You don’t have to have a furry animal growing on your chin to attend this show, but you do need a sense of humor. The Beards Of Comedy Tour sweeps through the Q.C. on Thursday night, stopping in for a gig at Prevue Music Hall. The bearded foursome – comprised of Andy Sandford, Joe Zimmerman, TJ Young and Dave Stone – is known for blending a mixture of stand-up, sketch and improv, for what amounts to a funny ordeal ( that’s not even facial hair related). Joe Zimmerman spoke to CL about the making of the Beards Of Comedy Tour and what can be expected at the show.
Creative Loafing: When and how did The Beards Of Comedy Tour start?
Joe Zimmerman: It started in 2008. We’ve been touring for about six months now. It really started because the other three guys all had really good beards. We were all friends from doing comedy around the southeast. I, jokingly, said to them that they should be in a tour called the Beards Of Comedy and at the time it just sounded funny and kind of ironic. But, then a couple months later, I was like ‘Hey, I could grow a beard and I’d like to be in the tour with them.’ So, I proposed that we actually do a tour called the Beards Of Comedy and then I grew my first beard ever. I’m kind of the poser of the group. The other three are all legit though. They rocked the solid beard since like forever.
How do you describe the show? I read it mixes stand-up, sketch and improv.
Yeah, it does mix a little bit of everything. We wanted to do a show that was different and unique and we wanted to do something that was fun too. So, we didn’t want it to just be four stand-up’s in a row and then say goodbye. That being said, we are stand-up comedians first, so it’s got a strong stand-up element to it and then we just sort of splice in a couple of sketches. TJ Young is actually a drummer and I used to play bass guitar in a band, so TJ and I worked up a big musical grand finale where all the beards get involved for some rock ‘n’ roll at the end of the show. But, most of the show is stand-up and then we do some sketch and giveaways. Actually, I found a painting of a unicorn at a GoodWill that I’m pretty excited about giving away in Charlotte this week. It was a $2 Unicorn painting. So yeah, I put the money out there to make sure people are getting good prizes if they answer our trivia question correctly.
Tickets to the show are $10. Starts at 8 p.m. Prevue Music Hall is located at 2909 N. Davidson St.
This article appears in Mar 23-29, 2010.
