Comedian Brian Regan brings his non-stop theater tour back to West Texas at the end of the month with a stop in the Permian Basin.
The show will take place 7:30 p.m. Jan. 25 at the Wagner Noël Performing Arts Center and tickets can be purchased online at tinyurl.com/ye28s2dh.
One of the premier comedians in the country, Regan has built his 30-plus year career on the strength of his material alone.
“Texas is a beautiful state and I have performed in West Texas before,” Regan said in a phone interview. “I remember years ago when I did a show in West Texas, I did a show in Lubbock and I remember there being a sign that read ‘please take off your cowboy hats during the performance’ and I’m like ‘Where am I?’ Everyone did and everyone was quite polite. It was a cool thing.”
Known for his clean humor and funny facial expressions, Regan has a simple and frank explanation for his comedy routine.
“It’s just me and my jokes,” Regan said. “I get on stage behind a microphone and tell my jokes and then a room full of people will let me know whether or not they think I’m funny.”
Over the years, Regan has worked with many different comedians from Jerry Seinfeld to Chris Rock.
A regular on “The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon,” Regan is a rare guest who the show invites on for two segments: a performance segment and segment on the couch to chat with Fallon.
Regan was previously a regular guest on “The Late Show with David Letterman,” making 28 appearances on the CBS Show.
He made his first late night appearance on the “The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson” back in 1991, just a year before Carson’s retirement.
“I’ve been very fortunate to have had wonderful experiences in my career,” Regan said. “Doing ‘The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson’ was the highlight of my life. A lot of young people might not know who he is anymore, but he was the pinnacle when I first got into standup comedy. Every comedian wanted to do the ‘The Tonight show with Johnny Carson.’ To be able to do that before he retired was a big dream come true. I was fortunate to get on the Letterman show. I did 28 appearances on that show and it was a huge honor to have that show and David Letterman himself like what I do enough to have me back that many times, so that was a big thrill to have that in my life. Those were big moments in my life to do those.”
It wasn’t until Regan was attending Heidelberg College in Ohio that he decided to go into comedy.
“I was studying communication theatre art,” Regan said. “I took a speech class. I remember trying to make my speeches funny. When I got the class laughing and the teacher laughing, something just got inside of me. I remember just walking back to the dorm, feeling ‘wow, I don’t feel this way when I’m walking back from biology class.’”
From there, he wanted to be in front of people, making them laugh.
“I started emceeing college activities. People would reach out to me and ask if I wanted to introduce the basketball players and the cheerleaders on the microphone in the gym so I would do that and try to be funny when I did that. When I heard the laughs, it felt infectious and I just thought I don’t know what this is, but I want to figure out how to do this in my life. That’s how I started doing standup.”
Over the years, he says his material has changed a little bit from when he started.
“I look back at the very early years and I still like to think that I’m silly at times, but I think of myself as sillier when I first started, like everything was on the goofy side of the railroad tracks and I even had some dirty jokes in my act when I first started and those fell by the wayside. I would love if a tape of me from year one or year two of comedy surfaced, but I doubt anything like that exists. It would be very interesting for me and for some fans to see what I was doing when I first started doing comedy.”
In 2021, Regan premiered his second Netflix stand-up special, “Brian Regan: On the Rocks” which was shot at Tuacahn Center for the Arts in Ivins, Utah, and was shot during COVID.
“I’m proud of that one that was done during a challenging time,” Regan said. “It was done during COVID. If you look really close, you’ll see that everyone in the audience is wearing masks. We tried to conceal that as much as we could. It was also an outdoor venue. That was the only reason we were able to shoot it.”
His other Netflix special, “Brian Regan: Nunchucks and Flamethrowers,” was released in 2017 to rave reviews.
Regan also returned for his third season in Peter Farrelly’s TV series, “Loudermilk” which streams on Amazon Prime.
Regan starred in his own Netflix series “Stand Up and Away! With Brian Regan” which premiered back in 2018 and has appeared multiple times with Seinfeld on his talk show “Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee.”
“As far as Jerry Seinfeld, he’s one of my favorite comedians,” Regan said. “He has always been very kind to me. We have a nice friendship. I’ve done two of his ‘Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee.’ I was honored to do the first and then when he asked me to do a second, that was a nice thing to hear.”
Seinfeld also executive produced “Stand Up and Away.”
“As far as the four-episode series on Netflix, he was gracious enough to back me creatively,” Regan said. “He was an executive producer but he gave me the freedom to do what I wanted to, creatively. I ran it by him first and he gave me his endorsement. He was involved along the way in a hands-off way. He gave his thoughts, but he told me it was my show and to do what I wanted which is what you want to hear from an executive producer. It couldn’t have been a better experience.”
As for this month’s show in the Permian Basin, Regan is hoping everyone comes out and has a good time.
“I’m just up there doing my thing and I’m really happy when people want to come out and share an evening with me,” Regan said. “If I can make you laugh for an hour and help you have a good time for a bit, then it makes me feel like a million bucks and I appreciate the support.”
If you go
- What: Brian Regan.
- When: 7:30 p.m. Jan. 25.
- Where: Wagner Noël Performing Arts Center.
- Where to purchase tickets: tinyurl.com/ye28s2dh
