Thank You for Coming to Hattiesburg: One Comedian's Tour of Not-Quite-the-Biggest Cities in the World

by Todd Barry Narrated by Todd Barry

Overview

“With this charming, sardonic debut, stand up comedian and actor Todd Barry makes readers laugh as hard as the audiences at his shows” (Publishers Weekly) in this hilarious book of travel essays from his time on tour in the US, Canada, and Israel.

Hello. It's Todd Barry. Yes, the massively famous comedian. I have billions of fans all over the world, so I do my fair share of touring. While I love doing shows in the big cities (New York, Philadelphia), I also enjoy a good secondary market (Ithaca, Bethlehem). Performing in these smaller places can be great because not all entertainers stop there on tour; they don't expect to see you. They're appreciative. They say things like “Thank you for coming to Hattiesburg” as much as they say “Nice show.” And almost every town has their version of a hipster coffee shop, so I can get in my comfort zone.

My original plan was to book one secondary market show in all fifty states, in about a year, but that idea was funnier than anything in my act. So, instead of all fifty states in a year, my agent booked multiple shows in a lot of states, plus Israel and Canada.

Thank You for Coming to Hattiesburg is part tour diary, part travel guide, and part memoir (Yes, memoir. Just like the thing presidents and former child stars get to write). Follow me on my journey of small clubs, and the occasional big amphitheater. Watch me make a promoter clean the dressing room toilet in Connecticut, see me stare at beached turtles in Maui, and see how I react when Lars from Metallica shows up to see me at a rec center in Northern California.

I'd love to tell you more, but I need to go book a flight to Evansville, Indiana.

Editorial Reviews

Publishers Weekly

02/06/2017
With this charming, sardonic debut, stand-up comedian and actor Barry makes readers laugh as hard as the audiences at his shows. The book recounts his comedy tour in secondary markets such as Oklahoma City; Iowa City; Tucson, Ariz.; and Syracuse, N.Y. What could have easily been a rote recitation of “flew into town, checked in, got coffee, did show” turns out to be anything but. Barry charmingly relates the day-to-day life of a comic on the road with his signature dry, laconic style of humor, showing genuine affection for the cities he visits and the audiences he encounters. Barry is continuously entertaining as he relates anecdotes such as visiting a bar owned and operated by the shock rock band Gwar in Richmond, Va.; dealing with inept promoters; and getting a police escort after a large show at Jones Beach Theater in Wantagh, N.Y. Barry deftly uses stories about a lack of toilet paper in the green room and hotel rooms with inoperative shades to play to his strengths, using deadpan commentary to sarcastically overstate his fame. Fans of Barry’s stand-up are sure to appreciate this tale of the comedian’s life in the smaller cities. B&w photos. (Mar.)

Sarah Silverman

"Todd Barry is not just one of my oldest friends in comedy but one of my favorite comedians, and this book captures his bone-dry subtle genius to a T."

Judd Apatow

"Todd Barry has always been hysterical, but he has never gotten filthy rich off a book. Let's make that happen!"

Neil Hamburger

"In recounting the hows-and-whys of deliberately steering a tour into the not-particularly-fast lane, Todd Barry animates the mundane with the same skill that makes his stand-up sets so uniquely funny. A fascinating memoir that doubles as the perfect souvenir of the Todd Barry experience."

Jim Gaffigan

"Few comedians have mastered sarcasm with a dose of warmth the way the great Todd Barry has. Also Todd would not have ended the previous sentence with a verb."

Marc Maron

"Watching Todd Barry perform live is one of my favorite things to do in life. I’ve known him for almost 30 years so that’s saying a lot. He really is one of the funniest comics I’ve ever seen."

Oscar-nominated actor Jesse Eisenberg

"A self-portrait that is as honest as it is enigmatic...a hysterical travelogue."

Jen Kirkman

One of my favorite comedians and my pal Todd Barry is going to bring this nation back together with this engaging, uniquely hilarious tour memoir. It’s a love letter to what the real American dream is all about, filled with gloriously specific details and snort-laughing-when-reading-jokes. I truly loved this book. You’ll be sad when it’s over. Also, It kills Todd that I said ONE of my favorite comedians.

Tim Heidecker

"Todd Barry is LITERALLY my favorite comedian of all time, in the sense that he’s among the handful of comedians working today I look forward to seeing live. He’s known around my house as “the master” and although I haven’t read a word of this book, it’s already in my top 10 books I’ve ever read."

Vogue

"No one else has mastered the art of at once self-deprecating and self-aggrandizing like Barry, and his trip through America is irresistibly funny...one of the funniest comics working today."

"Weird Al" Yankovic

"Todd Barry has single-handedly created an epic masterpiece for the ages—and I say that as someone who has not yet had time to read this book. But knowing Todd, I would expect nothing less.

Doug Stanhope

"One of the most truly gifted and skilled wordsmiths and creators in the world of comedy.”

