Last weekend I got to host again at The Funny Bone. This time it was 6 shows for Sarah Tiana. I’ll admit I’d never even heard of her, but I took the time to watch some of her work over the weekend. If you are interested, she’s on Brad Paisley’s Comedy Rodeo which just became available on Netflix about a week ago.  But I will say she was better in person.

Sarah was very animated on stage. She’s a country girl and even sold cat bandanas after the show that her mom had made. People lined up to buy them too! She told lots of good stories on stage about her family and dating, but it was her delivery that made actually them funny.

I got a chance to talk to her a bit in the green room between shows and she even admitted that she likes telling real stories, and each time she does she’s reliving those moments on stage. She said they aren’t really jokes, but she’s a funny person so it all comes down to delivery.

The first show was on a Thursday and it was fun seeing her test the waters to see what she could say here in front of a St. Louis crowd. There were jokes she told that first night that she didn’t tell during any of the other five shows and for good reason.

The crowds were nice in size, but were very unpredictable, like they are always in comedy. I felt like Thursday was just okay, fine for a weekday crowd I suppose. The first show on Friday was amazing, but the late show was a bit stiff. Usually you’d expect your first Saturday show to be electric, but it was not. And the late show on Saturday was only a tad bit better. But Sunday’s show was just as alive as the first show on Friday.

I got to do about 12 minutes of time for each show which was nice. It always feels good getting to do more time and in front of a larger audience instead of the usual 4 minutes at an open mic where the crowds are usually quite sparse. You feel like you really get to do a full solid set.

I even squeezed in two new jokes which I had been working on and had not done at an open mic yet. I’d gone over them the week before at my joke writing workshop with two comedian friends, but that was it. Yeah, I took a chance but they worked and got laughs and I even added some more to one of the jokes for Saturday’s shows which made it even stronger.

Doing shows every night for 4 days straight is fun but it’s also very tiring. I was dead tired by Sunday night and was still tired by the end of the day on Monday. But I’m going to the open mic on Tuesday for the heck of it, and to keep working on those new jokes.