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Authors: Ron White

I Had the Right to Remain Silent...But I Didn't Have the Ability (20 page)

BOOK: I Had the Right to Remain Silent...But I Didn't Have the Ability
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9
BACKSTAGE: ON THE ROAD AGAIN
F
ive years ago I was insolvent, with no hope of ever becoming solvent. I had huge tax debts, my financial matters were in fucking disarray, the IRS was on my ass. I had no idea how I'd ever get out of debt. And I really believed that I would die broke.
I was living in my friend Sammy's attic, after coming back from Mexico. And genuinely, from the bottom of my heart, I did not think I would be a success. I thought it would all pass me by, like it passes a lot of people by.
You know, I saw success happen to Foxworthy with my very eyes. I saw him go from headlining small comedy clubs to selling out theaters and arenas and playing the biggest rooms in Las Vegas. It's a huge leap to go from headlining clubs to selling out theaters. Very few comedians ever make it.
I never even thought of that happenin' to me. I really saw myself as kind of like Willie Nelson's harmonica player. I was gonna be back there behind Jeff just blowing on that harp, making a good living doing my job. I was a journeyman comedian doing his thing; I was trying to add more value to Jeff's shows. Jeff paid me real good money, so I made more money than most people. And I would've been doing fine, if it weren't for all my debts.
But all of a sudden, something popped.
I happened to have stuck with it long enough. I wouldn't quit. So when it did catch, I was still there. I'd done the work.
If it catches, it can catch big. The top comedians earn rock-show cash, but a comedian doesn't have ten fucking eighteen-wheelers full of lights and sound and other overhead to pay for. So the lists of the biggest entertainment acts in the country can be a little misleading. They don't really tell you which performers are taking home the most money, because the musicians have so much higher overhead.
The
Blue Collar Comedy Tour: The Movie
DVD is what made it catch for me. Like I said earlier, that was a thing where we all thought it was gonna be huge, when Warner Bros. was saying they were gonna spend $12 million promoting it in movie theaters. Then we all thought it was gonna be nothing, when they only spent $600,000, and pulled it out of the theaters real fast, and sent it straight to DVD.
And then Comedy Central showed it, and it was their highest-rated show ever, and the DVD became a phenomenon. That was kind of the ultimate vindication of the vision Jeff Foxworthy had when he started the Blue Collar Comedy Tour in the first place. He always knew it could be bigger than anybody else ever thought.
Before Warner Bros. downsized the marketing budget on
Blue Collar Comedy Tour: The Movie
, Jeff was the first one to get a copy of the final cut. He called me and said, "I've got it, if you want to see it."
So I went over to his house and he gives it to me, and he says, "This is gonna make you a star. And I'm gonna tell you this one time: Be nice to everybody."
I said, "OK, I will." Now, that was a lie, because I can be an asshole. But I try to be nice.
Jeff is genuinely generous with his time and his effort and his money. He helped me again and again, as I've said. He saw that I was killing myself with drugs and alcohol in the clubs, and he wanted to get me out. He told me one time, "You know what, God's gonna take you one day under the I've-Seen-Enough clause."
He took me off the road and gave me a better place to do stand-up comedy for a period of time. And he gave me a better example of somebody who is gracious, even though they're making a bigillion dollars. He's nice to everybody.
He gives a huge amount of time and energy to Duke Children's Hospital. It's not just lip service or a bunch of money. He goes down every year for four days from Thursday to Sunday for their big fund-raising event. It's a ton of work.
They call me and I'm like, "I'll sign a cap."
But I do enjoy giving them money. Last year in the charity auction they had this fishing trip with Curtis Strange on his boat. He's a Wake Forest guy and lives in Wilmington. I went in there and this group of six guys had the high bid with like $3,000. I said $4,000. I was at lunch, and they called me, said the bid was $6,000. I said $10,000. They bid $11,000, and I said $15,000 and that took it.
