Cover photo by Delisia Nicholas.
Copyright ©2025 Leon Peter Blanda. All rights reserved.
For every local comic producing independent comedy shows—I see you. Thank you.
KNOCK ‘EM DEAD:
A Step-by-Step Guide for Hosting and Producing Live Stand-up Comedy Shows and Open Mics in Small Towns and Mid-size Cities, or How To Build Your Own Comedy Scene From Scratch,
and memoir by Leon Peter Blanda
I got into comedy to do comedy. Which is weird, I know. When you're in Hollywood and you're a comedian, everybody wants you to do other things besides comedy.
“Alright, you're a stand-up comedian, can you act? …Can you write? …Write us a script.”
They want me to do things related to comedy, but not comedy.
That's not fair.
That's like if I was a cook, and I work my ass off to become a really good cook, and they're like, “Alright, you're a cook…
Can you farm?”
– Mitch Hedberg
Introduction
We’re living in a third-wave comedy boom. Maybe it’s the fourth wave, if you count the first intentional fart. I can picture it: a couple of cavemen best buds hanging out, field dressing a dinosaur with primitive tools—you can feed a village for a year with that sweet, sweet dinosaur meat—when one of them farts. Quite purposefully, he lifts his loincloth, and one leg, and belts out a sound like a brontosaurus blowing on a rusty trombone, right next to his buddy’s ear. They both crumble in a fit of joyful, grunting laughter. Man’s first joke. That’s comedy.
Stand-up comedy is basically a well-timed fart, practiced and repeated. At its best, it’s hilarious. At its worst, it’s absolutely repulsive.
The intention of this book is not to teach you how to write and perform stand-up comedy, which is a craft that is often confused with being an art form (gag). Art is subjective. Comedy is funny.
More and more people are becoming familiar with stand-up as a (f)art form, because stand-up comedians are everywhere these days. You can’t avoid them. They’re on your phone, and your TV, 24/7. They sell you boner pills, brain pills, and online therapy. They give you discounts on your personal website domain. Not to mention, hours and hours of free podcasts and paywall content. You can’t throw a mic stand without hitting some talentless hack holding a microphone asking a stranger what they do for a living.
One thing is for certain, comedy has never been more pervasive. And though the word pervasive can be either negative or positive, I choose positive pervasive, also known as positive perv. Who doesn’t like a positive perv?
As of 2025, there are approximately five-billion comedians on the internet, streaming live, right now, and they’re all teenagers—am I right, fellow old folks? Thanks to social media, the whole wide world has been overexposed to stand-up comedy of all styles and skill levels: from shaky iPhone open mic crowd-work, to carefully edited clips, chopped from polished comedy specials.
There weren’t this many comedians when I was a kid. All we had was Richard Pryor, George Carlin, Rodney Dangerfield, and Paula Poundstone. Whoopi Goldberg used to be a stand-up comedian, but had become a movie star, and only did “stand-up” once a year at Comic Relief shows as part of a trio with Billy Crystal and Robin Williams. Speaking of Robin Williams—he, too, was a stand-up, but had already transitioned past Mork, and was a legitimate actor headed to the Oscars. We used to hear stories about Bill Cosby performing stand-up, and even saw some old VHS tapes of him on stage, sitting in a chair, holding a microphone, telling clean jokes. But when I was growing up, Cosby wasn’t a stand-up comedian anymore; he was America’s funny TV dad. This was before we knew about all the bad stuff he did, like, Ghost Dad, and you know… other stuff. As for alt-comedy, Pee-Wee Herman was weird and funny, crushing it every Saturday morning in the playhouse, but he was not a stand-up comedian. Weird Al was, for my money, the pinnacle of hilarity, but I don’t think anyone would consider Alfred Matthew Yankovich a stand-up comedian. Oh… and Gallagher. We had Gallagher. That’s it. That’s all the comedy we had back then, and we were grateful.
Nowadays, kids have so much comedy, it’s coming out of their gender fluid holes. Too much comedy, if you ask me. I’m not complaining, like, “back in my day, we had to walk barefoot, uphill, backwards, while watching Comedy Central through the living room window, with the shades drawn, praying for an old Premium Blend or Comedy Central Presents to finally air after a The Man Show marathon.” But we didn’t have youtube and streaming. Kids today think we could watch HBO specials whenever we wanted… You better think again, Mr. Sister. Before watching any HBO stand-up special, you had to watch half of The Godfather Part III—which is the time equivalent of a Mr. Mom/Gung Ho Michael Keaton double-feature—plus the undercards and title fight of an old boxing match, and a full episode of Dream On. Then, when the HBO comedy special finally aired, it would end up being Bill Maher.
They were dark times, my friend. Dark times.
But I’m not here to preach. I’m just saying, kids today have it good… Besides all the school shootings and political upheaval reshaping society as we know it. Comedy-wise, they’re sitting pretty.
