Ever wonder what drives a person to stand onstage in front of a room full of strangers and try to tell jokes for an hour? Because it sounds positively paralyzing and deeply frightening.
“I don’t want to feed into the ‘all comedians are crazy, damaged people,’ [theory] because I think there’re just as many sad receptionists as there are sad clowns,” stand-up comic Gabriel Rutledge explained during a recent phone interview. “But there is a weird thing where negative feedback wasn’t enough to make me quit. Something in you compels you that you had to have people listen to you. I think—and this might just be my therapy talking—a lot of comedians have a sibling who took up more attention in the house than they did, and for me, I have a Down Syndrome brother, and no shade on him or my parents, but you know, he took a lot of effort.
“And so, subconsciously, I think, ‘Someday I’m gonna make this about me.’ I’m telling you, dozens and dozens of comedians I’ve had this conversation with have had similar circumstances. But also, I just like doing it. It doesn’t necessarily come from darkness.”
Rutledge will be “doing it” at the Fremont Theater on Friday, July 18, and “it” is a very astute brand of observational comedy. One video that went viral was his Coinstar bit, which you can find on YouTube.
“Almost everything I say is the truth, perhaps the truth exaggerated, but it at least comes from the truth,” Rutledge said. “I was using a Coinstar machine one time. Are you familiar with the Coinstar? Where you cash in your change? I had a change thing at home, it was full, so time to cash it in. I’m dumping it loudly into the machine, as you do, and someone I know came by and was like, ‘Hey, how’s comedy going?’ As I’m dumping change in to get a voucher.”
Ouch!
What started as a one-liner developed over time into a longer bit as Rutledge leaned into the discomfort of being spotted cashing in his change. Soon he was adding how the Coinstar machine is always in the front of the store when it should be “in the back of the store behind a beaded curtain for my privacy, but no, it’s in the front next to the lotto tickets. They’ve done their research.”
He takes a grain of an idea “and over time, I just keep adding to it onstage.”
He’s clearly a quick thinker. I read he was born in Bay Center, Washington, current population 253, and asked about it.
“Yes. I’m probably one of the last human beings born in Bay Center because it doesn’t even have a hospital. I had hippie parents at the time. My dad delivered me out in the woods,” he chuckled.
Wikipedia lists two “notable residents” of Bay Center: Lum You (1861-1902), a Chinese laborer and convicted murderer, and the only person legally executed in Pacific County; and Colin Murray Cowherd, sports media personality. I hoped Rutledge would have made the list.
“Yeah, well, I didn’t really live there. We moved to South Bend, Washington, which isn’t much bigger, shortly after I was born. My parents decided they needed electricity.”
These days he lives in Olympia with his wife, with whom he has three kids. Olympia isn’t exactly known as a comedy hotbed.
“I’m not here for show business reasons; I’ll tell you that much. You know, my wife is from here. I’m from here. I stayed after high school because the punk rock music scene in Olympia was really happening. And when I graduated in 1992, I was pretty sure my band was going to be pretty big.”
Rutledge was a drummer, and his long-haired “look” draws obvious comparison to Dave Grohl, former Nirvana drummer and current frontman (guitar and voice) for the Foo Fighters. Comically, he gets a lot of milage from the comparison.
“I don’t want to, but I do.”
He also has a bit where talks about people telling him he looks like “Chubby Jesus.”
After his band didn’t become “pretty big,” he decided to try stand-up, which he called “terrifying.”
“I was already with my wife, and I made her go to the first open mic. And it went well. You know, I’d be horrified if I saw a video of it now, but it went well. I felt good about it. But I remember my wife saying on the way home, ‘That was pretty good. I was afraid it was going to be like the time you sang Garth Brooks at karaoke.'”
Rutledge tends to work pretty clean, but he’s not Nate Bargatze or Jim Gaffigan clean.
“Look, when I write a joke, and it’s very clean, I do give myself a little extra pat on the back. Like, ‘Hey, you did it. Good for you, potty mouth. You did it.'”
He’s written a couple of books, most recently 2021’s There’s No F@!*ing Way You’re Getting a Pony.
“It’s silly. It’s profane. It’s not dirty. It’s a book I wrote and had illustrated about conversations with my young daughter, about how, you know, ‘When you were born, I said, I’d do anything for you, but I was wrong because there’s no fucking way you’re getting a pony.’ That kind of thing.”
In 2014, he released Happiness Isn’t Funny: True Stories of a Road Comic.
“I wrote it 10 years in [to my career]. A lot of people write memoirs, but with the hindsight of success. ‘Here’s what I went through before I became famous’ or whatever. You can read musicians, actors, comedians—every biography has a section about ‘paying their dues.’ The concept of my book was, ‘Is it paying your dues if you’re not going anywhere?’ You know? ‘Is this as good as it gets? Is that good enough?’ It has ended up being a little more honest than I wanted it to, and certainly, now that it’s been so many years ago, if I ever read it, I do cringe at a few of the things.”
The real test is, did his kids find him funny when they were growing up?
“I think sometimes people think having a comedian dad is just constantly me running bits. Like I just wake up in the morning, ‘What’s the deal with eggs?’ You know, it’s not like that. No one could handle that.”
Rutledge won the Seattle International Comedy Competition and The Laughing Skull Comedy Festival in Atlanta. He’s made numerous TV appearances including Comedy Central’s Live at Gotham, Nickelodeon’s Nickmom Night Out, Laughs on FOX, and Inside Joke streaming on Amazon Prime Video. Millions have streamed his Dry Bar Comedy special, A Third of the Room, as well as his YouTube special, Nectarine. He’s released five albums, including his most recent, Good Luck in Court, which debuted at No. 1 on the iTunes comedy charts.
He’s clearly on the rise, but the Fremont is a pretty big room. Can he fill it?
“We’ll see,” he laughed. “I certainly don’t always do that size venue, but I’m starting to do some bigger venues. I’m excited to check it out. I don’t think I’ve ever done a show in San Luis Obispo, ever.” Δ
Contact Arts Editor Glen Starkey at gstarkey@newtimesslo.com.
This article appears in Jul 10-20, 2025.