05/18/2007
Entertainment Channel / Bullz-Eye Home
It's likely you know Rodney Carrington from his mildly successful ABC sitcom, "Rodney," that lasted two seasons, but not for his stand-up comedy act. But that's what led to the TV show in the first place, and Carrington is still touring the country supporting his CDs and DVDs, and riding the success of Rodney. Either way, the man is hilarious and we talked to him about his new album, life after TV and flipping houses.
Bullz-Eye: So how are you doing?
Rodney Carrington: I'm good man. I bought this little, well, I bought nine acres. I just sold 194 acres, the place that I've had for about five years. And then I bought this other nine acres in town. There was this little house next to it that this lady was selling after her husband died. So I bought that from her. And I've been over there doing that "Flip This House" kind of thing. I'm like Bob Vila, man. I got it all going on.
BE: You do all that yourself?
RC: No, no, no. I've got 20 guys over there working. I'm just pointing. That's all I'm doing. I'm having fun. But I'm leaving today to go to Florida for two weeks to work on new material. I don't even give a shit about working on new material. I'd rather stay here and work on this house. I'm having more fun with this shit and I don't want to go to work because I just finished all this other shit. I'm tired of comedy right now! I'm tired of it.
BE: (laughs) I hear ya. But you've got an album ("King Of The Mountains") that just came out, or it's coming out this week?
RC: Yeah, it will be out Wednesday.
BE: OK.
RC: About Wednesday morning, then we're shutting the door down on it on Thursday. So if they're going to buy it, they gotta get it on Wednesday.
BE: (laughs) All right. You know what, I've got to tell you a really funny story about Mac Davis before we start.
RC: (laughs) OK!
BE: I live here in Nashville. My wife is a huge fan of yours. She was a huge fan of the TV show. So we were at this Judge Beans BBQ having dinner and Mac Davis was there. And we're looking at him and she's going, "I know that guy. He looks really familiar." I'm like, "Yeah, he does." Finally we figured it out. And all these people in Nashville know him as a big-time songwriter. But my wife knew him as your father-in-law on "Rodney." So she goes up to him and she's like, "I just want to tell you that "Rodney" is my favorite TV show." And he goes, "Man, I only did like 10 of those."
RC: (chuckles) Yeah. Mac was fun to work with. That was a great experience. You know, when I was a kid, he was huge! And my mother had all his records. So when we had a chance to work together, that was certainly a lot of fun and a little overwhelming at times too. Because you're like, "Hey! You're Mac Davis."
BE: Right. So we saw your show here in February. You were absolutely hilarious. One of the best comics I've ever seen.
RC: Well thanks! You know, that's the tragedy in
all that -- it's all about to go back downhill. Because here I am after
that show, kind of languishing in the stand-up portion of life. So
I worked really hard after the show ended and wanted to just put together
a new record. So I worked really hard and I put it all together. The
tragic part about doing comedy in that vain, by putting it out on a
record, is that once you do you've got to start all over. And it just
takes so much time to get a show together that's an hour long that
clips along like the one that I did there in Nashville. You know, here
I am, I've been sitting with my buddy Mark (Gross), the guy that opened
the show in Nashville.
BE: Yeah, he was great too.
RC: We've been talking about material and working on bits. We wrote a Christmas song. We've been wanting to do a Christmas album, something that can come out every year. We're going down to Florida to work these two little bitty comedy clubs to try out new material and have some new stuff together by the time the record comes out. In the past, every time I've put out a CD, three or four months go by and people start coming out to the shows and they already know everything. I've learned that. So you need about 10 or 15 minutes of new stuff to kind of give them a break. They're like, "Oh god, he's got new stuff." So a couple of new songs and 15 minutes sure helps things. So that's where I'm at now. It's hard to say good-bye but once it gets on the record you go, "Well alright. I'm done with you. Now I've got to go on to something else."
BE: So what's your process for writing material like?