Kirkus Reviews

2017-01-10
A tour diary from the veteran comedian.A lot of performers insist that they live for the hour or two onstage and that the rest is just tedium. Barry, "the massively famous comedian," as he describes himself with ambivalent irony, has not only captured that tedium; his tour diary wallows in it. There are 54 very short chapters, one each devoted to his experience playing a comedy club in a smaller market. Many of these clubs have bad bathrooms, which makes him all the more appreciative of the occasional ones that don't: "The hand soap situation at SPACE was quite impressive. Not just that they had any, which is always a nice surprise, but that it was that high-end Mrs. Meyer's stuff that comes in scents like basil and geranium." Sometimes shows are undermined by drunks and hecklers or by the seating arrangement or by Barry's displeasure over people who have asked to be on the guest list but never show. There is very little of his actual performance in the book and almost none of what is conventionally considered humor, though his deadpan wryness has charm. He often feels compelled to switch rooms in hotels or even switch hotels. He's a picky eater, and though he claims that he tries to eat healthy, he's as prone as anyone to junk food on the road. Though his travels have taken him from coast to coast, he doesn't seem to focus much on regional diversity in his observations. Instead, every place, and every day, is pretty much like the next or the last. "I flew from Oakland to Los Angeles," he writes. "Things got off to a terrible start at LAX when I ordered a bagel and it was toasted in a panini press. I can't defend why it bothered me, but I bet they can't defend why they toasted a bagel in a panini press." An up-and-down collection that often blurs the line between ha-ha funny and odd funny.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940171292423
Publisher:	Simon & Schuster
Publication date:	03/14/2017
Edition description:	Unabridged

Read an Excerpt

Thank You for Coming to Hattiesburg

On January 14, 2015, I opened for Louis C.K. in front of fourteen thousand people at Madison Square Garden. Five days later I was on a plane headed to Little Rock, Arkansas, to headline a show at Juanita’s Cantina, the first stop on my never-officially-titled “Secondary Markets Tour.”

It amused me that I’d just done a show in a sold-out arena and was now on my way to perform at a small music venue in Little Rock. But I’m realistic; I could never fill Madison Square Garden. And now might be a good time to mention that I didn’t even fill Juanita’s Cantina.

This was my second time performing at Juanita’s. I did a show there in 2008, when they were at a different location. About ninety people showed up on a Tuesday. I remember thinking afterward, Ninety people on a Tuesday in Little Rock. Not bad! Although I’ve always toured, I still spend most of my time in New York City, so the fact that nearly a hundred people would pay to see me in Little Rock was pretty satisfying. But then I think, Maybe if I wasn’t satisfied with ninety people in Little Rock, I’d be playing the Little Rock equivalent of Madison Square Garden. Right?

I arrived the night before the show. I would’ve preferred to arrive earlier in the day, but the only nonstop flight to Little Rock was at 6:00 p.m. After touring for twenty-seven years, you start coming up with some travel dealbreakers, and one of mine is booking a flight with a layover when a nonstop is available. Another dealbreaker: a hotel where the door opens to the outside.

I did a tiny bit of research before I arrived. I asked my friend Jeremy, a comedy producer from New York who used to live in Little Rock, to recommend some places to check out. He not only e-mailed me an extensive list of restaurants, bars, and museums, but he even included links. Not links under the name of the place, but links where you click on the name of the place and its website appears. If I ever do this for you it means you saved my life once or I’m in love with you.

I arrived around 8:30 p.m. My stomach was a bit upset, so I figured the best thing to do was go to the bar next to the hotel and get some chicken fingers with “voodoo” sauce and a glass of Pinot Noir. This pairing is also known as “the upset stomach’s best friend.”

The next morning I dove into my favorite on-the-road activity: finding a coffee shop that makes me feel like I’m in Brooklyn. Going to coffee shops is probably my favorite part of traveling. I’ll go on Yelp to search coffee shops that are near a hotel I’m not staying at for six weeks. In Little Rock, a place called Mylo came highly recommended, and when I read a Yelp review where a guy complained that the barista there wouldn’t grind a bag of beans he was buying because you should only grind coffee beans right before making the coffee, I knew this was the place for me.

Mylo wasn’t within walking distance, so I got an Uber. A male driver arrived with a woman in the passenger seat. She stuck her head out the window and said, “Todd?” I got in, and the driver smiled and said, “This is my wife. She’s also an Uber driver.” Then he pointed to both of their licenses mounted above the windshield. Getting picked up by a husband-and-wife Uber team was a delightful start to my morning.

