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That was Baurice Nelson’s thinking when he decided to put on the first Olympia Comedy Festival, happening Thursday, Friday and Saturday at The Royal Lounge.
The festival begins Thursday with a comedy competition featuring local and regional performers. Friday and Saturday are shows featuring multiple comics, all who could easily be headliners, Nelson said.
“The idea of a festival is to be able to stack up two or three of those guys in one night,” he said. Initially, he envisioned the festival as a one-night event, perhaps with a national-level headliner, but once he decided to focus on strong regional comedians, things just kept expanding.
“We just kept adding comedians to it,” he said. “I like the idea of a festival. I’d like it to become a staple event that I could do at least once a year. Ideally, I’d like to do it twice a year.”
While the shows are for ages 21 and older because they are being held in a bar, the humor tends toward the family-friendly, Nelson said.
“I love these comics who are able to come out and deliver super-humorous material without going into the gutter to get it,” he said. “I think gutter comedy is funny, but I do get worried about comics who do only that when I’m putting on a show.”
Here’s a look at some of the comics who’ll be sharing the stage Friday and Saturday:
DWIGHT SLADE: Slade of Portland has won the Boston Comedy Festival and the Seattle Laugh-Off and appeared on HBO and Comedy Central. His style is to poke fun at the minutiae — like the silly things people say and do.
Slade on the economy: “We have plenty of money,” he told The Olympian in a 2008 interview. “Just go to Costco and see if I’m not right. People aren’t broke because Lehman Brothers went belly up. It’s because they bought a jar of mustard the size of a Porta Potty.”
GABRIEL RUTLEDGE: Rutledge of Olympia won the prestigious Seattle International Comedy Competition in 2004. His comedy focuses a lot on his wife and children. Rutledge on parenthood: “People have kids for different reasons. For my wife and I, it was because we ran out of condoms.”
DAVID CROWE: Crowe of Seattle has won both the Seattle and San Francisco comedy competitions, two of the most prestigious in the nation. He’s also had his own Showtime special.
In a 2010 Olympian interview, he described his style as “highbrow comedy with lowbrow delivery.”
Crowe on the Northwest: “People always wonder if it’s depressing there because it rains all the time, and I’m here to tell you that it does rain there all the time and it is depressing. We have a low murder rate, though, because people tend to kill themselves.”
DUANE GOAD: Goad of Seattle has been a Seattle International Comedy Competition finalist and is a writer and voice talent on numerous shows on MSN-TV.
His comedy is topical and observational, sometimes riffing off his own life and sometimes off his random thoughts.
On pornography: “I know they make porn in Canada. I’ve never seen it. I don’t think I want to see porn from Canada. I just imagine very friendly, polite porn. ... ‘Oh, you like that, eh? ... Oh, that’s quite nice.’ ”
