We were lucky to catch up with Day Peace recently and have shared our conversation below.

Day, appreciate you joining us today. Let’s jump back to the first dollar you earned as a creative? What can you share with us about how it happened?

Before I “officially” started pursuing comedy — after having done only a few open mics I had the opportunity to open up for a nationally touring headliner traveling through North Iowa. I agree to open with a 10 to 15 minute set. The night before the show the headliner canceled and the bar owner asked me if I wanted to have him cancel the entire show or if I wanted to extend my 10 to 15 minute set to 45 minutes to a hour. I foolishly said I would and went on to having a good 10 to 15 minute set and bombing for 30 minutes straight. Even thought my show was very amateur and we never talked about money or being paid the owner handed me an envelope with $50 in it at the end of the night. He thanked me and told me: “The bar made a little money that night. Had you canceled as well the bar we have made $0 so it’s the least I could do”.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

(How I got started)

I did a couple open mics and then called myself a comedian for 6 months lol. I was always drawn to comedy (stand up comedy particularly) but what got me into was moving to a new state (Arizona), bringing it up one day that I been on stage a dozen times to people, and not having any idea why I wasn’t doing it anymore. When I lived in North Iowa there was nothing around so that made sense. Now that I was living in a new area with comedy clubs and open mic nights regularly I figured — why not try it again. I found a local comedy open mic night, went, did — okay, and having stopped since Feb 2011.

Writing and performing stand up comedy for over a decade now is a pretty insane thing to say out loud. “It ain’t for the weak” as the late great David A Arnold would say. So much has changed in my life personally and professionally. Hell so much has changed in the world! The road to becoming a professional comedian is the journey of self discovery. You have entire inner monologues with yourself about what to talk about, what to share, how much is too little or too much, cancel culture, selective outrage … I‘ve just tried to develop as a good stand up comedian who trust and respects the process while getting better each and every year.

The brand and company started from the concept of what 2 things am I most thankful to be; funny and blessed so I started Funny And Blessed Entertainment LLC. I independently produced my first comedy special ‘Peace of Mind’ (2020) as well as 2 comedy albums ‘Peace of Mind’ and Peace of Mind Side B’ the latter which debuted #1 on the Amazon & iTunes Charts. That was a moment in which it felt like confirmation I was doing exactly what I was put on this earth to do. These projects are easily what I’m most proud of so far.

I fall into a lot of different categories because of my range and the gigs I do. Sometimes it’s completely clean/ family friendly, to PG-13, but a lot of the times blue and outrageous/ adult humor. I want most people when our paths cross to see and know that I love to make people laugh, I love to laugh myself, and that rather it’s 4 people in a crowd, 40, or 400 I going to put on a show and have a great time as well.

We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.

There might be too many to count because without resiliency you might as well hang it up. The one that comes to mind the most is my transition from Arizona back to the North Iowa. I’ve been doing comedy for 5 years. I was still just okay, funny — but still just okay. I was moving back to that same place that didn’t have comedy or much entertainment at all. I found myself driving 3 hours to an open mic for 5 minutes of stage time then driving 3 hours back home after the show. This hustle went on for a good 6 months. Various low paying gigs mixed with far travel. I was completely invested in answering the question: “Could I be a comedian — a good comedian living in a small market and have comedy help pay some bills?

I would play some good venues and ratio of good gig/ bad gig started to shift. It started with 20/80, I worked very hard to get it to 50/50 and now it’s around 75/25 which is a number I’m comfortable with. It would have been easy to give up or not even try. The pure obstacle of where to even perform and how to afford gas money to get there was enough to question everything. Luckily, I stuck with it long enough and got better in the process.

Is there mission driving your creative journey?

One of my personal goal is to make the people that love and support me proud as well as my ancestors proud. I think about that a lot when developing material and performing material.

Professionally, a prayer I say right before every show is “Dear God please give me the confidence to be myself on stage and make these people laugh by connecting with them”. This has become my own little mission statement for each show. Something that drives my creativity journey is whatever it takes to be extremely comfortable on stage.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://linktr.ee/daypeacecomedy
• Instagram: http://instagram.com/ComedianDayDay
• Facebook: http://facebook.com/daypeacecomedy
• Twitter: https://x.com/daypeacecomedy
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/user/ComedianDayDay
• Other: APPLE MUSIC: http://music.apple.com/us/artist/day-peace/ SPOTIFY: https://open.spotify.com/artist/daypeace

Image Credits
Lake Mills Graphic (Kid pictures) Danny Carmen (Stage Pictures) Globe Gazette (RAGBRAI Photo)