Everybody thinks they’re a funny person; and some people think they’re funny enough to be a stand-up comedian. Well, let me be the first to tell you: you’re not. You’re not funny. At all.
Do something else.
Seriously…
Shoo!
Nobody wants you here.
Get outta here!
Get!
…
Did that dissuade you?
No?
You’re still here?
That’s good.
You’re a tough cookie.
To be a stand-up comedian, you’ve got to be able to face the fact that you might not be everyone’s can of soda pop. You’re going to experience a lot of rejection. Especially you. I mean, look at you, reading a book like some sort of ugly dork. (Roasted!)
Stand-up comedy isn’t easy, especially in the beginning. It’s a grind. A fun grind, but a grind all the same. Once you’re sucked in, it becomes a lifestyle, an endless night of open mics, mostly produced in bars, where you’re sure to develop mild-to-severe alcoholism. All the while, you have to maintain a day job that pays the bills. It’s not glamorous. There is no fortune and glory at the open mic. Open mics are the lowest rung on the showbiz ladder, and a lot of people never climb any higher.
This next statement may be debatable, but why would you debate a book? That’s dumb. You’re not going to win an argument with a book. You can’t change a book’s mind. A book is always going to be a book, and there’s nothing you can do to convince it otherwise. Now, the debatable statement:
I believe stand-up comedy is more difficult on every measurable metric for anyone who doesn't live in, or near, an established comedy market, like, New York, or LA, or Joe Rogan—you know, anywhere with a thriving comedy scene.
This book is for you. This is for the folks who live on the outskirts, but dream about the inskirts. For those brave souls—who dream big-city comedy dreams, but live in Smalltown, Nowheresville—I have one question:
“Can you farm?”
That’s a callback. If you don’t know what a callback is, don’t worry; you’ll eventually learn all the cool-kid comedy slang. As you Frodo along your stand-up comedy journey to Mount Doom, you’re bound to meet all kinds of crazy goblins, and interesting faefolk, who speak in odd tongues, and live in dank, dark caves. They will teach you the terms and conditions of your new craft.
But you won’t find any of that crucial comedy information within these pages. Hopefully, before you cracked open this book, you’ve already been doing stand-up for a spell—spell, as in a length of time, not a magical poem. Hopefully you have been cultivating a nice crop of stand-up material, and now have a bountiful bushel of bits.
Because I’m not here to teach you how to tell jokes. I’m here to teach you how to farm.
And by farm, I mean, I’m here to teach you how to produce and host live stand-up comedy shows, and open mics, in small towns and mid-sized cities. Let’s make a scene, gang! (Note: Cut out the “Let’s make a scene, gang!” line. It sounds too hopeful. You don’t want to get their hopes up.)
Be forewarned: you will not find any deeper meaning beyond the words you’re about to read. In fact, if you’re expecting any sort of enlightenment by the end, let me save you the trouble. There is no story arc. There is no plot. No fall from grace, and no redemption. There is no hero, and no hero’s journey. But there are most certainly villains; they’re called hecklers.
It is equally as important for me to stress, none of the information provided within these pages will be applicable to any real-life problem, or spiritual/emotional tribulation you may be facing. Unless your tribulation is that of a mere mortal who wants nothing more than to serve mankind by producing the best comedy show the gods will allow on Earth.
Not to say there is nothing of use in this book. Within the following pages, you will find detailed instructions outlining how to properly host and produce stand-up comedy shows and open mics.
Keep in mind, these are merely the opinions of one, very humble—yet incredibly talented and should probably be way more famous than he is—stand-up comedian. You are free to pick and choose from the text what you like, or disregard every tried and true (from years of trial and error) piece of advice offered. The ideas presented in this book did not come whole cloth on a mountaintop in a bolt of lightning; they were learned, often the hard way, through years of producing and hosting—and being booked on—thousands of very bad, and very good, stand-up comedy shows.
Don’t get discouraged if you find producing and hosting comedy shows is not for you. It’s not for everybody. It’s not always fun, and never a breeze, but it can be extremely rewarding, like raising children, or cooking Thanksgiving dinner for your dysfunctional family.
I’m just saying; if you find you hate, loathe, or despise running stand-up comedy shows, it’s okay. You’re not a farmer, for Pete Holmes’s sake.
Thank you for reading part 1 of 13 of KNOCK ‘EM DEAD: A Step-by-Step Guide for Hosting and Producing Live Stand-up Comedy Shows and Open Mics in Small Towns and Midsize Cities, or How To Build Your Own Comedy Scene From Scratch,
and memoir by Leon Peter Blanda
Please join us for next week’s installment - Get Your Act Together.
Visit LeonBlanda.com to check out where I’m performing live stand-up comedy, or to purchase my debut novel High Moon.