, so he's
(40:48):
supposed to be a preacher. But he was like, I
don't want to be, nor do I think that's my gift.
I want to sing R and B. I want to
sing about love. So he wrote a book He's saying
about R and B. He got a lot of flack
from the church, but he's still and did his thing.
End up being in room five and still did his thing.
And he also wrote gospel. And when I was getting fired,
he wrote the song called let Go and Let God
(41:09):
that Dwayne would sing, and I listened to it every
single day because I'm like, I'm about to lose. I
make jokes about it now, but in the real time,
I was like, bro, I don't know how to pay
my mortgage. Like our life was built off two incomes.
So I realized that everybody's gift isn't necessarily used in
the church the church building, but that doesn't mean it's
not used for God right. Jasmine Sullivan was almost signed
(41:33):
to a gospel label. I think that would have been
a waste of her talents. I think she belongs in
R and B and the story she tells Hotels album
is one of my favorite albums.
Speaker 1 (41:43):
Love that album needs to be heard the way it is.
Speaker 3 (41:46):
I think it would have been not I don't want
to say a way so I'd be too harsh. But
I think she's doing what she should be doing better
for a gift. It's a better fit for her gifts.
And I think God expresses himself in creativity in all disciplines, scientists, chef's.
Speaker 1 (41:59):
Painters like.
Speaker 3 (42:00):
It doesn't all have to be in the church, artists like,
there's so many different ways. I don't think you need
to force it into the building of the church. You
can still give back your gift to God by expressing
it however it however it comes out. So I think
that's what I do. And I think it's dope that
I can go from the church to a comedy club
to a theater. My goal is still to perform Madison
Square Garden Like, I don't want to perform at churches only,
(42:21):
but I want to perform at church because that's how
I grew up and it's a good time. And I
can also charge less for tickets because it's not as
expensive as working with you know, the big three promoters,
Like I could just charge you direct there's no parking issues,
so there's also benefits to the consumer. But I think, yeah,
the whole goal is to create and express yourself creatively,
but that doesn't always have to end up being in.
Speaker 4 (42:41):
A church because you're going actually into churches? Are you
do you? Like are you asking whye be? Like, hey,
is this Joe going to offend? Like are you more careful?
Because I've never really seen you get in too much
shoggle for your jos and you have like one little
incident with the the cosplayed girl. Yeah yeah, yeah that
and you apologize for that. Sure, Like what is your like,
(43:01):
what's that process? Because the church people about church get.
Speaker 3 (43:06):
Yeah, believe forgiveness that will cancel.
Speaker 5 (43:12):
Forget the right church forgiveness.
Speaker 3 (43:14):
But I think because I grew up in church, I
tell this joke but it's actually not a joke. But
the first thirty years of my life, I only miss
Sunday service three times. One was like y two K
one because we're moving, And probably the other one was
because I was born that week. But other than that,
I was in church. So being in church all that much,
I understand the rules of politics where the line is,
how to navigate it. Like what you can say on
(43:36):
Sunday morning isn't what you can say on Wednesday, isn't
what you can say on a comedy show, isn't what
you can say. If it's a marriage, you know, enrichment.
If it's just married couples, you can get away with
almost anything. If it's in the church, because we marry,
you know, marriage better is underfiled. So living in that
world and being a part of that world has taught
me what the line is more than anything else. I
(43:56):
think if you didn't grow up there, you won't know
what the line is and what you can and can't say,
because it, like in comedy, that line is ever changing.
So I think that my upbringing is what allows me
to navigate it so well.
Speaker 1 (44:08):
And congratulations church you got picked up.
Speaker 3 (44:10):
Yeah, Churchy got picked up for season two BT plus
shout out to spring Hill, Jamal Henderson Leslie. They were
very instrumental in getting that picked up. On season one
and season two So we just finished production on that
in January. We're editing it now and it'll be out,
I believe in June or July. And similar to you know,
(44:32):
keep your distance, my goal there is to not only
tell my churchy story right, because to me, there wasn't
an authentic story about Church from a person who grew
up in church. You can always tell because they always
have in Hollywood, they always have pipe organs and pipe organs.
Do not know Black Church has a pipe organ. It's
a hamm and B three organ. If there's an organ,
they don't even really make them anymore like they used to.
(44:53):
So if you hear that pipe organ and they have
the choir robes on them, like y'all not paying attention
to Church no more. People don't even wear choir robes
like that. But same thing I did with stand Up
is what I did with Churchie, giving actors opportunities that
they hadn't got Mark jp Hood, brilliant actor, hadn't had
a chance to lead in this season. We got Quinn Walters,
who's been acting but she always gets cast as like
(45:13):
the sultry it's a ductress, but she's hilarious, So in
this role she's playing funny to hear more. Comedian friend
of mine who went on tour me for two years,
three years.
Speaker 1 (45:24):
He's a brilliant actor.
Speaker 3 (45:25):
He's been like four episodes of Abbot Elementary takes acting
very seriously, so he's a good actor. Better actor than
I am by a lot. He's in there. Love JJP
Jasmine Love another actor who start off as an influencer
in Hollywood hasn't given her her role where she could
be an actor in a series regular, So because of churches.
She's got that Lexi who's a brilliant gospel artist. Melissa
(45:50):
her first car. We used to play Lexi's music. But
she's actually a brilliant actress as well. She's in there.
Tabitha Brown pulled up for four or five episodes this season.
Tony Baker, comedian friend of mine. All these people can act.
Oh yeah, that's my brother. That is my dog. Anthony
Alfonsi a brilliant actor. So all these people are getting
(46:11):
an opportunity through me. And that's just in front of
the camera. Behind the camera. Jared who is our director.
This is his first time directing some TV series. He's
got this incubator with Jordan Peel that he's a part
of Rich Washington, who works for me now used to
work for CIA. He was on an agent's desk working
(46:31):
in TV department reading movie scripts all day for years.
He was like, called me one day he was on
my team when I was with CIA. He was like,
I want to I think I want to quit my
job and come work for you and help you build
Kevin on Stage Studios and he was instrumental in season two.
He helped write season two. Sydney Castile comedian friend of
mine wrote season one with me, but black women behind
(46:53):
the camera, black women in sound, black women, costume designers,
makeup artist hair all. I hired his many black people
as I possibly could, because to me as big of
a problem in Hollywood, racism is a huge problem. Nepotism
is much more dangerous because nepotism, they're not even thinking
I'm gonna exclude you. It's who am I gonna hire.
(47:15):
It's who I know and who's in my network. Who
If I need a podcast person, I hit Charlomagne, He's
more than likely gonna hit a black podcaster. If I
hit you for a DJ, you're more like because that's
just who you know. You're not thinking let me exclude
white people. You're thinking of who do I know? And
that's how Hollywood works. Then people go to AFI and
you get in there and they hire the people they
went to school with. So at all deaf, I realize
(47:38):
I can hire black people because that's my network, and
that's my goal is to hire as many black people
as humanly possible. It's give as many opportunities as possible
and then let people go and be im. That's probably
the best thing I learned from Russell Simmons was don't
try to hold onto people's talent. Don't like, oh, I
gave you this opportunity, so I'm gonna hold you here
like he let Will Smith go from man him and
(48:01):
he blossomed. So I learned like, however long we can
work together, let's work together. But if you get if
you blow up, blow up, I'm not going to take
credit for your work because I didn't create you. Trevor
Wallace is a huge white comedian.
Speaker 1 (48:14):
Huge.
Speaker 3 (48:15):
He was my intern at all death uh. He ran
social media. He blew past me and I'm like, brother,
go ahead, do your thing. Josh was my intern as well.
He didn't get me a turkey sandwich want to ask
him on the first day.
Speaker 4 (48:27):
So many people came from that all dev digital space,
though it was when I first went to LA that
was like, you have.
Speaker 5 (48:33):
To work with all digital if you're going anywhere.
