{"id":2454822,"date":"2020-02-20T16:00:00","date_gmt":"2020-02-20T23:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.aspentimes.com\/?p=321158"},"modified":"2020-02-20T16:00:00","modified_gmt":"2020-02-20T23:00:00","slug":"aspen-laugh-fest-comedian-dusty-slay-on-bridging-americas-red-blue-divide","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/local-news\/aspen-laugh-fest-comedian-dusty-slay-on-bridging-americas-red-blue-divide\/","title":{"rendered":"Aspen Laugh Fest: Comedian Dusty Slay on bridging America\u2019s red-blue divide"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
Dusty Slay<\/strong>
Courtesy photo<\/em><\/figcaption><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n

He may wear a trucker hat and tell jokes in a Southern twang, but Dusty Slay<\/a> isn\u2019t quite what you\u2019d expect. He\u2019s more of a trailer park Jerry Seinfeld rather than he is a new generation of Jeff Foxworthy.<\/p>\n

Slay shapes sharp observational humor about everyday foibles and his Alabama upbringing. The comedian, who will co-headline the Aspen Laugh Festival on Friday night with Taylor Tomlinson and Adam Ray, has figured out that he can joke about poverty and trailer park life with love and without doing lame, classist humor. In recent years, as the U.S. has grown more divided between red and blue factions, Slay has been a rare bridge between them.<\/p>\n

\u201cI have people from all political sides that come to my shows and I don\u2019t want that kind of stuff to keep us from laughing together,\u201d he said in a phone interview from home in Nashville.<\/p>\n

Slay\u2019s national profile has risen over the last few years with features on Comedy Central, Jimmy Fallon and Jimmy Kimmel and in headlining spots at clubs around the country.<\/p>\n

He developed his comic chops working out of Charleston, South Carolina \u2014 a liberal city in a conservative state \u2014 which he thinks helped him thread the needle of our culturally fraught and politically divided moment. He can get laughs from good ol\u2019 boys or from cosmopolitan crowds or anything in between. Slay is unafraid to offend, he said, but doesn\u2019t want anybody to leave his show feeling worse than when they arrived.<\/p>\n

\u201cI decided a long time ago that I wouldn\u2019t do comedy that\u2019s going to hurt your feelings,\u201d he explained. \u201cSo no matter what you\u2019re bringing to the show there is nothing in my act that\u2019s going to hurt your feelings. I feel like being offended is a choice, but your feelings you can\u2019t control.\u201d<\/p>\n

He can make jokes out of his hardscrabble childhood, he\u2019s found, because he loved that childhood. It comes from a fond place, he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cGrowing up, I was in a two-bedroom trailer with my mom and two sisters and their boyfriends,\u201d Slay said. \u201cWe packed that house and had a good time. We watched NASCAR and watched wresting and we did the stereotypical redneck stuff, but we loved it. I still like living in the South and I like the people I live around.\u201d<\/p>\n

The past few years have been a show business breakthrough for Slay, but for the country music-loving kid, no gig will ever be as big as his debut at the Grand Ole Opry in 2019.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was comparable to the feeling I had being on the \u2018Tonight Show\u2019 for the first time,\u201d Slay said. \u201cAt the Opry I did eight minutes onstage the first time and you would have throught I just headlined Madison Square Garden given the way I felt. \u2026 It was amazing.\u201d<\/p>\n

Slay is doing two Laugh Fest shows this weekend, co-headlining the main stage Friday and then doing a free show Saturday at the Limelight Snowmass with Joe Praino. The festival environment is a welcome change of pace for the comic, used to hopping around the U.S. from solo gig to solo gig.<\/p>\n

\u201cI love to talk about comedy, so I love festivals,\u201d he said, noting how festivals offer the rare chance for comics to sit still and hang out for a few days together. \u201cAfter awhile I feel like comics are about the only people I can relate to. You sit with comics and say, \u2018Have you done this club?\u2019 \u2018Have you done this?\u2019 You can talk forever.\u201d<\/p>\n

Slay crossed paths with fellow Laugh Fest headliner Norm Macdonald five years ago, when the then-unknown Slay was a contestant on \u201cLast Comic Standing\u201d and Macdonald was a judge (along with Keenan Ivory Wayans and Roseanne Barr).<\/p>\n

Slay didn\u2019t make it far in the reality show contest.<\/p>\n

\u201cNorm was the only one who had anything positive to say,\u201d he recalled with a laugh. \u201cI\u2019m a much better comic now than I was in 2015 and I\u2019m glad I didn\u2019t go any further.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sharing a festival bill with Macdonald, he said, is an honor: \u201cMy friends are excited I\u2019m on a poster with Norm Macdonald. Nobody beats Norm Macdonald.\u201d<\/p>\n

Along with his hat, long hair and glasses \u2014 \u201cA lot of people tell me I look like Forrest Gump after he ran for a long time\u201d he has quipped \u2014 a few seemingly simple gestures have become stage signatures for Slay: a short and friendly hand wave he uses to punctuate jokes and the phrase \u201cWe\u2019re having a good time,\u201d which developed out of his early days playing to grumpy crowds in stale rooms.<\/p>\n

\u201cI played a lot of bad gigs where I\u2019d go up in front of 15 people and none of them looked happy,\u201d he recalled. \u201cI\u2019d take the mic and go, \u2018All right, who\u2019s pumped?\u2019 It would get people to laugh a bit because clearly nobody was pumped. That evolved into \u2018We\u2019re having a good time.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

But it\u2019s actually more than a verbal tic or personal slogan, he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s my job to make it fun,\u201d Slay said. \u201cPeople make the mistake of going onstage and bashing an audience because the energy isn\u2019t where they want it to be. But I think it\u2019s my job to get the energy up.\u201d<\/p>\n

Slay has played Denver\u2019s ComedyWorks and elsewhere around Colorado in the past few years as his national profile has expanded, but he\u2019s never before performed in Aspen.<\/p>\n

Slay is not a skier. He didn\u2019t rule out giving it a try while in Aspen, but didn\u2019t sound confident about his alpine skills.<\/p>\n

\u201cI used to say, \u2018I don\u2019t have health insurance, so I don\u2019t want to do any extreme sports,\u2019\u201d he said. \u201cNow I do have health insurance but it\u2019s not that good and I\u2019m so bad at things that move under my feet.\u201d<\/p>\n

atravers@aspentimes.com<\/a><\/p>\n

via:: The Aspen Times<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Dusty SlayCourtesy photo He may wear a trucker hat and tell jokes in a Southern twang, but Dusty Slay isn\u2019t quite what you\u2019d expect. He\u2019s more of a trailer park Jerry Seinfeld rather than he is a new generation of Jeff Foxworthy. Slay shapes sharp observational humor about everyday foibles and his Alabama upbringing. The […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[49],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2454822","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-local-news"],"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-08-18 14:34:37","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KSPN The Valley's Quality Rock","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2454822","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2454822"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2454822\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2454822"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2454822"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2454822"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}