RC: I try to find a really good subject. After seven records, I'm sitting here going, "Man, what am I going to talk about now?" And it's overwhelming. I'm at the point now where I don't just take anything. In the early days I would look for something that's funny, anything! You know it's funny too. I heard my record, I heard a portion of "Morning Wood" on Sirius Radio the other day, and I'm like, "Who in the hell is that guy?" That record was so much nastier and raunchier than anything I've done. But I had come off of "Hanging with Rodney" and they were in a hurry to put some stuff together. I think I was just driving along in the tour bus and drinking whiskey and kind of acting like a lunatic for those years. I was just like, "I don't even recognize me. I don't recognize that guy. I don't recognize that material. I don't even think that way." Things change. But my method is I'm trying to find a really unique subject that's unique to me, or a personal thing that's happened to me. The more personal it is, the more unique it is, the more people will identify with it because you're emotionally attached to it. I don't talk about current events or politics or anything like that only because, well I don't like it. It doesn't appeal to me, but also when you make comedy records you want something that will stand the test of time that if somebody picked it up 20 years from now, they'd still laugh at it. But it's a little overwhelming. Going through the process as many times as I have of coming up with new stuff, it's tedious. And things come in minutes, in seconds. They don't come in chunks. So to start the process early and be talking about stuff, we had a couple of good ideas this week and formulated them. We're going to go down to Florida. The whole purpose of going down and picking a comedy club is to get some new stuff together. And if you come out of there with two or three minutes, believe it or not, that's a big deal. That's a huge thing. That's a huge accomplishment because it is in minutes. And a lot of stuff we'll put together, it gets cut out, and we never do it again. It's just a long process.
BE: Sure. Is it just you and Mark or is it a team of writers?
RC: No, it's just Mark and me. I call in other guys every now and then just to bring in a new, fresh head per se, and get somebody talking to hear what they've got to say and things like that. So yeah, I've used other guys in the past. Mark and me work together so well. We already get each other comedicly. We understand each other. I think we just work more efficient that way.
BE: OK. Do you get women to show their breasts at every show?
RC: Not every show.
BE: (laughs in reference to the Nashville show) That was pretty amazing.
RC: Mark wrote that song, "Show Them to Me." He wrote it and brought it to me. And I said, "I don't know Mark. I don't know if this is going to work." And I sit down with it and put it on the guitar and started to play it. It just kind of became this fun thing for people at the show. And bringing the lights up during the "Show Them to Me" part was something we discovered so that people would be like, "humm?" Some towns you don't see any and then some towns you see so many you forget what you're singing. That's been fun, it's been a fun song.
BE: Is your family life in real life the way it was on TV?
RC: No, no. I mean my family life at home is nothing…I mean a lot of things that we did talk about on television was like my family life early on. The struggles and sleeping in my truck. Some of that was represented in the struggles and being away. Going away and doing television for two years wasn't real great on our relationship by any means. But certainly things right now are pretty good. I'm playing golf and working on projects like buying this house, you know. I'm a project guy. I like stuff to do. I like to have things to do. My wife every now and then substitutes up at the school where the kids go to school. And we spend a lot of time with the kids. Of course they're growing up and playing ball. We go to ball games. I'm just a regular … it's just a regular, old life.
BE: Sure. And I saw in your bio, you're still in Tulsa?
RC: Yeah.
BE: OK, cool. What about when you're on the road? What is your favorite place to eat?
RC: I usually try to find a place where there's vegetables, like a Golden Corral, you know that kind of deal.
BE: Just so you're not eating too much crap?
RC: Yeah. Not eating too much junk. I don't eat fast food at all. I run five or six days a week, three or four miles a day. It does me good. I ran three and a half miles this morning. Just to kind of stay in shape, you know?
BE: Cool. So the bit about Rodeo Drive on the album, which I saw you do live too, did that actually happen or was it just a bit?