Speaker 3 (48:36):
Reasons Yeah, smoking reasons. He did doctor reasons there. He
actually shout out to him. He was in My Boy's
first skit Where's My Milk on Austin's TV, which was
huge for us. But yeah, that was like our version
of in Living Color. Obviously very different, but digital media wise,
that was like where the black culture was for that
(48:58):
period of time. People still run up to me talk
about Roast Me. I've been on Roast Me in five
six years. But people watch YouTube like I watch old
episodes of the Office or Different World. People watch old
episodes of Roast Me in Great Taste like they just
came out, so that you know, continues to help those
people even today. Well, Congratulations always said what you build
(49:19):
only benefits you.
Speaker 1 (49:20):
It's not big enough. Yeah, you building some big things.
Break you. Thank you, Thank you.
Speaker 2 (49:24):
Kevi on stage, ladies and gentlemen, and how can they
follow you?
Speaker 3 (49:26):
Kevi on stage everywhere, whatever platform you're on, search Kevi
on stage, I should pull up all right.
Speaker 1 (49:31):
Well, appreciate you. It's Kevin on stage. Appreciate your Breakfast Club.
Good morning, wake that ass up in the morning. The
Breakfast Club
Wake that ass up in the morning. Breakfast Club Morning.
Speaker 2 (00:04):
Everybody is stej Envy, Jess Hilarious, Charlamagne the guy. We
are the Breakfast Club Lone, the Rosa fhillin in for
just this morning. And we got a special guest in
the building. We have Kevi on stage. Yes, y'all, how
you feeling good?
Speaker 1 (00:16):
Morning?
Speaker 3 (00:17):
Good?
Speaker 1 (00:17):
I've been wanting to hear that for a long time.
How are you, my brother? I'm good man.
Speaker 3 (00:22):
Thank you guys for having me. You know, there's some
people who might know. I got a two part question.
Number one, who is Kevi on stage? And who is
Kevin Fredericks.
Speaker 1 (00:29):
Oh it's a good question.
Speaker 3 (00:30):
Uh, Kevi on stage is probably the performative version of
Kevin Fredericks. Kevi on stage is a comedian entertainer. Uh
pretty much do anything to make you laugh. I feel
like Kevin Fredericks is a father, husband, business person as well.
Speaker 1 (00:49):
You know that's it. I think it's two sides.
Speaker 3 (00:52):
When I'm when I'm at home, I'm Kevin Fredericks, right,
gotta make my family laugh.
Speaker 1 (00:55):
But I'm not like Yo, let me see this boo
booty boo, BITI boo.
Speaker 3 (00:58):
You know what I'm saying, But when I leave that house,
I'm kept on stage, you know what I'm saying. So yeah,
I think that's the difference.
Speaker 2 (01:05):
How'd you get into comedy, especially coming from the church. Yeah,
I think clean quote unquote clean comic.
Speaker 3 (01:10):
Yes. And when I say clean, I just don't cuss,
like yeah, because clean has different connotations, like you can
be clean where there's no vulgar material at all, you
don't touch certain subjects. I really just don't cuss. I
talk about everything else in my life, everything else that
I think is funny. I just don't cuss. I say
nigga too though, Like I just as a church kid,
(01:31):
I could not cuss. My mom would rather me bring
home a child than to cuss. Really, yes, cussing was
so bad, and you know a lot of church are
way worse. Well, what's a little baby amongst friends and family?
You have a baby, but cussing in the house. She
was like, absolutely not. And I didn't trust myself to
cuss at school and not cuss at home like most
of the church kids did. So I pretty much did
(01:53):
you know, I premrial sex. I just never cussed. But
don't practice bad habits, no, No, I just never I
felt like they would catch me slipping. And that's actually
really a tool for me in comedy. I think a
lot of times you got to work a little bit
harder if you ain't cussing. Sometimes cuss words are just funny,
so you just throw it out there and it's funny.
But to answer your question, my comedy started in church,
(02:13):
like making people laugh in church. After church, my Grandma'd
be like, do that thing Sister Daniel's did when she
fell over, do that, do that person's shower, do how
that person preached, And I would get to stay in
the living room a little longer around grown folks and
stuff like that. So once I realized, oh, this gets
me attention, this gets me perks, I started leaning into that.
And you know black churches where a lot of performers
(02:35):
get their first start. So I did a talent show
in church sixteen and I was like bitten by the
bug then, and then shout out to Nate Jackson, a
real big comedian. Now he had a comedy club in Tacoma,
and he let me do twenty twenty five minutes at
his club every Thursday for like two years. And that's
why I really really honed my craft. After college, I
was just going there every week and a lot of
(02:56):
time we had a lot of regulars there, so I
couldn't do the same material, so I'd have to like
do new jokes, get better, do new stuff. So I
think that's the church gives me the performance. The club
helped me sharpen my tool. Why do you keep saying, like,
what made you keep saying the N word? Because I'm
trying not to say the N word no more? So
what made you not curse but say the N word?
You know, that wasn't a cuss word to me, Like
(03:18):
there are certain words.
Speaker 2 (03:19):
That my mom say, sell them is saying it for
fifteen years. He's been trying to stop saying.
Speaker 1 (03:26):
Hard not You know what I'm saying, it's hard not
to use it.
Speaker 3 (03:30):
I think as a black kid, all my friends were
saying nigga. It was in black culture movies, TV. And
it wasn't a cuss word. To my mom, she wasn't
on the list like some people couldn't say lie, like
my wife. She couldn't say lie in the you know,
in the house my family, pissed off wasn't a cuss word,
and nigga just didn't really bother them. I didn't say
that a lot at home, but it didn't raise no flags.
(03:52):
So there was like the one curse word I could say.
So I said it so much.
Speaker 1 (03:56):
It's always a person telling you not to say lie.
That's the biggest lie. I don't want you to say.
They don't follow me out, and.
Speaker 2 (04:02):
We don't get we don't say live, we don't say fat,
we don't say ugly in the house.
Speaker 1 (04:06):
Yeah, those words.
Speaker 4 (04:11):
My mom cussed me out, like really what? Oh no,
she's a sweet, humble lady now, but.
Speaker 1 (04:18):
You should have led it with that part.
Speaker 4 (04:21):
Because they met her and they'd be like, what I'm
trying to know? It was yeah, she changed, Oh yeah,
and my grandmother was locked into the church now.
Speaker 2 (04:29):
So yeah, you know, I wanted to ask you about
you know, we had Big Mac Hash something producers and
he was talking about what you did during COVID. He
was very impressed of how COVID, who had everybody locked down,
you made it into a business and a successful business.
Speaker 1 (04:44):
He said, he's seeing you.
Speaker 2 (04:45):
Go from small house to medium house, the bigger house,
the different car to this, this, this, that and the other.
So telling people what you did during COVID, that was
something that was totally different.
Speaker 3 (04:53):
Yeah, there were some other things in there, but that
was the most visible. Shout out the spectrum, appreciate y'all.
Keep your distance comedy was our COVID comedy relief situation.
So what I did in La we obviously everything was
locked down during COVID, and then we got the notification
(05:14):
that you could have up to twenty five people outside
social distance two people here, six feet two more people.
And I could never do the zoom comedy. I could
never get into it because comedy is about timing and
that's short delay from zoom response. It threw me off.
Some people could do it. I just I needed instant reaction,
know if it's funny or not. So once they did that,
(05:34):
I have the idea of like, okay, if we get
people to come outside. Luckily LA is warm and it
doesn't rain that often, and we could split them up
and get twenty five people. I'll bring the comics, comics in,
we'll do COVID testing, put them up, and we'll live
stream the comedy. Because we didn't have nothing to do,
like we watching verses and you know, me and my
wife was like we was having like five parties for
verses I was like, we really, she's making nachos, you
(05:56):
know what I'm.
Speaker 5 (05:57):
Saying, We like really getting parties.
Speaker 3 (05:58):
Yeah, like them Verse was part of the early Verses.
That was the only thing to look forward to, like
new interesting. Didn't even care about the quality. It was like, oh,
Versus coming on. So I was like, what if we
do that for comedy And that's basically where the idea
came from.
