We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Bryan Bixby a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Bryan, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Can you talk to us about how you learned to do what you do?

I learned just by doing. It was really the only way. There was some stuff I could learn by studying the comedians I liked, and books about writing comedy and being a comedian that prepared me for what I would find when I started doing it. With stand-up, you have to do most of the learning on stage, in front of strangers; succeeding or failing with everyone watching, because you need their response to evaluate your work. It’s a lot of trial and error. Lots of testing. Every idea has to be tested on an audience. If it works you keep testing for consistency in different places and trying to add new lines expanding on the original idea. When it doesn’t work the first time, you also have to keep testing and changing things trying to make it work. Sometimes I can’t figure it out at all and just spend weeks following a lead that goes nowhere, but I think that makes future material better because of time spent dissecting those ideas. That’s both the way you learn and the way you continue to do it for the rest of your career. The only way to learn faster is to do more work. I could have done more dissecting early on, searched for more connections in my jokes. Sometimes the joke you end up with takes the opposite stance of the idea you started with, so it’s important to not get stuck on that original premise. Zoom out, cause maybe there’s a funnier way to look at whatever your subject is. Maybe there’s an angle that’s more you. I do wish I had been more disciplined with writing and more open to taking chances. It took a while to realize the importance of a good vocabulary, too. It’s also extremely helpful to collect knowledge about a vast assortment of topics, concepts, and just random things. Many great jokes are made through making connections, so the more you know, the more associations you can make, the better your writing will be. You want to find a unique angle to everything, which can take a lot of effort. Discipline and persistence are probably the most important traits to have. Along with the learned skills of comedic timing and stage presence. Timing is something a lot of us start learning before we ever do comedy, usually starting as kids. Stage presence is something you can only really learn by going on stage. A lot of comedians, certainly myself included, struggle with things like social anxiety so you have to learn your way around that. Learn confidence. I try to believe I can handle anything thrown at me when I’m on stage. The biggest obstacle is getting quality stage time to hone timing and stage presence, and also to experiment with material with reliable feedback. The different time-slots in comedy take different skill sets, too. Performing for 10 minutes is different from 20, which is different from 30-45. It’s hard to get 30 minutes on stage before you’re good at it, but you need the time to get good. It was the occasional booker’s generosity that got me those opportunities to practice those headliner length sets. The longer I’ve done comedy the more I’ve looked for not-obvious ways to train myself to be better. I give myself challenges, things like “write a new 3 minutes of topical material every week”, or “go up without material to work on improvisation.” I go on stage at least 7-10 times a week and have done that since I started, 8 years ago (not counting a year during covid) There are also a lot of things outside of the actual craft of comedy that have to be learned in order to make it a career. I’ve had to learn how to connect with bookers, keep contacts with comedians I meet, I learned to design my own website and how to promote. I’ve had to learn how to edit videos, to make reels for posting on social media. Each new thing has started with me knowing absolutely nothing at all and picking it up from there. I don’t have an agent or manager, and right now it wouldn’t be worth it. Instead I have to act like my own agent. I’m responsible for everything and I’m learning how to do it all as I go.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