"In the past, every time I've put out a CD, three or four months go by and people start coming out to the shows and they already know everything. I've learned that. So you need about 10 or 15 minutes of new stuff to kind of give them a break."RC: Well you know what happened? I took my wife, when things were just kind of kicking up. When I was moving out of comedy clubs and I was selling records. You know you got to understand, when I met Terri, I was working a Holiday Inn lounge one particular night in front of 11 people. That's where I met my wife. Not only did I not have shit, she didn't have nothing! If there was anybody who had less shit than I did, it was her. We got together, and you only can only imagine what her mother said when Terri said, "You know, I'm going to marry this comedian. He's going to travel and take care of me." It sounds ludicrous. It's almost like I'm going to be a magician for the rest of my life. It just sounded that ridiculous. We've been through so much together. There were times had it not been for me peddling little t-shirts and stuff like that, that we wouldn't have been able to buy baby formula. Whenever things got a little better, I can remember going out and having meetings in Los Angeles with, you know, those kind of meetings that are just kind of like, "Hey. What are you interested in? Blah, blah, blah." Nothing never really comes of them. They're just meet and greet kinds of things. You meet with agents and things like that. Things were kind of picking up. We stayed on Wilshire Boulevard in the place, the hotel where they filmed "Pretty Woman" and stuff like that. It was kind of a big thing for us because we had never really gone anywhere. I had seen places here and there, but I wanted things to be right for Terri. She's always been home with the kids and things like that. So we actually went walking down Rodeo Drive for the first time. It was not important that is was something that we do, but you know, it's something that you read about. So we went walking down there. And you know, you walk in these stores and you just can't even believe the ridiculousness in which prices are. You know, I'm in a pair of jeans and work boots, literally. Like work boots with mud on them, and a ripped up sweatshirt walking around Rodeo Drive. And we walk in that Ralph Lauren shop, and she put on this outfit that was ridiculously expensive, but I didn't know it. Nothing dawned on me until she tried on this outfit and she looked so pretty in it. And I said, "Man that's great. You ought to get that." She walked out of the dressing room with her clothes and her purse and said, "Let's go." I said, "What is it?" She said, "That's ridiculous." She told me what the price is. I knew she would have never bought that, probably me neither, but I figured it was one time. What's it going to hurt, so I bought her this outfit that, you know, I probably could have bought a small car for and a third world country. (laughs)
BE: (laughs) Right.
RC: And she cried and I was happy to be able to do it for her. It was one of those things where you go, "Well the hell with it. What difference is it going to make? Are we not going to be able to pay the light bills?" That wasn't the case at that point. And we'd come from nothing. We didn't have anything. That's where that story kind of came from. It's not important for us at all now, if we go shopping. I mean certainly she'll go the mall here in town or something.
BE: It was still pretty funny.
RC: We still spend some time over at the 24-hour Wal-Mart like everybody else does.
BE: Right on. Cool. Have you ever come up with a bit that was hilarious but too racy to actually use?
RC: No, I've come up with racy bits that I thought
were hilarious that never worked out. I can't remember specifics. I
can't remember specifics of stuff I've done. It's like I was saying
the other day, I was listening to Sirius Radio -- me and my wife were
in the car, and she's like, "Oh my God. You sound like a 75-year-old
drunken homeless person." And I did! It just didn't even sound like
me. During that time we had moved, traveling around on a tour bus,
me and Barry (Davis). Of course Barry died, and I think a lot of that
came from the fact that we just partied so damn much. And after that,
everything just kind of calmed down.
BE: Sure. Absolutely.
RC: You know the television show presented a lot of…there was way more discipline in that arena. You cannot be out partying and get up and go read lines. You've got to be on top of things. For many reasons the television show was great in that respect. You were really working. It helped discipline me in many areas of my life.
BE: Do you think you'll ever have a TV show again?
RC: I don't know. I mean, not under the scenario in which I did it, I won't. Maybe under an entirely different deal. I'd like to do something down the road, another thing, another project like that.
BE: Besides writing comedy music, do you ever write songs that are not comedy?
RC: Yeah, I've written a bunch of them. It's not what I aspire to be or aspire to do. It's a different world. I didn't start as a singer and become a comedian. I started as a comedian and was always interested in music, and bought a guitar out of boredom, and out of boredom came comedy songs. I wasn't interested in parodies for one. I couldn't play parodies because I couldn't play the guitar. So I was limited to whatever I created. And where they started out as short little ditties, one or two or three lines of something, they escalated into actual comedy songs. It just kind of became part of my act. For me it was just fun to do. It breaks things up.
BE: Absolutely. I mean people here in Nashville appreciate it.
RC: Yeah.
BE: So what are the touring plans for the new album?
RC: I'm not touring for this album. I've already been touring for this album. In comedy you do things backwards. You do the material, then you make an album and then you leave the material behind. It's like, "There it is. Go get it." And now I'm on to something else. People go, "When does your tour start?" I go, "My tour never stopped. I started in 1989, and it's still going." I guess after the record comes out we do what's called the "King of the Mountains Tour" but it's really to promote the record. The material itself will continue to change. We start back pretty serious in August. Right now we're just kind of piddling.
BE: OK. Well cool. I think that's about all I got. You have anything else you want to plug?
RC: No. I got a special that airs on Comedy Central on April 14. And a concert DVD, a 90-minute version with extras and stuff on there that comes out May 1.
BE: Yeah, I think all that was in the bio that Julie sent me.
RC: Yeah, so, besides that, I think that is it.
BE: Awesome.
RC: Mike, thank you for your time. I appreciate it.