Speaker 1 (06:12):
Did you run out an alley? It was like the.
Speaker 3 (06:15):
Back parking lot of our partner's studio, Like it was
a back parking lot. I mean, we literally had twenty
five thirty people max, maybe thirty five including the comics,
and we needed the comics. We were like, y'all stand
here too, so we have as much audience as possible.
We had to COVID test every single person. It was
like two hundred dollars a test. It was crazy expensive.
But yeah, I flew all these comics in and I
(06:37):
we livestream their sets. We have like six comedians, probably
did over one hundred and fifty micro specials over the
two year period. Introduced a lot of people to a
lot of comics, to a lot of different people, A
lot of people to a lot of different comics. A
lot of comics'.
Speaker 1 (06:52):
Biggest YouTube video is there to keep your.
Speaker 3 (06:55):
Distance special And it was like it was like my
proudest moment to create opportunities to see black comedians put
some money in their pockets, give them some tape to
show the comedy clubs. Like I was ask them like, yo,
can you send me your tape so I could market it,
and they like, bro, I don't have no tape because
most comedy clubs are drabbing dark and you know it's
not quality. So we gave them their specials to do
(07:16):
with what they wanted afterwards, so they put them up
on YouTube or chop them up and make reels and
it was fantastic. Dave Chappelle actually executed it first, like
I have the idea, and then I saw him do
it in Ohio, so that was like, oh great, now
I can say it's just how Dave did that, That's
how we're going to do it.
Speaker 2 (07:32):
So I said, you have no less than ten thousand
people on the stream each every other week.
Speaker 1 (07:37):
Right right, it was every other week. That was early COVID.
Speaker 3 (07:39):
So as guidelines relaxed, the ticket sales went down. So
at the top at the peak of it was ten
thousand tickets, fourteen thousand tickets, and we were averaging about
ten thousand tickets. And that's like just people who purchased,
but people were having basically five parties. They'd have ten
to fifteen people. So it was like almost closed closed
circuit TV parties. But as each state, once Atlanta was outside,
(08:02):
then it was less than Texas, it was less. But
we did it for about two years straight and it
was it was fantastic. And now that's on Amazon. You
can go watch those all those specialist on Amazon.
Speaker 5 (08:12):
First of all, your partnerships go crazy.
Speaker 4 (08:14):
Yeah, because you had for really Amazon then, So I
was gonna ask you after that. I know you did
something with Patreon with the women in comedy because you
forgot the women a lot in the pandemic.
Speaker 1 (08:23):
No, I did it. I didn't forget the women.
Speaker 3 (08:25):
I made sure there was at least one black woman
and often two or three on every single show.
Speaker 1 (08:32):
Okay, because I had.
Speaker 5 (08:35):
Well, I don't think I paid attention to that.
Speaker 1 (08:37):
Yeah, because y'all don't see black women. No, that's not
want to say.
Speaker 4 (08:43):
I know you from all that digital So I've seen
you work with so many women and like different people
I didn't think about that, but when I was researching
for this, I saw something in essence where you would
talk about one of your homegirls. Was like, yo, like
where the women that like? Can we like hello? And
then you did the partnership with Patreon.
Speaker 1 (08:59):
Yeah, so Patreon reached out to me.
Speaker 3 (09:00):
I was like, what do you want to do and
to continue my efforts to support black women because he.
Speaker 1 (09:05):
Was already already like black women don't see each other.
I understand this all the time. Honestly.
Speaker 3 (09:11):
The truth is the ratio of comics it's probably eight
to two men to women anyway. So to make sure
I had a black woman, I had to like, I
was flying them out. At first, I was only doing
LA comics, but after I ran out of LA Women,
I was flying them out, flying women from New York
and Atlanta, every women in LA Black Women comics.
Speaker 1 (09:33):
Yeah. But yeah, when Patron reached out there like what
do you want to do? You want to do a special?
Speaker 3 (09:36):
And I was like, I want to produce stand up
specials for the black women I think are funny. So
so that's what we did. We had an amazing time
and mel Mitchell, Tyd Davis para parasas. I think Grace
came from New York. Jarlyn indescribable did some time. And
there's one person I'm forgetting off the top of him. No,
I said, tie, all that might have been in. They
(09:59):
did great. My shout out to my Patreon, the stage crew,
they support keep your distance, they support Patreon, they buy
a lot.
Speaker 1 (10:07):
So you know what.
Speaker 3 (10:08):
The reason I asked that is because a lot of
times we ask for things, but we don't support. Yeah, oh,
that's that's something black people do. We ask for things,
say well, we want more black women, But then do
you actually watch the Black Women, especially when she does it?
You watch your sitcom, you watch her cable news show.
Speaker 1 (10:22):
That I do.
Speaker 4 (10:24):
People support you though, like you get a lot especially online,
like you've mastered the comedian that comes from like the stage,
but like also is online. But people will take you
very serious and real sefely very serious. It's hard to
be in that middle space sometimes.
Speaker 3 (10:35):
Yeah, I think I totally agree. I think they're two
different skills and you need to know how to do
both of them. And for me, the internet's always been
a tool to get you to come to shows and
do other stuff. Like I'm just trying to get your attention.
But you have to be funny on the Internet and
you have to be funny in real life. A lot
of times comedians are on the Internet but they haven't
put the time and stand up. I actually did the reverse,
(10:57):
but I wasn't making videos on the Internet, so people
didn't know I was stand up. So then I was like, Okay,
I need to remind people. So a lot of times
people come to my show it's their first stand up
comedy show ever that they've ever attended. So I think
few people have mastered both because they both require immense
level of training in that discipline. You know what I'm saying.
Even if you're funny, it might not necessarily translate to
(11:18):
the Internet because you need to know how to be
funny on that specific platform. Each platform has their own identity.
Twitter funny is not the same as Instagram TikTok. They
all have their own identities and comedic abilities. Some stuff
translates to all five, but and it's all different budgets
of money. If you're able to do stand up, you'll
do your stand up. If you're able to do stuff
on social media, you do social media.
Speaker 1 (11:38):
You can do both. Get it off absolutely get brand deals.
Speaker 3 (11:41):
Some platforms pay use you know, brand deals, live show
money like that was the other thing about keep your distance.
It was like I went from touring and selling out
to not being able to tour. So I still got
my family, I got employees and stuff. So I'm like,
I need a way to generate this income because people
looking for me to pay their bills. So switching to that,
you know, keep your distance was also just that's the
(12:02):
Kevin Fredericks of it. That's the business mindset of like
we gotta pivot and also knowing that that business is
not gonna last long term. Some people can go outside again,
They're gonna go outside, you know what I'm saying that
nothing can compete with being able to go outside, have
dinner and go to a show or do whatever.
Speaker 4 (12:15):
Did your internet life start like with you figuring out
okay on the stage? I also should do internet? Did
that begin during the all depth digital time? Like what
was the first like internet breakthrough for you?
Speaker 3 (12:25):
It was prior, prior prior to even moving to LA.
It was back in the day. Had a group called
the Playmakers, me and my brother and my friend and
we used to actually do physical plays like ty We
were trying to be Tyler Perry, but we lived in Tacoma, Washington,
and you just not gonna be able to stand up
a play in Tacoma. There's not enough black people, there's
not enough stuff. Tyler starting in Atlanta, so he was
(12:46):
able to his audience was there more so. I remember
we were struggling. We had lost its investor. We lost
forty thousand dollars in his money, like he and first
we put up on ourselves. We're doing like high schools
and churches that adin't go nowhere, got investor give us
forty thousand dollars. We didn't make that man dying with
his money back. So next time we got twenty thousand
dollars and we flew this Tyler Perry promoter out. He
was like, Yo, this place is great, Like Tyler would
(13:07):
love to see this. You guys got to stand it
up in Oakland. We're like, okay, what do we gotta do?
Like you're gonna help us? He was like, yes, I'm
going to help you set up in Oakland. All you
need is three hundred thousand dollars.
Speaker 1 (13:15):
Three hundred thousand dollars, I said, brother, I mean you
might as well be three hundred million.
