Laugh Lines: Conversations With Comedians (18 page)

Corey: The other three guys said you helped them in the business. Have you noticed a change in them?

Jeff: It’s funny, you know, career-wise, it’s probably changed for all of them. But the fact that we’ve all been friends for 20 years, that’s the most gratifying thing for me—especially when we first started doing it, because really nobody knew who Larry or Ron was, and I knew for two decades that they were funny. They just never had gotten the exposure. To see them have the success is a cool thing.

It’s funny; everybody handles it in a different way. Larry hasn’t changed a bit. About an hour south of the airport here in Atlanta, I have a couple thousand acres, and I go down there and work on my farm. I take the kids to school and go down there for four or five hours and work, come home. I go down there in September and go in my barn and there’s a brand new, giant tractor in there with a bow on it that says, ‘Happy Birthday, thanks for everything you’ve done for me, Larry.’

And Ron’s a little redneck rich right now. Ron’s doing a bit of the Elvis thing right now, the big houses, and the cars and the cigars. Ron’s like, ‘You knew this was gonna happen to me.’

I remember saying to him, eight or nine years ago, ‘I sometimes wonder why all this good stuff has happened to me, and there was all these funny people we started out with, and it just never panned out.’ Ron said, ‘I think it’s ’cause God knew you’d do the right thing with it and the rest of us would just lay around, smoke dope and watch cartoons.’

Corey: When people think of you, it’s as a nice guy. So are you always a nice guy or sometimes not nice?

Jeff: I try real hard to be a nice guy. I say try real hard, like my nature is to go out and slit throats. I think that kind of the fortunate thing for me is I’m pretty much what you see. I don’t have to get prepared to go out onstage or anything, especially as I’ve gotten older and had kids. I believe life is about balance. I’ve turned down stuff, career wise. I turned down a movie last year with Robin Williams because I was going to be nine weeks away.

As fun as that would have been, I don’t want to miss nine weeks with my kids in the summertime. I love this thing that I do. I probably love it more now than ever. I think I have a greater appreciation for stand-up now than I ever have.

There’s a lot of people who get into it because they want to get into TV or movies. There’s nothing wrong with that. The Steve Martins, the Eddie Murphys, the Adam Sandlers. Then there’s some people, like Cosby, who’s worth a billion dollars, he’s still doing stand-up because he loves it. There’s very few people like that.

Being able to still do it and hopefully still be funny is very cool this far into it., which is my greatest fear. That’s the thing I always tell my wife. ‘Please tell me if I stop being funny,’ because there’s nothing worse than a comic that’s not funny anymore.

Corey: When you do a show with these three guys, you have to come out with new stuff. How do you balance the old classics with the new?

Jeff: I think for a comic, you always want to do the new stuff. I have these arguments sometime with Ron and Larry, because Ron will say, ‘You’ve got 10 hours of material. You’ve got all this great stuff you haven’t told in 15 years, and you should do some of that stuff.’ And I’m, like, ‘Yeah, but that’s old stuff.’

When it’s me by myself I try to do that balance, do the new stuff, then do a few things people are familiar with, then digging up something I haven’t done in forever, which is like new stuff to most people. But when I’m with them, we’re mostly doing the new stuff, because we’re trying to make each other laugh most of the time. It’s funny, it’s like a lot of the old stuff, like Ron telling the Tater Salad story. He used to tell that just sitting around at Denny’s. ‘Ron, you’ve got to tell this on stage.’ ‘You think so?’ ‘Are you kidding me, that’s one of the funniest things I’ve ever heard.’

Corey: Are there themes for this tour?

Jeff: One of the things I’ve been working on is fashion. Every fashion thing you ever see is geared toward super models, the beautiful people, of which there’s like nine of. Nobody’s doing fashion tips for the rest of the world. That’s one thing I’ve been working on, like certain things should not be sold in certain sizes. If your rear end looks like two full-grown raccoons wrestling in a 50-pound bag of seed corn, say no to Spandex. People need this information.

Corey: You’re known for your moustache. When was the last time you didn’t have it?

Jeff: I didn’t realize my moustache was that big of a deal until that roast. I think it was the summer before my senior year of high school. We’ve been together 21 years; she’s never seen me without it. It’s been there a long time.

Corey: Does it hold some special powers?

Jeff: No, but it may hold some pieces of potato chips. I don’t even know if I have a lip anymore. Ron griped at me when I grew a goatee. ‘Jeff Foxworthy is supposed to have a big moustache. You’re not supposed to have a goatee.’ I don’t even think about it anymore. I guess its just part of who I am.

Corey: And now there’s redneck slot machines.

Jeff: It was one of those things; somebody had an interest in doing it. They’re like, ‘We’re gonna do a redneck slot machine with or without you.’ ‘That being the case, why don’t you do it with me?’ It was kind of fun. Instead of cherries and lemons and things, we had boots and dogs and trucks. Then they did an audio thing of me. They start at a penny; you can play at a penny on up, which I thought was aimed at my crowd. That’s one of those things that nothing in life prepares you for: to walk into a casino and see your face on a slot machine. It’s just weird.

Corey: Do you ever wake up shocked at the popularity of the redneck thing?