Mylo was great. The type of place I’d stay at for hours with the intention of getting work done, but then I wouldn’t get any work done. And as I suspected, everyone there was extremely friendly, and no, not because they recognized me from the one minute, eight seconds I was in the movie Pootie Tang. No one recognized me. Believe me, if someone recognized me there, you would’ve heard about it by now (and there will be that kind of thing if you keep reading!). I sat at Mylo and did a little research about the neighborhood I was in, an artsy community called Hillcrest. I put “Hillcrest” into my little Android browser and found something called “the Shoppes on Woodlawn,” which looked like it was in a house around the corner. It seemed like a place to get my girlfriend a gift from the road. I liked to buy her little gifts when I went out of town. Often they weren’t very imaginative, like a refrigerator magnet from Alaska that just said “AK.” (Treated myself to one, too!)

There was a very friendly man at the front desk of the Shoppes. I asked if there was anything “Arkansas-specific” to buy as a gift. He showed me some sort of tree ornaments shaped like Arkansas. I didn’t know how my girlfriend could use such an item, and I wasn’t going to buy her a tree to go with it, so I left empty-handed.

When you go to Little Rock, everyone tells you to go to the Clinton Library. I’d been on my last trip but figured it was something I needed to do every time I came to town. The visit started out right. I was in line waiting for my admission sticker. An old man had just gotten his. He handed one to his wife and told her, “The woman at the counter said you’re supposed to stick it on your forehead.” It was such a simple, silly, perfect joke.

I saw a sign for a guided tour that started in a few minutes. Hmmm. A guided tour? That’s probably a good way to get some knowledge stuffed into my head that I wouldn’t find on my own, but what about the guided part? Am I really a guided tour guy? I’d like to be, but what if the guide is long-winded? I can’t focus on a conversation for more than thirty seconds. Okay. Let’s do it. The crowd for the tour was basically a sweet group of senior citizens from a local Baptist church and me, a very young Jewish man. The tour started out slow, like “Todd, get ready for a panic attack” slow. At the rate we were going, I couldn’t imagine the tour lasting less than eleven hours, or maybe it was only scheduled for one hour and the tour guide would have to make everyone sprint through the last fifteen minutes. That could be fun. I’m a completist (I never walk out of movies) but this pace tortured me, so I gathered up some strength and disengaged from the group. There’s a good chance the tour is still in progress.

I spent the next twenty minutes wandering around the museum looking for the slight mention of the whole Monica Lewinsky/impeachment thing that I found the last time I was in town. I got overwhelmed by the text-heavy displays, so I left before I found it.

I think I did a good job entertaining the fifty-eight people who showed up at Juanita’s that night (yes, thirty-two fewer than my last trip). It wasn’t the best-publicized show in town (I had to teach the promoter how to retweet), and I wasn’t expecting a thousand people, but I bet I could’ve gotten a hundred fifty. You’re supposed to get more people the second time you come through a city.

After the show, my opening act, Kris Pierce, invited me to a showcase for local comics at a bar a few miles away. I wasn’t feeling great, but this is something I actually love doing—a short, no-pressure unpaid set after doing a higher-stakes paid headlining set. In New York, people like Chris Rock and Jerry Seinfeld will do unannounced drop-in sets at the comedy clubs. The crowd always goes apeshit. I imagined this is what it would be like if I did a set at an open mic in Little Rock. I’d be introduced and there would be a palpable sense of “Oh my God! I knew Todd Barry was in town and was hoping he’d do a set here, but I didn’t think he would!” energy in the air. I defused this energy by showing up after the show ended.

Before I went to Little Rock I posted something about it on Facebook. Below it a woman commented, Tough crowd for your quick clever wit. She posted this before the show. In her mind she was giving me a compliment. She saw “Little Rock” and assumed everyone there was a redneck and that it would be a tough show. It wasn’t a “tough crowd” (and you mean-spirited readers out there are saying it wasn’t a crowd at all). I’ve had this happen when I promote shows in other regions that aren’t in big markets. I remember posting a list of my upcoming tour dates on Instagram (yes, you can do that) that included two dates in North Dakota and one in South Dakota. A woman commented, Living the dream. I’m guessing she was being sarcastic. I doubt she would’ve said this if my tour dates were Chicago, San Francisco, and New York. I didn’t respond to the comment, but I would’ve liked to yell at her, “WHAT DREAM ARE YOU LIVING?!” That would have annihilated her.

I saw in the paper that singer/songwriter Randy Newman had a show in Little Rock with a local orchestra the same night as mine. The next morning I spotted him on my flight from Little Rock to Dallas. This is the second time I’ve been on a flight with Randy Newman. I left him alone, but it might have been fun to talk to him:

“Sorry to bother you, Mr. Newman, but this is the second time I’ve been on a flight with you, so I think that makes it okay. I did a show in Little Rock last night, too. I’m a comedian.”

He’d reply, “Oh, great. How was your show?”

“Pretty good, but there were only fifty-eight people there. I’m guessing your show was sold out.”

He would shrug politely, then say, “I had more than fifty-eight people in my orchestra.”

Brief pause.

“Well, next time I’ll return with an orchestra!”

We’d both laugh and I’d walk back to my seat in coach.

Videos