Speaker 3 (13:19):
At that point, I probably had seven hundred and fifty
six dollars in my account like be, and my wife
made just enough to pay those bills. So I remember
watching like Billy Currell's at that time. He did things
Black Girls Say. Matt already been watching YouTube, Lisa and Dormtainment,
Tim Chyna, wrong Suit, all those people. But it didn't
seem like a viable business for me because I didn't
(13:40):
know how that worked. But Billy Sorel's is a comedian
and I knew and he was the His video did
like nine million views. So I thought, if we can
go on the internet and make people laugh, then when
we go do our plays, then people will be like, oh,
I saw them on the Internet.
Speaker 1 (13:53):
I'll come to the place.
Speaker 3 (13:54):
Then as we started first two videos, he did things
Black Church Girl Say and Things Black Parents Say. Both
went really viral a million views at that time. That
was a lot of views on use still a lot,
but that happens more often now than it used to,
And at that moment, I was like, Oh, actually, the
Internet is a thing of its own, Like if we
just do that that we should focus on building that,
(14:15):
and then churches would bring us out. We would do
stand up all over the United States doing me and
my brother and aunt. And then after that, I was
like I need to do my own stuff. Like pretty
much instantly, I was like, I don't want to get
boxing and just doing church stuff because then that's all
people will.
Speaker 1 (14:28):
Let you do.
Speaker 3 (14:29):
So I started my kevil on Stage YouTube page, which
is almost at a million followers, which has been a
golden mine from the very beginning, but it's been harder
because the algorithm doesn't encourage you to subscribe like it
used to, because it's all just like recommended. But the
internet became the goal and since then I probably been
making a video every single day. So to answer your question,
it was those two videos and then all deaf. When
(14:53):
I moved to La I got a job there, and
actually that was kind of tough because I had to
take a step back from being town because they were like,
you are here to nurture the other people. You ain't
gonna build your channel, you ain't gonna do none of
that stuff. You do all that on your own time.
And I got fired from Boeing previously, and I was like,
I can't get fired from noo jobs no more. And
it was hard to get a job in LA, so
(15:13):
I made sure I focused on those talent company Boeing,
the playing company I was in there.
Speaker 1 (15:21):
You did quality control them.
Speaker 3 (15:22):
I have nothing to do with them flying, I have
nothing to do with them crashing.
Speaker 1 (15:26):
I was doing a little bit of working there.
Speaker 3 (15:28):
I ain't do much in there, but All Death helped
me to develop other talent and help me to develop shows.
Speaker 1 (15:34):
Like my job.
Speaker 3 (15:35):
I was ahead of talent and head of talent and
head of creative at All Death at the same time.
So I helped, you know, bring talent in, develop them
and also help develop in those shows. So roast me
great taste. All those shows were developed underneath me. They
were not my ideas, like Patrick and Teddy and to
hear in all those groups, you know Meg, they would
(15:56):
create the shows, but we brainstorm and stuff like that.
So you have to wrestle. Was Russelling at that time.
He's the one who hired me. Russell hired me. He
called me. I had a meeting with him and I
was pitching a movie and he was like, we don't
want to do this, but why don't you come run
talent for me? Called me as I left his house
and I started like within two weeks and now.
Speaker 4 (16:14):
We're the guy there too. Like I did a couple
episodes of The Cooler Yeah, and like I remember like
people just the way that they talked about you and
just y'all team in the office. I was like, Okay,
if you do this, like you make it next and
then you see like to hear like everybody's everywhere.
Speaker 1 (16:29):
Now.
Speaker 4 (16:29):
How impactful was Russell Simmons on your career then and
just being at all that digital.
Speaker 3 (16:33):
Oh, I think the opportunity that he gave me was
life changing.
Speaker 1 (16:38):
Like skill wise, I should not have had that job.
Speaker 3 (16:42):
Absolutely lied in my interview about the teams I ran,
oh man, I had thirty tailers here, people that Boeing,
I had this many people working under me.
Speaker 1 (16:49):
Nobody reporting to God thought that. I mean, you know
what I'm saying. He probably like, you gotta get it,
how you fit in? You know what I'm saying. He understood.
Speaker 3 (16:56):
I might not have been his proudest moment of me,
but you know what I'm saying, I gotta be kids,
you know what I'm saying. So, but I was a
firm believer. You give me this job, I'll do this job.
I might not be prepared but I went in there
and got it together. But yeah, without that job, it
was like digital media college for me. Like I learned
how to make six episodes in a day.
Speaker 1 (17:17):
It's funny.
Speaker 3 (17:17):
We just went to WrestleMania last night, I mean raw
wrestling last night, and we were early and I saw
them taping other shows ahead of time, and I was like,
that's that's efficient, Like that's how we would have thought
of that. You got these people here, you can shoot.
They shot I think speed before they shot Saturday night
to Maine event. You have all this talent here cycling
them through. We was making great tastes, were making six
eight episodes a day because we didn't have a lot
(17:39):
of money, so we had to learn how to maximize
our time and our budget efficient, be efficient with content,
with ideas, how to make more with less. So that
type of thinking is what trained me to be more
successful eventually start my own app Patreon. Like that's how
I was taught to do that. Actually, before that, I
was working at Awesome, this TV, which is the kid
(18:00):
version of All Death. My kids were Jaz and Jojo.
They had to show on Awesome. It's called crazy, I say.
So I learned from them unpaid. I went and sat
in their staff meetings when we moved down and I
was like, hey, can I just come sit in the
staff meetings. So for two years before or like a
year before I got to even at All Death, I
would be at their staff meetings every day, just taking notes,
seeing how they thought about stuff, seeing how they did
(18:21):
brand deals. So when I went to All Death, I
had all that knowledge from awesomeness, So I knew what
I was talking about in the interview, and I actually
knew how to do the job.
Speaker 1 (18:28):
I just had never done the job.
Speaker 2 (18:29):
Who was your inspiration as comedians coming up?
Speaker 1 (18:32):
Uh? Stand up wise?
Speaker 3 (18:35):
Uh? Probably my biggest was Arnest Jay's probably my favorite comedian.
He's just so physical. He didn't care whatever. He was
gonna make you laugh. Sindbad was gonna make you laugh.
He didn't cuss, But Simbad doesn't cuss, but you don't
notice he doesn't cuss, which was what my goal was.
I don't want you to like be like, oh, this
is non cussing guy's funny. I wanted people to leave
(18:55):
and be like.
Speaker 1 (18:56):
I don't think I even heard him cuss.
Speaker 3 (18:57):
And that's how Simbad was. Ernie Mack probably made me
laugh harder than I ever did his death comedy Jam special,
and me and my wife saw him in Kings of Comedy,
and that set is probably the most flawless stand upset
to me, Eddie Murphy as a goal of how big
a comedian could be. And then more recently Kevin Hart,
like Kevin Hart is funny, and Sony disciplines so to
(19:20):
be funny on stand up podcast, TV movies like that's
how I see myself with the regular conversation just interviewing. Yeah,
Like to me, his offhand comedy is some of his
best work.
Speaker 1 (19:31):
Cod is Balls.
Speaker 3 (19:32):
He's funny, but you get him in the interview sion
scenario and you realize just how funny he is.
Speaker 1 (19:37):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (19:37):
So I think all those people, probably even Jonathan Slocum
was probably the first one, though he's a black church comedian.
He had a tape called laugh Yourself to Life that
my parents listen to all the time to and from church,
And that's the person who probably made me think that
you could even do stand up related to church things
and it could be funny. When did you start noticing
the comedy in the church, Like do you remember that
(19:58):
first thing that you saw in the church that you
found funny. Oh manly, there's so many things. Sister Lewis
was Sister Lewis in our church. She might have been
not laughing.
Speaker 1 (20:10):
You ain't say God, bless God rest her. So I
didn't want to bring it down.
Speaker 2 (20:14):
But I'm like, she got to be about one hundred
and five Lewis.
Speaker 1 (20:18):
God, Sister Lewis went on to be with him.
