Amy Daulton

Today I am interviewing Amy Daulton, a comedian from Salem, VA who has been doing comedy for twelve years. To find out more about Amy, please visit her website.



Why did you start doing stand-up comedy?

When I was younger, my mom told me that I wasn't funny because I never made her laugh. I wanted to prove her wrong (pain + time = comedy). Not really.

I was a huge Carol Burnett and Tim Conway fan. I used to wet my pants watching that show. Then, I was introduced to Saturday Night Live and Eddie Murphy. I thought he was a freaking genius. I wanted to be him, unfortunately I am a 5'0 white girl, so that dream could never truly come to fruition. "Raw "was one the most amazing things I had ever seen. I loved how free and uncensored he was. I used to put on comedy shows for my entire family. And being raised Southern Baptist, Eddie Murphy wasn't the greatest influence that one could have. I remember my uncle (a Deacon in the church) telling me that I should "keep it clean, like Sinbad. Now, that's a great comedian."

Can you talk about your journey and how you have changed since you first started doing stand-up?

The first time that I did stand up was in 1998 at a coffee shop in Los Angeles. The comic who went up before me, got into a fist fight with another comic while on stage. I practically shat myself. I went up and my jokes were so bad. The other comics were just staring at me. It was such an awful feeling. One of the jokes that I wrote was, "the other day, I gave myself a black eye while doing Taebo. My friends asked me what happened and I told them that my boyfriend hit me. Then they said, 'you have a boyfriend?'" I cringe thinking about it.

I would get all dolled up to go to an open mic and when I was on stage, I was afraid to take the mic out of the mic stand and I would just stand there, dead. I was so self conscious that I even starved myself down to 90 pounds before the first mic, just so I would have more confidence. Now on stage, I am a nutcase and am all over the place. I'm not sure if my comedy even makes sense. I just say whatever is on my mind and most of the time it comes across as insane. I have no problem with doing 15 minutes on the new hair cut that I gave my dog. If it is funny to me, I say it.

Do you have any stories from the times you have been performing comedy?

Oh comedy, my abusive, yet very loving boyfriend. When comedy is good, it is better than a crack high. When comedy is bad, I want to throw myself into speeding traffic.

I once was booked as the host of a battle of the bands in a strip club in Anaheim, CA. I'm not sure how I was chosen for this fantastic opportunity. I arrived at the club and found out that the bookers wanted me to do 2 hours of stand up. A 30 minute "warm up" and 15-20 minutes between strippers. It was a recipe for disaster and needless to say, the crowd hated me. The entire time I was on stage they yelled, "show us your tits". When I wasn't on stage, I was in my car crying. I finally got fed up and found a mentally challenged man in the crowd and got him on stage to dance with me for the last 15 minutes. The crowd loved it and I knew that I had secured my place in hell. To top it off, I got paid in pitchers of beer.

I auditioned to get a booked spot at one of the comedy clubs in LA. Instead of seeing the comics live, the booker made us audition at 2pm on a Saturday afternoon in an empty room. He also wouldn't give us a microphone, because we were "amateurs who didn't know how to use the mic properly." So, he asked that we all do our sets into the mic stand as if a mic was there. So, of course I opened with "is this thing on?" I thought it was hilarious. He asked me to leave.

I did a show in Lake Havasu, Arizona and I completely bombed. You could hear crickets the entire time I was on stage. When I finished my set, the booker beckoned me over by gesturing "come here" with his finger. I walked over to him and he said, "you know, Ellen DeGeneres has performed on that stage. She did tampon jokes and it killed. Maybe you should do tampon jokes."