Jimmie Roulette
written by Jeff Carmack
“I love being on stage – it’s one place where there are no rules,” said comedian Jimmie Roulette, “There’s no one telling you, ‘You should have done this, you should have done that. As long as you don’t cross any major boundaries, as long as you don’t get into a fist fight, then anything goes. As long as people are laughing, you can do anything you want. And that’s one of the big freedoms about it. As long as you don’t take it too far – and I’ve never found that boundary – as long as people are laughing and having a good time, you can say something about someone when you’re on stage, and as soon as you get off stage that will be the person who comes up and says, ‘Damn – that was funny!’”
Cap City Comedy Club is Austin’s oldest and best know stand-up spot. It’s the city’s premier showcase for local and touring comics, and also home of the annual “Funniest Person in Austin” contest. Stepping inside, you see a pack of comics holding down one corner of the bar, all awaiting their time on stage. The back wall of the stage is graced (or defaced, depending upon your taste) by a wire sculpture of a bistro scene that serves as fodder for countless comic riffs. None of the comedy clubs in Austin have obvious bouncers, but this is Texas so y’all better be polite or you’ll find yourself in the parking lot.
The small room seats maybe 75 people, and it’s full tonight. The audience runs the gamut, from couples on first dates to folks who just needed an evening out of the double-wide. Roulette takes the stage and it’s clear that some of the crowd already know him, and in just a few minutes he’ll be everybody’s new best friend.
Twenty minutes later, the audience is wiping tears from their eyes from laughing and Roulette gives up the mic to the next comic (whose comedy karma has put him in the unenviable position of having to follow Jimmie). Almost surprisingly, Roulette is not only approachable but seems absolutely flattered when audience members line up afterwards to shake his hand and thank him for the laughs.
Jimmie Roulette is a 34-year-old comic from Austin, Texas. He’s performed on Comedy Central’s Premium Blend, and the prestigious HBO Comedy Festival in Las Vegas.
“It’s not one of those stories where I got into it on a dare,” recalls Roulette. “I was a security guard and I came down here (Cap City Comedy Club) and signed up for a Comedy Gym class with Sam Cox and started telling jokes. People laughed, and I was hooked. My first time out there, and he was like, ‘I don’t know what you need me for’ and just turned me loose. I took the six-week course and Sam said, ‘You can come back if you want to but I recommend just getting back up there.’”
Roulette didn’t start getting paid for his stand-up until two years later and confesses he doesn’t know why he was hanging that long, but it happened and he’s never looked back. “This is my main thing now. You get your first check and that’s when you realize ‘Hey – this can happen!’”
“Growing up, I would like to say I was funny but it was mainly survival, Roulette recalls. “People laughed at the stuff I did. I didn’t think it was funny at the time – it was just me being me. But I didn’t realize I was funny until I was in high school, when people wanted to be around me, like, ‘Hey, Jimmie’s funny – stick with Jimmie!’ I got voted class clown, got my picture in the yearbook. I got out of a lot of fights because I was funny. I would get out of trouble because teachers liked me so much. In fact, I don’t think I really graduated, but the teachers liked me and gave me some extra points. Technically, I should not have that diploma on the wall.”
“My parents aren’t funny,” says Roulette, “not ha-ha funny, anyway. They’re funny because they’re, 65, been married 45 years and they don’t like each other. Their arguments make me laugh but surprisingly I’m the only one with the funny gene. I like to laugh, have a good time. I don’t want to get too serious. I really dislike it when people say, ‘Are you always on?’ No, I’m not always “on,” this is just me. This is just me talking. To me, a comic is a personality on stage. As long as you are who you are, you’re gonna be that much more on stage.”
“It’s great working with Jimmie,” says Ted Alexandro, comedian from New York. “A lot of comics, you work with them a week and you watch them once or twice, and then you don’t watch them again. But with Jimmie, I enjoyed watching his set over and over again. He’s got a lot of unique stuff, -- a nice combination of silly and smart.”
“There were comics I used to watch when I was in high school, Roulette recalls. “Paula Poundstone, I liked her. I thought Rosie O’Donnell was funny – but then, poop makes me laugh; can’t go wrong with poop jokes! Bill Engvall, I used to watch him on VH1’s Comedy Spotlight and just laugh and laugh. And of course, Eddie Murphy; he’s a staple in any comic’s market. I didn’t get to watch much Richard Pryor when I was a kid but now I have. Got to go with the greats, you know?”
With current comedians, Roulette’s take is that of a comedy fan, standing by those that make him laugh, “Tony Woods, Wanda Sykes, Eddie Gosling ... Bill Burr is another one – he’s very free on stage. Larry Reeb “Uncle Lar’” -- he’s another one who makes me laugh. We just worked together in Dayton, Ohio. I would watch every show of his – every show I would sit down and watch. And that’s how you can tell a great comic – you can sit and watch him, and you know what’s coming – but you still laugh!”