But I never had time to do it. I thought of calling him up and saying, "Let's just play golf." I play golf, I don't go deep-sea fishing.
One time when I was opening for Jeff, we're doing two shows on a Saturday night in Reno, Nevada, and Father's Day is the next day, and Jeff wants to get home for that. Well, that's rough, if you're doing two shows in Reno, which is west of Los Angeles, and you get on a plane flying east, losing all of those hours, and you want to be at church the next morning.
The limo's waiting, I've ordered him some food. 'Cause Jeff would forget about himself. He'd get on the plane and go, "Man, I'm starving," and fall asleep. So I'd ordered a sandwich or something for him.
In the audience in Reno there was this kind of retarded lady who ironed clothes at the Hilton in Las Vegas. And I'd worked that club with Jeff; it's a 1,500-seater that Elvis played a million times. He set the record for 360 sold-out shows there.
And I see this retarded lady walking over to him, and she's got a picture and a pen. And Jeff stopped and talked to her for fifteen minutes. He asked her about her family and made her feel special. Then he said, "Let's get out of here." But while he was talking to that lady, he gave her his full attention.
That's the kind of thing he modeled for me.
One thing's for sure, it's a whole lot better for me to be trying to imitate Jeff's behavior, than for Jeff to be imitating mine. About ten years ago, when Jeff first started hitting it big, he took me on tour with him as his opening act.
The first gig of the tour, our first gig together ever, was in this 900-seat room at the MGM Grand. And Bill Engvall was opening for Reba McEntire at Caesars Palace. They're doing one show a night in this 15,000-seat theater, and we're doing three shows a night in this 900-seat room.
Bill does his show, and then he comes over to see Jeff and me. At that point, I hadn't really spent any time with Jeff in about two years, and I hadn't seen Bill in three years.
And I've come to Vegas with a woman I can't stand. And she can't stand me either, really. Which happened to me a lot back then. The only thing that kept my relationships together was mutual hate.
"I would rather be miserable than to see you happy with somebody else."
"That goes double for me."
Anyway, after the last show this woman and I go up to our hotel room. And I just wanna go out with Bill and Jeff and throw darts and tell stories and whatever. And I know she's gonna be pissed, she's drunk on red wine.
And I tell her, "Honey, I just wanna go hang out with Jeff and Bill--I haven't seen 'em in a while--and just, you know, go knock back a couple of Co-Colas."
"Fine. Just leave me here in the hotel room by myself then."
"OK, honey, great. See you later."
So Jeff, Bill, and I go out together. And we're playing blackjack and craps. We're winning money. We're telling lies and stories. We're having a blast. It gets to be about 4:30 in the morning, we break it up.
Now, Vegas will make you horny, if you let it. I go back to the hotel room. I'm horny. She's a gorgeous woman, she's laying there in her negligee. But I know if I wake her up, she's gonna hit me in the head with her bucket of nickels.
The only thing that's gonna happen if I wake this girl up to try to have sex with her is that I'm gonna end up with a new mug shot. That's what's gonna happen.
So I think, shit, I'll just do it myself. So I rummage around in the dark, and I find some lotion.
The next morning I wake up. She's making coffee. And she asks me, "What's wrong with your hand?"
I look at my hand. It's dark orange. Bain de Soleil Self Tanning Lotion for Dark Skin Only. And apparently I was getting down, because it was on my nipples and the inside of my thighs and behind my ears.
To be where I am now, ten years later, is amazing. This is such a gratifying time in my career. I've made my own leap from touring the comedy clubs for more than fifteen, almost twenty years, to being able to sell out big theaters. The eight minutes or so of "Tater Salad," somebody told me, is the single most downloaded piece of comedy in the history of the Internet.
My retirement plan was always, "Maybe something neat will happen." And it did. I don't feel like I deserve it especially, but it's still a blast.
One of the great things about being really successful is you have the money to get things working right. Although it can take a little trial and error.