Jeff: Shocked. More than anybody probably. In fact, I was working this morning on the page-a-day calendar for next year. I wrote the first redneck joke I think in ’87. Twenty years later, I’m still sitting here writing redneck jokes—and the scary thing is they’re still funny. The very last one I wrote was, ‘If you’ve ever had to hop to the bathroom in a sleeping bag so family members wouldn’t see you nekkid …’ This must be number 7,000.

Corey: Are you still adding words to redneck dictionary?

Jeff: That thing went crazy. That was out of every book I’d ever done. When we started the TV show, they wanted things that were kind of quick hitters. I had done some of these words in the first ‘Blue Collar’ movie. When we started the TV show, ‘Let’s do some of these words as a quick little thing instead of some drawn-out skit.’ We did that, made a mock-up book cover. We got inundated with e-mails from people. We can’t fund this book; it doesn’t exist. We’re making them up. At the end of the first season, sit down and see how many you can write. I thought there may be 40-50 of them and came up with like 700. Something’s bad wrong with my mind. It ended up being No. 2 on the New York Times Bestseller list.

Corey: Is there a difference between redneck versus white trash?

Jeff: I think they’re different. Redneck to me is almost like a state of mind thing. To me, white trash is more, almost like an economic thing. When I started doing it, it never had anything to do with money, because Elvis had $100 million and he was putting carpet and TVs on the ceiling. Elvis was the first guy with the rhinestone kit, and he had a lot of money. To me, that’s what I’ve always said, it’s like a state of mind.

Corey: Do people say ‘Git ’er done’ to you?

Jeff: Yeah. My favorite thing is when they’re wearing a ‘Here’s Your Sign’ T-shirt and want me to sign it. I do it knowing somewhere down the road someone’s going to go, ‘Bob, you idiot, “Here’s your sign,” that’s Bill Engvall’s joke.’ Bill used to get mad at me, because before either of us had done television, we’re in the clubs and people would come up to Bill in the airports and say, ‘We love your redneck jokes.’ He would get mad and go, ‘That’s not me. That’s Jeff Foxworthy.’ And people would come up to me and say, ‘We love your “Here’s your sign” stuff, and I would go, ‘Thank you. I’m so glad you do.’ Bill said, ‘You’ve got to tell them it’s not you.’ I said, ‘No, they like it. If they had said, “We hate it,” I would have gone, “Oh, that’s not me, that’s Bill Engvall.”’

Corey: What’s the first thing that comes to mind when I mention the other three? Larry?

Jeff: You probably couldn’t print it. Fart jokes.

Corey: Ron?

Jeff: Sobriety? A new concept.

Corey: Bill?

Jeff: You know what, friend. I’ve had so much fun doing the TV show with Bill. It was kind of like when you’ve known somebody for that long, we had never done sketch stuff, and Bill was so good at that. It was like seeing somebody in a light you’ve never seen before. Though I worried about him toward the end, he was wearing a dress like every week. At first he volunteered, then it was like, ‘Bill, we’re not even shooting today; you’ve got a dress on.’ He worries me.

I always call Bill the Golden Retriever of our group, because he’s game for anything—happy and his tail’s waggin’. ‘What do you want to do?’ Any group where I’m the mature daddy of the group, they’ve got some problems.

Corey: What do you want for your legacy?

Jeff: You’d think that would do it. Lord knows I’m still writing redneck jokes. I think the thing that’s made this thing fun—almost like a Rat Pack thing—everybody can perform on their own. Something about when we’re all together, it’s more fun. I don’t know … We’ve had people approach us about doing real movies.

I don’t want to stay longer at the dance than I should, but as long as people are enjoying it and we’re having fun, I hope we get to do other stuff.

Larry the Cable Guy isn’t real—but don’t tell that to his fans. He’s right up there with the Easter Bunny, Sasquatch and Mr. Snuffleupagus.

When a rural Missouri teen helped foil the long-time kidnapping of Shawn Hornbeck, his statement to the crowd: “Git-r-done.”

I didn’t get Dan Whitney in an interview, I got Larry—camo cap and sleeveless flannel to boot.

Corey: Larry, how the hell are ya’?

Larry the Cable Guy: I’m doin’ purty good. You?

Corey: No major complaints.

Larry: Good, me either. We all doin’ good.

Corey: We’re a little bit into January. Did you make any New Year’s resolutions?

Larry: Yeah, this year I’m gonna wreck the truck, get the insurance money to make the truck payment. That’s my resolution this year.

Corey: You ain’t quite done that yet?

Larry: I ain’t quite done that yet, but that’s what I’m gonna do. I’m gonna quit eatin’ finger wieners.

Corey: What are those?

Larry: Those little barbecue finger wieners.

Corey: That come in a can?

Larry: Oh, good lord. That’s what I’m trying to get as a TV show, the next ‘Survivor.’ How many people can sit in a room with me after five finger wieners? I ate them the other day—I ain’t kiddin’ you— we was in the car, and I got them finger wiener farts. This is a true story. It was so bad the side air bag came out. Then we got a phone call from OnStar; they thought there was an explosion in the car and they wanted us to pull over, get out and tuck and roll, in case any of us was on fire.