He won us over by casually, and fittingly, dropping the word zeitgeist into a joke about scoring cocaine in the bathroom of an art gallery. Writer, actor and standup comic Curtis Cook can play smooth or crunchy, learned or crass, wicked smart but seldom silly. Broadway Boulevard,, $15, $20 preferred seating. His decades of experience allow him to cast the widest possible web of good humor. In four sets this weekend, he’s likely to romp through every corner of the comedy spectrum. But even his clean set on YouTube’s Dry Bar Comedy Channel is a rush of tightly written, topical twists with a mesmerizing delivery. He’s quoted as saying, “It’s not about being dirty but about taking on subjects we should be talking about.”Īs we know, that’s sometimes in the ear of the beholder, so your mileage may vary. Tickets are $15, $20 preferred seating.īarnhart’s Tucson visit is an excursion from his Las Vegas residencies where he takes pride in hosting a wide range of comedy. It’s easy to see how he also performs as a hypnotist, but there’s no mind control in the works this weekend at Laffs’s Comedy Caffe. I think it’s in our blood.”ĭon Barnhart’s engaging physicality keeps all eyes on him as he spins out his set like a tease from a good-natured spider. His father was a social worker and drug and alcohol counselor for the Air Force and the Navy after his tour of duty in Vietnam. He could have been a social worker, though, and some may argue that he is. But ultimately, he said, he realized that the best place for him is in the family business. That could almost pass for rebellion in a comedy-club kid. He studied environmental issues and journalism at NAU. He spoke of new signage and a fresh coat of paint, maybe in shades of green.Ĭasey was never interested in being onstage, he said, let alone running a comedy club. That helped us and mitigated some of it.” Now out of the woods, Casey has ideas for spiffing the place up. Most of the people that are coming here have been here before and know where it is. “Thankfully, we’ve been in the same spot. “It was definitely a pivotal time,” Casey said. Finding a way into the parking lot was a creative challenge even to regular patrons.īut find it they did.
Laff’s is back to its pre-COVID-19 schedule, having survived not only the lockdown, and the long tail of pandemic precautions, but also a year of upheaval in the Broadway Boulevard widening project. Casey now runs the Laff’s Comedy Caffe at 2900 E. The club was profitable enough that the senior Bynum soon opened clubs in Oklahoma City, Colorado Springs and, in 1988, Tucson, where he ultimately consolidated his interests. You could have a comedy club anywhere in the country as long as there were roads to it.” “All we had to do back then was open the doors and it was six nights a week. “It was going like gangbusters,” Casey recalled. The first Laff’s comedy club opened in 1986. In a 2018 interview with Tucson Weekly, he said that he sold everything he had and borrowed money from his parents to break into the comedy business with his wife’s brother. Casey still remembers that his hamster died in the moving van, but Gary had made a prescient move. “Anybody that was in town that week, it was a foregone conclusion that everybody was going to be partying with them.” The party spot was often the family home.īynum’s dad, Gary Bynum, had moved the family to Albuquerque from Washington State to open a comedy club with his brother-in-law. “Back then it was a lot more of a party atmosphere,” he said. Curtis Cook is double dipping in Tucson and Bisbee this weekend.Ĭasey Bynum grew up a comedy-club kid.
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