Roulette considers his style indefinable, because he finds everything funny, “My father was in the military, (as was Jimmie, serving four and a half years in the Army as a generator technician) so I got to travel around a lot and meet different people and I would find a way to make this group laugh here and that group over there laugh, and then three years later we’d move and now I gotta find a way to make these guys laugh. So, I was always changing, and that’s what my style is – a little over there, a little over there, a little serious but still funny. I can do five minutes on something and then I want to go on and talk about … I dunno … ants or something.”
That penchant for moving on has continued with his career in comedy, “When I first started out – I didn’t realize it then – but when I first went on the road I was gone 30, 32 weeks a year. One time I was gone for eight weeks. I didn’t realize it because I was so happy. I got back to town and people thought I moved. Now, I think my wife actually prefers it. Too much of me hanging around and she’s like, ‘Go tell some jokes – get out of here.’ I think our discipline comes from the time I spent in the military. In the Army, every two or three months we were separated when I’d go to the field for two or three weeks. So we kinda got used to that. She’s like, ‘It’s alright – he’ll be back.’”
“To be in a different city and telling the same jokes and having the audience get it,” says Roulette, “and then go to a different state and have them laughing – and your not changing your style – is fun. It’s fun not having to cater to a different demographic. It’s like, this is me, and people get it and they come along, and then at the end they say, ‘That was fun! Thanks a lot!’”
“I’ve known Jimmie”, says Mario Digorgio, a comic from Austin, “for as long as I’ve been doing comedy – about 10 years – and I think he’s terrific. He’s got great stage presence, he’s instantly likeable, and he’s got a great pool of odd comedy that’s hard to categorize. I’m jealous.”
“My worst room?” recalls Roulette. “There was a Funny Bones in Shreveport (La.), They’ve relocated and everything’s better now, but I had a bad week there I’ll never forget. I’ve been back and headlined since and had a great time, but there’s still that little man in the back of my head going, ‘Man, you guys really beat me up last time.’ And it wasn’t just one show – it was all week. I was featuring and it was quiet. I’ve had periods in my set when nobody laughed, and I deal with it. But all week it was like, ha … ha. I called my manager and said, ‘You’ve gotta get me outta here – this hurts!’ And I’ve never felt that way about another room. It could have been me just being young – this was early in my career – and not knowing how to deal with it. But I don’t ever want to feel that feeling again.”
Roulette takes pride in the Austin comedy scene, a sentiment he shares with other comedians, “It’s a great town to develop in. Getting on stage and talking is easy. A lot of people say it’s hard, but it’s easy. But to know that people are supposed to laugh and they don’t, that’s a nightmare. Like that Shreveport room. It was like I was dreaming... everything got blurry. I always get nervous before every show -- that Shreveport show is in the back of my mind. That’s always plaguing me, but after three, four minutes out and you’ve got the audience on your side, that goes away and you realize, ‘All right, let’s go.’ But there’s always a little nervousness. I always have a routine -- a little thing I do before the show. I’m like, ‘Don’t talk to me – I’m going on in two minutes.’
“That’s one of my biggest fears,” Roulette continues, “having people not laughing when I know they should be laughing. You try onstage when you’re not doing well – you speed it up, slow it down, get more angry, reel it in a little – you try everything while you’re up there to get the audience to come along. So you’re not thinking about your material, you’re thinking about how can I get them to like me. You’re not having a good time, you’re actually working, and that shows. And it drives them further away. ”
Like many comics, Roulette is not one to sit and write his jokes in formal settings and rarely does political jokes. He’s tried carrying around a notebook to jot something down, but for him to think it’s funny, it starts with what he says in the moment, “It’s got to be spontaneous, something I say on stage. That way I can take something I say on stage and write something around it. There are jokes in my act that have never seen a notebook because I’m so comfortable and people respond the same way. If I’m working in new jokes, I’ll do them up front because if you can get a crowd to laugh at something new and they don’t know you, then you’ve got something. On the other hand, if you take a joke you just wrote and hide it between some established jokes, that’s one thing because the crowd has already established that you’re funny. So basically, whatever you say for the rest of the evening is going to be on the same level. I should be a lot funnier. I’m not working during the day, so I should be sitting around writing jokes. But like I said if it doesn’t come do you, don’t try to force the funny. People can see through that. That would be faking it.”
Jeff Carmack is a writer from Austin. Visit JeffCarmack.com.
For more on Jimmie, visit JimmieRoulette.com.