Speaker 5 (20:21):
But it is so tabbern at.
Speaker 3 (20:25):
But she worked like two jobs, but she loved church
and she could never stay awake, so to wake herself up,
she would yell out.
Speaker 1 (20:32):
So she fell asleep.
Speaker 3 (20:33):
God is amazing like that, and everybody would look me,
it's your sister Lewis. But she'd do what when you're
preaching in the most inopportune moments, she would wake up
and scream out. And I was like, nobody is saying
anything about this. So when we get home and be
like yeah, and then we'd be eating, then I'll be like, ye're.
Speaker 1 (20:48):
Never Sister Lewis, God.
Speaker 3 (20:49):
Is amazing and my grandma and then would bust out laughing.
And she did that from like my whole childhood, like
ten years straight. Nobody ever stopped her. Nobody ever said, hey,
it's okay not to come. You can, you know, rest.
So that's probably the first thing I noticed that was funny.
And that's the first thing I I copied.
Speaker 1 (21:04):
Did you do that joking for the house? Oh? Yeah?
And she thought it was hilarious. And she could never
pronounce my name. My name is Kevin. She'd be like.
Speaker 3 (21:10):
Coln and I would always be like cow. And they,
my family thought that was hilarious. My great grandma was hilarious.
She had a little, you know, five o'clock shadow. Yeah,
she was. She was big, prickly. She had George Clooney,
same beard like that. Yeah, she was bearded up.
Speaker 1 (21:27):
You said you had that, dude, No, I had aunts
like that.
Speaker 4 (21:29):
I had like a I don't want to call him. Well,
they're not here no more. Had I had great great
when I was younger. I remember my great great aunts
down in Virginia. They were all very prickly. O, this
is not supposed.
Speaker 5 (21:39):
I always was a little confused.
Speaker 3 (21:40):
Yes, so I make for my grandma like grandma, you
you got this, you got a beard. And my my my,
that was my great grandma, my grandma, my mom. My
whole family thought that was funny. We had a family
of nine in a three bedroom house. So laughter is
what kept us like saying, I guess. And we had
a dog too. It was like, we don't have enough
money to feed us while we got the dog. But
(22:03):
that was that was not unusual, you know what I'm saying.
So we were poor, but we didn't know we were
poor because we were full of love and laughter. And
that's kind of how I saw the world. So that
was that was my approach.
Speaker 2 (22:13):
Now, your wife has been with you, y you'all been
together twenty years. Over twenty years, twenty years.
Speaker 3 (22:17):
May When I'm watching you tell your story, she's she's exciting,
Like when you said the forty dollars things, she.
Speaker 4 (22:24):
Was like, y'all are one of my favorite husband and
wife content duo. I mean, and I know you got
your own things that you do, but like y'all together
and it's separately. It's just like like I bounced back
and forth time.
Speaker 1 (22:36):
Thank you. She always believed, always believed God. You both
always believed. I don't know if she.
Speaker 3 (22:46):
Was always believing in my version of how to get
to things, because like when I went, for example, when
I wanted to move to La, I was like I
had written this whole plan that I submitted to her.
Speaker 1 (22:55):
I submitted to her.
Speaker 3 (22:56):
Yeah, yeah, that's crazy. Listen, we submit to each other.
So I was like, I want to move to La.
Here's my plan. And part of the plan was, let's
give our house up for foreclosure. Like, who cares, I'm
gonna get to La. I'm gonna get I'm gonna make
it back in cash, you know, let the house go.
Because it's during the housing crisis. I was like, everybody's
house is foreclosing. I'm gonna get it back. And she
was like, or we could rent it out. And I
was like, oh, snap, that's that's genius because it was
(23:18):
upside down at the time by like forty thousand dollars
and that.
Speaker 2 (23:23):
Forty thousand numbers stuff a lot of money.
Speaker 3 (23:27):
Yes, we couldn't even sell it, but we rented it
out and lo and behold, it's up over its value now.
So I think she she's helped me to steer those
things into a foreseeable thing. But she's never been like no.
Speaker 1 (23:41):
Now.
Speaker 3 (23:41):
The first time when I got fired from my job,
that was the first time I showed this. This is
when I got fired from Key Bank back in Washington, Jesus, how.
Speaker 1 (23:48):
Many time you got about it? Once? I quit? I
quit boring here.
Speaker 3 (23:52):
I got fired from Key Bank, and I deserved it,
Like I wasn't a good employee. I was making color
copies of comedy show flyers I left there, you know,
in the glass. I was doing all type of stuff.
Have my feet on the desk. Told my era of
retail lead manager. She was like, what are your goals
here at the company? And I told this woman who
oversaw all the banks in the PG sound, I don't.
I don't plan on working here. I'm just working here
(24:14):
till I make it. And she was like huh. And
I came home and told my wife that.
Speaker 1 (24:18):
She was like, why would you tell that lady that?
And I was like, that's that's the truth.
Speaker 3 (24:23):
Fired ninety days from that day on the dot. Literally,
I got put on a performance in planning that next monday.
Was fired ninety days from that that monday.
Speaker 1 (24:31):
Kevin moving in another direction, dreams.
Speaker 3 (24:36):
That's what they told me. They were like, you don't.
The lady was like, you don't. You don't need to
be here. Somebody who needs to be at this job
needs to be here. You're not You're not focused on that,
so I forgot where I.
Speaker 1 (24:46):
Was going with that.
Speaker 5 (24:48):
How your wife is your saving Oh yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 (24:50):
My wife is my saving girl.
Speaker 5 (24:50):
Thank you.
Speaker 3 (24:51):
Uh So that was when I told my wife I
don't actually want to do a job.
Speaker 1 (24:56):
I want to do stand up.
Speaker 3 (24:57):
So she was like, well, this is the first I'm
ever hearing of this, Like how we supposed to feed
these kids because in Tacoma that wasn't a feasible option.
Speaker 2 (25:07):
How many kids that time?
Speaker 3 (25:08):
We had two boys, two under four. I think my
son was three and one when I got fired, or
four and two somewhere around there. And she did not believe.
She just didn't see how that was feasible. So what
she said was, let's work on a plan to get there.
Part of that work includes you getting a job and
show me how you can do stand up and how
that can be feasible. But until then, let's do it.
(25:30):
So that's what we did. We made a plan. I
went and got a job. That's how I got the
job at Boying, worked on my craft, worked my job
at Boying, then didn't stand up at night. Nates became Thursdays,
and then I would do a show on Thursday, and
then somebody else on Friday, and then Thursday, Friday, Saturday,
and then Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday. And now I'm like, oh,
I'm making not much money but a couple hundred bucks
here and there, which at that time was still a
lot of money. Still today's a lot of money. Now
(25:52):
comedy's paying for a bill here and there. First it
was just gum, then gas, then the cell phone bill,
then the electric bill. So then when the Internet came
in and Austin This TV offered us, offered me a
contract to write, direct, produce, shoot and edit my kids videos.
Now comedy became income and she was like, Okay, now
(26:12):
I can see it. So that's when we moved to LA.
Works her awesomeness, got another job with Tracy Edmonds eventually
led to the job to Tracy.
Speaker 1 (26:18):
Yeah out to Tracy. Tracy Trady don't get the credit
she deserve. She doesn't another black person. She gave us.
Speaker 3 (26:23):
Actually, the fifty thousand dollars we used to move to
LA was split between the three of me and Jay,
but that's the money that we used to move to LA.
She gave us fifty thousand dollars to make ten videos
for all Right TV, which was her YouTube, her version
of like all deat Digital, which was like a faith
based thing. But then she also taught us the game, right.
She taught us everything she knew. She invited us to
the house. I ain't gonna tell your story. I ain't
(26:46):
gonna tell your story as a husband. There was a
great funny story there, but that's your story to tell.
She put us on the game. She kept up for
as long as she could. The company run out of money.
You want to tell the story, pull up a seat.
Speaker 5 (27:00):
Are so good together?