Transportation, for instance. I started out driving to gigs in a beat-to-shit 1986 Nissan pickup. It had a bench vinyl seat that would just bend you over the wheel after about fifty miles. And I'm driving five hundred miles or more at a stretch in between gigs.
And I'm driving places I've never been and wouldn't want to go to at that time of year. That's when I learned you can't be going up to these places like Minnesota and Wisconsin in the wintertime with some Texas jackets. You need to have special shit. Or you will freeze your ass right off.
Early on as a comedian I was performing in Green Bay, Wisconsin, and they're having this horrendous cold snap. It was colder than anything I'd ever experienced. It's like forty below, and I mean it's so bad that I can't get from the apartment to the cab to go to work without being in pain.
And I don't have the special shit you need to survive in that weather. I just went up there with some Texas jackets. And I was dying. And I thought, well, there's not gonna be anybody there.
The place was packed. They put on their same outfit they wear to the Packers game, and they wore it over to the comedy club. They got a huge coatroom for all the snowsuits and parkas and shit.
These people put on their cold-weather gear in late October, and they take it off about April. Which you can appreciate, if you've ever been up there with 'em during that time.
Smells like it too. Which you can appreciate, if you've ever been up there with 'em during that time.
You put on all those layers, and you heat up. It's only natural.
What's that fragrance? Eau de Parka. Eau de Long Johns.
Another time I had a gig in Omaha to get to. I called the club, and said I was on my way. I'd played this club before, and the girl who answered the phone, Mimi, said, "Oh, great, Ron. We're waiting for you. We've been looking forward to having you back."
I get outside and my truck won't start. So I catch a Greyhound bus. It's January and it starts to snow, and we get stuck behind a jack-knifed Little Debbie's tractor-trailer. I'm sitting in the front of the bus, staring at this eighteen-wheeler, thinking, "I wonder if this bus has got a tool kit with a tire iron. We could bust into that Little Debbie's truck, and at least I could get something to eat." Because I hadn't had anything to eat, and I didn't have any money, and I was starving.
They finally get things cleared up, we chug along to the next stop, which is Kansas City. I call the club to tell 'em I'm gonna be late, and they tell me, "You're here
next
week." So the next Tuesday I had to make the trip all over again.
Then I got to where I could buy a custom van to tour in. And now I fly, or most of the time I travel on a custom tour bus. My wife, Barbara, and I have paid our dues with tour buses, let me tell you.
The first time Barbara and I rented a bus, the bus company sent us a goddamn band bus that sleeps twelve people in bunks, with a single bed and a couch in the back. Barbara and I can't even sleep together, and we're gonna be on this bus for twenty-two nights.
I get on the bus and I think, "These fuckin' people knew what I wanted. They knew it was just me and my wife, and they go ahead and give us this huge band bus that we can't use."
And I'm paying top dollar for a bus and a driver. So I get on the phone and I'm just fucking cussin' out this guy at the bus company. They tell me they got another bus for us, a Star Coach, we're gonna love it. And we're supposed to rendezvous with this new bus and shift into it.
Well, they didn't have a driver available that had ever operated this Star Coach. What they found was this guy named C.B., who had to be seventy years old and didn't weigh a hundred pounds. As we found out later, he had driven eighteen-wheelers for forty years. And then he got a job driving these fifty-five-seat Blue Bird buses that church and school groups rent to go on outings. And then he started driving for this company we were renting the tour bus from.
Well, old C.B. had plenty of driving experience, no doubt about that. But they put him on this super-modern, custom coach that's so fancy, it's got pushbutton everything. You need to take a class to learn all the controls.
As soon as I got on the bus, I had to take a piss. The door's open to the bathroom. I walk in, I turn around, and there's this six-button panel. I push a button and the door closes. "OK," I think, "cool." I turn around and take a piss. I turn back around, and--I don't have my glasses--I push a button, and the lights go out.
BOOK: I Had the Right to Remain Silent...But I Didn't Have the Ability
2.17Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
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