I’m a stand-up comedian, currently based in Portland, OR. I’ve been doing comedy for 8 years. I’m a regional headliner in the Pacific Northwest. I’ve performed in a handful of comedy festivals. I’ve been a finalist in several comedy competitions and was named Portland’s Funniest Person in 2022. I co-host a roast battle at Funhouse Lounge that sells out every month. I always wanted to be a comedian. I grew up in Wisconsin, in a small town where there’s nothing even close to a comedy club. But my dad was a big fan of comedy and neither of my parents were very strict about the content I was allowed to watch, so I got to see all the outrageous and vulgar comedians on TV, as well as the more family friendly ones. I was mostly enamored with the former. They really shaped me into the comedian I am today. Speaking with irreverence, getting people to laugh at stuff they wouldn’t normally laugh about. I love it when people are bent over laughing and in shock at the same time. I started trying to write my own jokes when I was 9 or 10. When I was 15 I had a 5 subject notebook full of jokes I had written. I put together 8.5 minutes and performed for the first time in front of the teachers and students at my highschool. The next day I did that set for about 100 people from the community. One of the locals gave me my first paid gig a few weeks later. $20 to do 10 minutes for a VFW holiday dinner. I was probably the first comedian to ever perform in my town. I performed a few more times while in school, made $20 here and there. I knew a lot of people who were supportive of my ambition, but even they pushed me to have a back-up plan. The teachers pressured me to find something I could go to college for that had nothing to do with comedy. I chose culinary school, but dropped out a few weeks before starting, if that’s even considered dropping out. I didn’t want to have a back-up plan. I thought the only way to make it was to have no other options. I still kind of believe that. You definitely have to have a reason to risk everything to pursue a career in the arts. I moved to Minneapolis to start doing comedy, but fell into a job that had me working a lot of nights and almost never got up. I moved around some more, always knew I wanted to be doing stand-up but struggled to actually start and keep going. The only way to get started in comedy is to just do it. I eventually moved to Portland, determined to do just that. I went to open mics every night and eventually got booked to do short sets for free on local showcases. After a few years and a few notable local credits, I got booked more, was given longer sets and more pay. I started getting booked out of town once I had a good video of my stand-up to send to bookers, along with recommendations from fellow comics. It just built up in small increments. I’ve only come this far because I’ve improved little by little every year just by going on stage as much as I can. Now I get to do a lot of stuff that I could only dream about just a few years ago. I’ve performed in front of a couple of my favorite comedians, and I have the respect of my peers, which is all stuff I’m grateful for. I’m trying to go forward from here. Spread out from the geographical area I’ve gotten comfortable in. I’m always trying to grow as a comic and be funnier, make more people laugh. That’s the only way I know how to keep moving forward. The biggest reward is when you realize you made a room full of people laugh more in 1-2 hours than they ever will in their day-to-day life.

In your view, what can society to do to best support artists, creatives and a thriving creative ecosystem?

If someone close to you has something creative they want to pursue, don’t try to drill into them the impossibility of “making it” in the arts. It’s very hard and takes a lot of self-motivation, and a lot of it will be self-taught, but it’s obviously possible and telling your friends or family members that they need to change their ambition to better suit your limited idea of what is possible doesn’t help anything, That person will still want to do what they want to do, but maybe they will chose not to try because of the discouragement. Instead of discouraging people from pursuing the arts, people should recognize the importance and value in them. Pay money to see a show; buy a comedian’s or a band’s merch if you like what they do. Appreciate how important it is to be entertained, and be grateful you get to enjoy what others create. Recognize it for the work it is, even though artists are also having fun some of the time.

We often hear about learning lessons – but just as important is unlearning lessons. Have you ever had to unlearn a lesson?

I used to be convinced that really being hard on myself and telling myself everything I made sucked would really push me to be better. I thought if I put myself down and was basically a tortured artist that would make me produce better quality stuff by never believing anything was good enough. Now I know that’s so wrong. There is a difference between believing you can do better and repeatedly telling yourself how much you suck. Only the former brings out your best work. I realized that beating myself up was making it harder to create anything. It seems obvious to me now, unfortunately I’ve known a lot of other comics who feel the same, that self-flagellation is somehow the key to higher quality. I used to have people compliment me and also credit my self-ridicule for my material being exceptional. All the negative self-talk really got me to a point where I was scared to write. Like some part of me knew that if I wrote I was going to be torturing myself for not being good enough. It’s something I’m still trying to get over. Trying to build confidence in my talent, instead of trying to punish something good out of myself.

Contact Info:

• Website: bryanbixby.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bixbycomedian/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/BryanBixbyComedy
• Youtube: https://youtube.com/@bryanbixby

Image Credits
Kylie Brooks J.R. Cervantes Emily Ulsh