Speaker 3 (27:01):
So yeah, and then all Bright TV fell apart, and
then she was like, hey guys, it did the best
I could. And she moved on, which was actually a
lessoning of itself. It's like people can help you, but
when that money ends, it's every man for themselves. Like
she it's no hard feelings, she said, brother, they no
more money.
Speaker 1 (27:15):
Like I made the investment. She made the investment. She
moved on to her other projects.
Speaker 3 (27:18):
At that point, I learned, oh, it's not even no
heart feelings, like brother, I did what I could did
we did business. I helped you as much as I could,
but I'm not gonna reach in my personal pocket to
help you like we do business together, we shake hands,
we go our separate ways, So that was very valuable.
And also shout out to her. I don't think we
would have been able to move to LA without Tracy
Edmond because we didn't have the hard cash to move families.
It was three families, me my family, my brother's family move,
(27:39):
and Ant's family all moved. We split that fifty thousand
shot and edited the videos ourselves. Kept that money, paid
off this credit card that we had that was ten
thousand dollars that was built on stupid mistakes.
Speaker 1 (27:51):
I could take twenty nine percent interest. Oh I'd love
to have Tracy on Breakfast Club, but no, no, hit
her up.
Speaker 3 (27:57):
She's amazing like she and I agree, she doesn't the
credit she deserves for what kind of brilliant producer she is.
And just like a solid person, like she was a
solid individual. She did more than she had to for us,
and I'm eternally grateful. Still sends us Christmas cards to
this day, Like that's how solid a person she is.
Speaker 1 (28:16):
So yeah, shout out to her. You know, damn I
want to.
Speaker 3 (28:20):
Oh, you know you were talking about working at Bowing,
And the reason I think that's so powerful is because
one thing I always tell people is that there's one
hundred and sixty eight hours in a week. That's more
than enough time to chase your dreams and deal with
your reality. Yes, absolutely, I so boeing. I by the
grace of God, that job was very easy and didn't
take a lot of time. So I studied YouTube at
(28:41):
that time. That's when I really learned how what makes
a good video. I spent my time studying there, and
then when I left Boring in my first tour, I
worked at all death Monday through Thursday. I worked remote
on Friday, did stand up Friday in one city, another
city Saturday, another city Sunday, then flew back to la
on Monday morning and went to work Monday through Thursday
again for a whole year. Like I worked my job,
(29:03):
And I tell people like, you don't have to rush
to quit your job to do this, Like it should
be so obvious that you can't keep up with both.
I think a lot of people stun their growth because
they want content to be their job so bad, and
content is up and down, like how much money U
is up and down? Brandos is up and down. That
nine to five is your first real investment into yourself
and into your company. It allows you to have health insurance,
(29:25):
pay your bills, and allow your money from your business, content, comedy,
whatever to be excess money as opposed to build money,
because then people get frustrated it's not the money.
Speaker 1 (29:34):
Then you lose creativity because you're.
Speaker 3 (29:36):
Worried about survival and as you and you gotta survive first.
So if your stability is rocky, creativity can't flow if
you can't think about I'm hungry, where am I gonna eat?
Where am I gonna sleep? So once that's taken care of,
then you can flow creatively. In my opinion, and I
was not afraid to work hard, so at Boing, I
would go to the breakroom and find a nondescript wall
(29:57):
and make my video, or walk all the way to
my car on my lunch break, make a video, shoot it, edit,
edit it, post it, and then go back to my job.
Never talked about none of my videos. I wasn't gonna
make the same mistake. I made a key bank, and
I took that money and built my comedy career on
the internet and stand up.
Speaker 1 (30:13):
And worked that regular job. All at the same time.
Speaker 4 (30:16):
I see that your YouTube channel is Kevi on stage studios.
Speaker 3 (30:20):
Yeah, I have two. I have Kevi on stage, which
was the first one. Then I have Kevin on stage
studios as well.
Speaker 4 (30:24):
At what point did you understand why you needed Kevi
on stage studios? Do you get what I'm saying.
Speaker 3 (30:28):
Yeah, So it was actually there was I don't know
if y'all remember this, but Logan Paul went to this
suicide forest in Japan. Yeah, and they called what people
called the ad apocalypse. Everybody's revenue dropped. All these advertisers
pulled their money out of YouTube. So that's the first
thing that I realized. I was like, oh, this can
(30:49):
go away. And the second thing that happened there was
some sort of like child trafficking pedophile situation on YouTube,
and they had they were like doing these playlists in
finding kids, like basically kids doing innocuous things, going swimming,
and they would put like numbers in the comments. So
basically everybody who had children on their channel, all their
comments got blocked, right, and that kills the engagement, kills
(31:12):
the views. So in order to get comments back, I
started Kevin Stage Studios just to keep the engagement back
right and also to get rid of that. Logan Paul situation.
I was like, maybe I saw a new channel. It'll
be getting different ads, and then I realized, I'll just
do long form content kevil on Stage studios and things
that are not just me and Kevi on stage will
just be my personal point of view. So Kevil on
(31:34):
Stage Studios actually is much more of a healthy channel,
even with less subscribers, because that's where I put my podcasts.
Here's the thing. Shout out to that chick Angel and Joshi,
they're my co host. And here's the thing. When we
were doing bigger shows, I would put them on Kevil
on Stage studios and things like that. So that was
really the difference. So people know, if you just want me,
it's Kevin stage. You want me, or other people or
(31:56):
things that don't have me, then that would be Kevin's
Stage Studios. Which is my goal eventually to be able
to produce content for other people, not just for myself
or not featuring myself. So that's what Kemon Statee Studios came.
Speaker 1 (32:08):
Don't looks like him and Drewsy could be like brothers.
Get a lot absolutely that, No, didn't die.
Speaker 3 (32:17):
All the time, Juiceky was bald, and you know we're
both heavier set individuals. So I do get that a lot,
and also get that I look like a lot of people.
People like, look at this person like you, keV. If
you light skinning beard, nobody famous, you know what I'm saying,
Just a lot of there's a lot of light skinned,
bald men with beards, and pretty much anybody who looks
(32:37):
like that, they'd be like, you look like keV.
Speaker 1 (32:39):
You and Juicy definitely got.
Speaker 3 (32:40):
A yeah something Yeah. Shout out to Juice ky Man.
He's an amazing, amazing talent, just cultural anthropologists through comedy.
Speaker 1 (32:48):
Absolutely all the time.
Speaker 3 (32:50):
He has a way of capturing culture through his yeah
sketches one thousand percent, and it's not just black culture.
He I first saw Hi when he was doing Kyle
Rogert for frat videos and I.
Speaker 1 (33:02):
Went to a PWI.
Speaker 3 (33:03):
Yeah, I went to Washington University of Washington, and I
was like, them white boys be just like that, and
you almost forget he's acting like he is the black
dude in that white fraternity, Like we knew those guys.
But you know, the the Yan videos, the London video Tide, Yeah,
roll Tide, Like he look he could be a really
good comedic actor. I think he has the ability and creatively,
(33:27):
it's just genius to me. Like what he's done with
the Internet is amazing, very impressive. The life from the
back pew, Yeah, why'd you call it the back pew.
Speaker 1 (33:35):
The back pew, the backpew tour.
Speaker 3 (33:37):
I called it that because, like I wanted to differentiate
my style of humor versus like just church humor, because
there's a lot of reverence and you know, there's a
lot of sacrilege in church. I was a kid who
was in church every not just Sunday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday.
We literally were in Bible study, evangelistical service, prayer, choir, rehearsal,
(33:58):
then church and we always had a sittle, a black pew,
and the back pew was like we in church, but
we also plan, you know what I'm saying. So the
way we saw stuff, that's like the vision I had
of church was from the back pew. You had to go.
You don't have to sit in the front. You didn't
always have to participate in every service, but you had
to go. And so my mom actually maybe participate, but
I had to play drums or singing the choir, gir
(34:18):
all that type of stuff. But the back pew is
so people know, like, I'm gonna be in church, but
it's not gonna be every joke's not gonna be about church.
