Corey Rodrigues headlines Tupelo Night of Comedy
The world is full of comedians who entered the craft after being inspired by another standup, but Corey Rodrigues came to it through the crucible of a barbershop owned by his family. Making the customers laugh came naturally, and the more he did it, the clearer it became that he was destined for bigger crowds.
However, Rodrigues was the last one to know about his career in the making.
“I never thought I would be a comedian,” he said in a recent phone interview. “People used to say I should, but I was like, that’s stupid. I don’t know how to make people laugh [who] I don’t know, and I don’t want to … I’m not a clown. I didn’t even know how that could be possible.”
So Rodrigues became a comic by acclamation, as classmates, coworkers and others urged him to give it a shot.
“It’s just in me, I’ve always been this person,” he finally realized. “There’s a funny angle at which you look at things … someone else may have thought it, but they just don’t know what to do with it. That’s not their mindset. … The blessing and curse of a comedian is you’re constantly finding something funny.”
After suffering through a few tough shows early on, he did begin to study other comics.
“I was like, I could eventually get to that … it looks easy enough,” he said. He eventually became aware of another critical standup survival skill. “If you’re delusional, you’ll stay in this business. … You have to have a level of delusion.”
Rodrigues was raised in Milton, Mass., after his troubled mother sent him and his brother to live with their grandparents — he described it as an act of mercy in an Epix Unprotected Sets episode filmed last year.
Early on, he sharpened his edge at Boston’s Improv Asylum, later winning several competitions. A key break came in 2018, when his Dry Bar Comedy Club special garnered over 40 million views, leading to a Late Night With Conan O’Brien appearance the following year.
The Dry Bar special required Rodrigues adhere to PG content, which wasn’t a difficult pivot for him, as he already had a long resume working on cruise ships.
“I do churches, colleges, corporate gigs, everything,” he said. “If you have enough material, you could talk about your balls and something very vanilla at the same time and still make it funny. It was probably one of the best experiences I ever had. … I killed that set.”
He’s done some other unconventional things, like appearing on Mike Huckabee’s show in Nashville a few months back.
“I want to make it [out to] be worse than it was, but it was actually pretty cool,” he said of the experience. “I don’t agree at all with what he said after, when we talked, but he knew my jokes [and] everybody’s gotta laugh.”
Further evidence of Rodrigues’s inclusive comedy was found in Corey’s Stories, a family-friendly livestream he did with his son in the early days of the pandemic. The two read books together, told jokes and invited their audience to call in to answer trivia questions for prizes.
“I had a lot of friends complaining about being stuck at home, kids getting on their nerves and everything, so I created something to kind of give people a break,” he said.
Does Rodrigues have plans for his son to follow in his footsteps?
“I’m not really grooming him for that, but he already knows how to hold his own,” he said. “He showed me that in the show, which was pretty awesome.”
Corey Rodrigues, Kyle Crawford and Alex Giampapa
When: Friday, Jan. 14, 8 p.m.
Where: Tupelo Music Hall, 10 A St., Derry
Tickets: $22 at tupelohall.com
Featured photo: Corey Rodrigues. Courtesy photo.
