We recently connected with Nick Allen and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Nick, thanks for joining us today. We’d love to hear about when you first realized that you wanted to pursue a creative path professionally.

It took me awhile to realize what had been right in front of my face for quite some time. I’d always been drawn to comedy. Whether it was watching SNL with my dad, watching Seinfeld religiously, or noticing that I could make friends laugh around a lunch table, I was always drawn to it. I spear-headed a local public access show in my early 20’s that was a mix between SNL and a late-night, Letterman style late night show. I played the part of Letterman (poorly) doing a monologue in a suit and everything. It still didn’t occur to me that I might be interested in trying stand-up until a close friend asked me if I’d ever considered it.

An offhand joke at a bar led to them asking if I’d ever thought about what should have been obvious for years. As soon as they asked, I couldn’t get the thought out of my mind. It still took about three years after that before I had the courage to get on a stage. I read any book I could find, went to some local shows and finally gave it a shot.

As soon as I stepped onstage, I knew I wasn’t good but I knew I was comfortable. After a few months of open mics, I knew it was something I wanted to do professionally. It didn’t take too long to start getting paid but it took 16 years before I could quit my day job.

Nick, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

I got into comedy because I love to laugh and I love to make people laugh. That sounds cheesy but it’s really as simple as that. There’s nothing better than laughing really hard. I’m not sure what sets me apart from others. Probably a problem ha. I’m a middle aged white guy from the midwest, had kids young and have had a death grip on a dream for nearly 20 years. Not sure what else I could do at this point. Not sure there’s anything else I want to do at this point.

Something that might set me apart is being a full-time comedian from Omaha, NE. It’s not all stand-up, I am a member of a morning radio show that is syndicated every morning. The Todd-N-Tyler Radio Empire has given me the opportunity to tell jokes for a living. Whether it’s on-air in the mornings or on a weekend night throughout the listening area doing stand-up, I don’t have to clock in anywhere where the job isn’t to be funny.

Maybe my persistence sets me apart as well. It took years and years of going on the radio weekly until being brought on as a full-time member of the show. It took years and years to get good enough at stand-up to feel worthy of a ticket price. But I think that’s true of any comedian. Nobody who gives up gets there. I don’t know. I really don’t know anything. I’ve kind of made that the basis of a lot of my comedy. Someone referred to it once as ‘righteous confusion’ and I think it fits. Life would be easier in general if I didn’t feel that every second of every day but it helps with comedy.

One thing I feel like I’m able to do now is to make the room feel like a different place after a show is over. I spent a lot of years being the host of comedy shows. You go up at the beginning, tell jokes, bring on the middle act, bring up the headliner then go up at the end of the show to say goodnight and thank the crowd for coming out. When there was a good headliner, as the lights went up and the crowd filed out, it felt like something had happened there. The room felt different. I think I can do that now and it’s a testament to all of the great comics I learned from sitting on the side of the stage.

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

Not sure about one story that illustrates resilience. Stand-up is kind of a constant test of resilience. If you have two shows in a night, one can be incredible, the other can have you questioning every choice you’ve ever made. You hope the good show is the late show.

Going into something like this, people will tell you you’re crazy. Sometimes those people are very close to you and you’re glad when your mom divorces them down the line for unrelated reasons (not my dad, he’s always been insanely supportive). They’ll tell you that you’re crazy and they might be right. If it was easy, everyone would do it.

I feel like I’m still resilient now. 90% of the shows I book are at venues I’ve reached out to. I have to tell people I’m worth a shot who are doubting why anyone who’s actually decent would reach to them. Sometimes they go well, sometimes they don’t. There’s a song by The Roots called ‘The Water’ that contains a line that says, ‘A lot of times at the shows people hardly came.’ I wish that line didn’t echo in my head on a regular basis. But what else am I going to do? LinkedIn is definitely not for me.

What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?

It’s seeing people have a good time. There are a surprising amount of people who have never been to a comedy show. I’m always taken aback a little especially if they’re like 60 ha. But they’re still trying new things and they usually have a great time.

There are people who will let you know after a show that they haven’t laughed like that in a long time or that they ‘needed that.’

To me there’s not much better than an entire room of strangers laughing in unison. There’s nothing like it and it can’t be recreated anywhere.

Life is tough and weird and if we can’t laugh about it what’s the point?

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.nicksallens.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nicksallens/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/nickallencomedy
• Twitter: https://x.com/NicksAllens
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@nicksallens

Image Credits

N/A