I have a whole set segment where I just talk
about regular stuff. I knew want of people to know
it's for church kids, but black people. Even if you
didn't grow up in church, you have a concept of
black church. But even never been to church, you can
still come to this show because if you've only been once,
you might probably sat on the back pew. So I
(34:39):
wanted people to have an idea of what show they
were coming to, so they would know, like, it's not
gonna be every joke about God, but it's also not
gonna be so ridiculous that you're like, I shouldn't even
be in the church. So I kind of walked that line.
So that's why I call it Life from the back People.
Are you trying to get people into the church with
your comedy? I believe that is probably one of my
subconscious goals. I don't think that's the intent, but I
feel like it is my way where I feel like
(35:01):
there's a lot of different types of ministries. There's music,
there's preaching, there's pastoring, and I think comedy is one
because a lot of black people are hurt by the church.
They have negative feelings about the church, and like, man,
this take, it's only fifty bucks and it's keV. Maybe
maybe I'll give it one more shot and then they
if they just come in and don't have a negative experience,
maybe they'll be interested in coming back. So I think
(35:22):
that's probably one of my sub goals, is to just
do my part, you know what I'm saying. Because black
church number, church in general numbers are dwindling, especially post COVID,
and I don't want the Black church to not exist anymore.
So I think absolutely that's probably part of my goal.
I think it's because of the Internet too, though, Like
I do bedside Baptists every Sunday, I'm in a Potter House
(35:43):
on Sunday morning.
Speaker 1 (35:44):
Okay, yeah, I don't think you negative.
Speaker 3 (35:46):
I think the pandemic made people realize, oh, I can
actually watch church from here and a lot of and
listen Potter's House Transformation Church. They have top tier production,
like you feel like you're watching TV. It's not just
like one guy the back with an iPhone like they have.
They have the whole team hundreds of thousand dollars in
sound equipment, video equipment, top of the line production staff
(36:08):
and services, their internets, Instagram social media is up to
par like any NFL team as well. So I do agree,
Like I don't think you have to physically go in
the church anymore. I think there's so many different ways
to engage with people the Bible app, YouTube, like Pastor
Yepj's one my favorite preachers, and I engage with him
on Instagram in two to three minute bits. Sarah Jake Roberts,
who I know you're a fan of. She's great online
(36:32):
on digital. I think she's actually so important to the
Black Church because especially how her journey started and where
it is now, Like a lot of people need to
see the Sarah Jakes Roberts at the poolpit, person who
wasn't perfect and who was outcast like I was growing
up remembering how people were talking about her, so to
see where she is now and the fact that she doesn't,
you know, shy away from her past, and how good
(36:54):
she is at speaking and communicating you know, God's word.
I think she's super important, but also be simone's an
important voice right like her turning to God, my niece
is a hood little sweet baby, and she got a
face tattooed, and she she loves be Someone's comedy. So
(37:17):
when Be Simone says I'm giving my life to Christ,
my niece sees herself in more Be Simone than Sarah
Jake's or TD Jakes. So I think everybody's journey is important,
not just the pastors. It's everybody has a role to play.
So I just want to play my role and do
my part. Now I love it because, you know, I
feel like we got to bring I know this sounds crazy,
but you got to bring God. You gotta meet people
(37:37):
where they are basic. Yeah, you know what I'm saying, Like,
you know, you can't just think people are going to
come into the church or go on YouTube. And there's
certain people like yourself, like Sarah Jakes who know how
to connect with culture. You know, Like I got Sarah
Jake's headlining the Black Effects Podcast Festival that I do
every years on April twenty six, and it's for that
reason because I know she knows how to connect with coaching. Absolutely,
(37:58):
I think you need people who speak that language. I believe.
I'm gonna tell you what really messed me up. As
a young Christian, I thought we were all playing by
the same rules. Like they said we're not drinking, were
really not drinking, and nobody's drinking, right, So I'm thinking
that's the truth. And then I'm not even talking about
the church. I'm talking about my actual family. I remember
I was eighteen, came back, I went to visit my
grandma's and there was some zemas in the refrigerator. I
(38:20):
was like, yo, it's demas. We don't drink, and my
aunt was like, you don't drink.
Speaker 1 (38:25):
I was like, what, No, our whole life it was this.
Speaker 3 (38:27):
She was like, well, we don't talk about it, but
keV come on, we drink. And then when I started
working in the church, I realized pastors are like, well,
this is how I live my life, but I don't
want to mess up to the flock, so I do this.
And I think most people's problem a lot of problems
with Christianities. People have one life they live as a
Christian and one life they actually live.
Speaker 1 (38:44):
So I refused to live two separate lives.
Speaker 3 (38:46):
So I got in trouble with the Christian community because
I went to the reunion concert which was at the Forum,
and I was drinking and I made a realio brother
of Kirk, Franklin, Delana and the Addams. They were at
the Forum and I was drinking. I made a video.
I was like, oh my gosh, I'm drinking it at
the gospel concert. This is incongruent. And I was I
thought it was funny and they were so, man.
Speaker 1 (39:05):
How dare you drink? How dare you?
Speaker 3 (39:07):
I was like this, this is at the Forum. Like
I saw Bruno martinet two weeks ago. The line was
long at the bar. She said, oh my god, it
was water thirty seconds ago, but now it's wine. Jesus, Yeah,
I didn't think of that. But I'm like, I'm not
gonna act like I don't drink. You don't like I'm
(39:28):
not gonna present one way and then be a different person.
I'm not gonna act like I don't say nigga. Because
the people be like that behind the scenes, behind the
pool pit, but they think people can't take it, so they,
you know, they present one way. So now you have
two different versions of people that are there. And I
was I was a kid, you know, when I was
young and saved. My whole Christianity was trying to be
more saved than everybody else. That's how I found my Christianity.
(39:50):
That's what I was taught even forget like sinners more
save than other save people. So I've let all that go.
This is how I live my life. I'm a Christian
who's also come to be not a Christian comedian. And
the difference there is, like, I don't every joke's not
gonna be about God, church and all that type of stuff,
because what I've learned is even if you do that,
it's still not gonna be enough because some people don't
think you should make jokes about God at all. So
(40:10):
you'll never be saved enough, You'll never be good enough.
So forget it. I'm just gonna live my life, do
my thing. If you like it, you like it. If
you don't, you don't. You know man, the reason I
love that, and I just thought about this for whatever reason,
I often wonder, like how much can faith stifle somebody's
creativity Because.
Speaker 1 (40:26):
God gave you these gifts?
Speaker 3 (40:27):
Yeah, but then if you look at the structure of religion,
the structured religion, it'll make you think like you're not
supposed to express those gifts. But what if I express
those gifts for God one thousand percent. That's why PJ.
Morton was so instrumental in me as a comedian, because
he had that exact problem. He wrote a book called
why Can't I Sing About Love? Because he's played the keyboard.
His dad's a big Bishop, Paul Morton Senior, so he's
(40:48):
supposed to be a preacher. But he was like, I
don't want to be, nor do I think that's my gift.
I want to sing R and B. I want to
sing about love. So he wrote a book He's saying
about R and B. He got a lot of flack
from the church, but he's still and did his thing.
End up being in room five and still did his thing.
And he also wrote gospel. And when I was getting fired,
he wrote the song called let Go and Let God
(41:09):
that Dwayne would sing, and I listened to it every
single day because I'm like, I'm about to lose. I
make jokes about it now, but in the real time,
I was like, bro, I don't know how to pay
my mortgage. Like our life was built off two incomes.
So I realized that everybody's gift isn't necessarily used in
the church the church building, but that doesn't mean it's
not used for God right. Jasmine Sullivan was almost signed
(41:33):
to a gospel label. I think that would have been
a waste of her talents. I think she belongs in
R and B and the story she tells Hotels album
is one of my favorite albums.
Speaker 1 (41:43):
Love that album needs to be heard the way it is.
Speaker 3 (41:46):
I think it would have been not I don't want
to say a way so I'd be too harsh. But
I think she's doing what she should be doing better
for a gift. It's a better fit for her gifts.
And I think God expresses himself in creativity in all disciplines, scientists, chef's.
Speaker 1 (41:59):
Painters like.
Speaker 3 (42:00):
It doesn't all have to be in the church, artists like,
there's so many different ways. I don't think you need
to force it into the building of the church. You
can still give back your gift to God by expressing
it however it however it comes out. So I think
that's what I do. And I think it's dope that
I can go from the church to a comedy club
to a theater. My goal is still to perform Madison
Square Garden Like, I don't want to perform at churches only,
(42:21):
but I want to perform at church because that's how
I grew up and it's a good time. And I
can also charge less for tickets because it's not as
expensive as working with you know, the big three promoters,
Like I could just charge you direct there's no parking issues,
so there's also benefits to the consumer. But I think, yeah,
the whole goal is to create and express yourself creatively,
but that doesn't always have to end up being in.
Speaker 4 (42:41):
A church because you're going actually into churches? Are you
do you? Like are you asking whye be? Like, hey,
is this Joe going to offend? Like are you more careful?
Because I've never really seen you get in too much
shoggle for your jos and you have like one little
incident with the the cosplayed girl. Yeah yeah, yeah that
and you apologize for that. Sure, Like what is your like,
(43:01):
what's that process? Because the church people about church get.
Speaker 3 (43:06):
Yeah, believe forgiveness that will cancel.
Speaker 5 (43:12):
Forget the right church forgiveness.
Speaker 3 (43:14):
But I think because I grew up in church, I
tell this joke but it's actually not a joke. But
the first thirty years of my life, I only miss
Sunday service three times. One was like y two K
one because we're moving, And probably the other one was
because I was born that week. But other than that,
I was in church. So being in church all that much,
I understand the rules of politics where the line is,
how to navigate it. Like what you can say on
(43:36):
Sunday morning isn't what you can say on Wednesday, isn't
what you can say on a comedy show, isn't what
you can say. If it's a marriage, you know, enrichment.
If it's just married couples, you can get away with
almost anything. If it's in the church, because we marry,
you know, marriage better is underfiled. So living in that
world and being a part of that world has taught
me what the line is more than anything else. I
(43:56):
think if you didn't grow up there, you won't know
what the line is and what you can and can't say,
because it, like in comedy, that line is ever changing.
So I think that my upbringing is what allows me
to navigate it so well.
Speaker 1 (44:08):
And congratulations church you got picked up.
Speaker 3 (44:10):
Yeah, Churchy got picked up for season two BT plus
shout out to spring Hill, Jamal Henderson Leslie. They were
very instrumental in getting that picked up. On season one
and season two So we just finished production on that
in January. We're editing it now and it'll be out,
I believe in June or July. And similar to you know,
(44:32):
keep your distance, my goal there is to not only
tell my churchy story right, because to me, there wasn't
an authentic story about Church from a person who grew
up in church. You can always tell because they always
have in Hollywood, they always have pipe organs and pipe organs.
Do not know Black Church has a pipe organ. It's
a hamm and B three organ. If there's an organ,
they don't even really make them anymore like they used to.
(44:53):
So if you hear that pipe organ and they have
the choir robes on them, like y'all not paying attention
to Church no more. People don't even wear choir robes
like that. But same thing I did with stand Up
is what I did with Churchie, giving actors opportunities that
they hadn't got Mark jp Hood, brilliant actor, hadn't had
a chance to lead in this season. We got Quinn Walters,
who's been acting but she always gets cast as like
(45:13):
the sultry it's a ductress, but she's hilarious, So in
this role she's playing funny to hear more. Comedian friend
of mine who went on tour me for two years,
three years.
Speaker 1 (45:24):
He's a brilliant actor.
Speaker 3 (45:25):
He's been like four episodes of Abbot Elementary takes acting
very seriously, so he's a good actor. Better actor than
I am by a lot. He's in there. Love JJP
Jasmine Love another actor who start off as an influencer
in Hollywood hasn't given her her role where she could
be an actor in a series regular, So because of churches.
She's got that Lexi who's a brilliant gospel artist. Melissa
(45:50):
her first car. We used to play Lexi's music. But
she's actually a brilliant actress as well. She's in there.
Tabitha Brown pulled up for four or five episodes this season.
Tony Baker, comedian friend of mine. All these people can act.
Oh yeah, that's my brother. That is my dog. Anthony
Alfonsi a brilliant actor. So all these people are getting
(46:11):
an opportunity through me. And that's just in front of
the camera. Behind the camera. Jared who is our director.
This is his first time directing some TV series. He's
got this incubator with Jordan Peel that he's a part
of Rich Washington, who works for me now used to
work for CIA. He was on an agent's desk working
(46:31):
in TV department reading movie scripts all day for years.
He was like, called me one day he was on
my team when I was with CIA. He was like,
I want to I think I want to quit my
job and come work for you and help you build
Kevin on Stage Studios and he was instrumental in season two.
He helped write season two. Sydney Castile comedian friend of
mine wrote season one with me, but black women behind
(46:53):
the camera, black women in sound, black women, costume designers,
makeup artist hair all. I hired his many black people
as I possibly could, because to me as big of
a problem in Hollywood, racism is a huge problem. Nepotism
is much more dangerous because nepotism, they're not even thinking
I'm gonna exclude you. It's who am I gonna hire.
(47:15):
It's who I know and who's in my network. Who
If I need a podcast person, I hit Charlomagne, He's
more than likely gonna hit a black podcaster. If I
hit you for a DJ, you're more like because that's
just who you know. You're not thinking let me exclude
white people. You're thinking of who do I know? And
that's how Hollywood works. Then people go to AFI and
you get in there and they hire the people they
went to school with. So at all deaf, I realize
(47:38):
I can hire black people because that's my network, and
that's my goal is to hire as many black people
as humanly possible. It's give as many opportunities as possible
and then let people go and be im. That's probably
the best thing I learned from Russell Simmons was don't
try to hold onto people's talent. Don't like, oh, I
gave you this opportunity, so I'm gonna hold you here
like he let Will Smith go from man him and
(48:01):
he blossomed. So I learned like, however long we can
work together, let's work together. But if you get if
you blow up, blow up, I'm not going to take
credit for your work because I didn't create you. Trevor
Wallace is a huge white comedian.
Speaker 1 (48:14):
Huge.
Speaker 3 (48:15):
He was my intern at all death uh. He ran
social media. He blew past me and I'm like, brother,
go ahead, do your thing. Josh was my intern as well.
He didn't get me a turkey sandwich want to ask
him on the first day.
Speaker 4 (48:27):
So many people came from that all dev digital space,
though it was when I first went to LA that
was like, you have.
Speaker 5 (48:33):
To work with all digital if you're going anywhere.
Speaker 3 (48:36):
Reasons Yeah, smoking reasons. He did doctor reasons there. He
actually shout out to him. He was in My Boy's
first skit Where's My Milk on Austin's TV, which was
huge for us. But yeah, that was like our version
of in Living Color. Obviously very different, but digital media wise,
that was like where the black culture was for that
(48:58):
period of time. People still run up to me talk
about Roast Me. I've been on Roast Me in five
six years. But people watch YouTube like I watch old
episodes of the Office or Different World. People watch old
episodes of Roast Me in Great Taste like they just
came out, so that you know, continues to help those
people even today. Well, Congratulations always said what you build
(49:19):
only benefits you.
Speaker 1 (49:20):
It's not big enough. Yeah, you building some big things.
Break you. Thank you, Thank you.
Speaker 2 (49:24):
Kevi on stage, ladies and gentlemen, and how can they
follow you?
Speaker 3 (49:26):
Kevi on stage everywhere, whatever platform you're on, search Kevi
on stage, I should pull up all right.
Speaker 1 (49:31):
Well, appreciate you. It's Kevin on stage. Appreciate your Breakfast Club.
Good morning, wake that ass up in the morning. The
Breakfast Club
The Breakfast Club News
Hosts And Creators
Charlamagne Tha God
DJ Envy
Jess Hilarious
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