Look What Feeding Your Kids Sugar Can Do?!?!: Recovery Comedian Steve Smith
This week we are catching up with Steve Smith. Steve is one of the most requested Clean and Sober comics around!!! Steve has performed at well over 100 program related shows and he is always a pro.
Recovery Comedy: What were you like as a kid?
Steve Smith: One of my best memories as a kid was going to see Jimi Hendrix Although I really don’t remember it because, I was 6, and I was drunk. I was a hyper kid. I grew up on sugar cereal, and it was called sugar cereal too. It wasn’t Honey anything. It was Sugar Pops Sugar Flakes Sugar Smacks. Just a big bowl of fucking sugar. Addiction in training. When your 5 and you eat that and go to school and have a pixie stick and a donut and..WHAAAAM! I’M UP NOW! WHOOO WOOOOO! NO NAP TODAY!
Recovery Comedy: What made you decide to become a stand-up comedian and how long have you been performing?
Steve Smith: I’ve been a comedian for 30 years I started when I was 3. No actually I started in college in 1982. I didn’t want to be a comic, I wanted to be an actor. But when an audience is laughing at your delivery of Anton Chekhov’s “The Seagull” The message was pretty clear.
Recovery Comedy: Were you performing stand-up comedy before you got into recovery?
Steve Smith: Yes, I was doing comedy for 6 years before I got clean and sober. I bounced in and out of the program for a few years before I nailed my butt to a chair. I went in and out so many times that guys in my regular meeting would be placing bets on me. I live in LA and would go on the road and slip up. I would go back to the meeting as a new comer again and say “Hi I’m Steve and I have 8 days” and I would hear someone in the back of the room go “8 days?! I got 8 days! I win”
Recovery Comedy: Does your comedy have a message and if so what is it?
Steve Smith: Laughter and enjoying your life in the program is my message. Yes we have to take our sobriety and clean time seriously but we also have to have fun, enjoy your life and new way of living clean and sober. We have to laugh. At our past, present and future. I woke up from a 3 day bender on a park bench wearing nothing but a Seahawk helmet surrounded by squirrels that were yelling at me. That shits funny
Recovery Comedy: Who are your comedy idols?
Steve Smith: Jonathan Winters was one. I loved his Improv skills. I liked Robin Williams in his early days of stand-up. George Carlin was brilliant. When I was a kid I bought his 7 words you can’t say on TV album and I played it during a family dinner. My parents we’re a little shocked. My mom turned bright red.
Recovery Comedy: Where does your inspiration for material come from?
Steve Smith: From the stupid shit we all do every day. It’s all around us. You just have to see it.
Just the other day I was up at my brothers for a family get together and when it was over one of my brother’s cars wouldn’t start. So he and his wife and sons are trying to start it. At one point his wife was spraying some sort of starting fluid crap into the carb while one of his sons is trying to turn the key and my brother had crawled under the car and was hitting the car with a stick. It just doesn’t get any better than that.
Recovery Comedy: What is your joke writing process?
Steve Smith: No real process. The stuff just comes to me. Most the time I forget to write it down. Sometimes I’ll just go sit in Walmart and watch people and laugh and laugh.
Recovery Comedy: What is your kryptonite?
Steve Smith: In life or on stage?
In life, it’s seeing children suffer, like on a news report. I have really hard time watching that. I usually have to turn the channel
On Stage, its Drunk obnoxious women in the audience. All I want to do is call them a cunt. But I don’t…out loud.
Recovery Comedy: Is your family supportive of your comedy career?
Steve Smith: Yes. My mother was great. She supported whatever I wanted to do.
Recovery Comedy: Is comedy part of your healing process?
Steve Smith: If you mean does preforming comedy on stage help me personally heal. No, it’s my job and I’m really fucking good at it. I think comedy is healing for the audience. Laughter is a natural healing medicine.
If you mean was humor apart of my healing and dealing with my addictions?…
Yes, especially when I was a new comer. There were some other comedians in the meetings I would go to. We would have so much fun at those meetings. We would get our daily dose of program while laughing our asses off at stupid shit we did.
Recovery Comedy: What was your worst experience performing comedy?
Steve Smith: Canada. Club owner asked me if I brought my lights and sound system Then told me not to talk to the audience because a lot of them carry weapons
Recovery Comedy: What was your best experience performing comedy?
Steve Smith: Having a women come up to me at the end of a show and say “I brought my sister here tonight, she has cancer, and for the hour you were on stage she laughed and forgot about her cancer, thank you for that” I thanked her and went back stage and just lost it. Emotionally that just got me. I felt great that I could be of service and terrible her sister had cancer. Life…What a trip.
Recovery Comedy: What is your favorite joke?
Steve Smith: Not sure I really have a favorite I’m not a joke teller. If you mean one of my jokes, it’s probably some of the newer stuff I do on stupid Alaska laws. (See my Show!) If you mean a joke joke. Here’s a couple that come to mind.
People ask me if I’m pro-abortion. I say, I’m pretty good at it, but I would call myself a pro- Comedian Larry “Bubbles” Brown
A black guy, a Jewish guy and a Polish guy walk into a bar. The bartender says..” YA ALL GET THE FUCK OUTTA HERE!” — Comedian George Wallace
I tried that internet dating. I got a virus. Completely wiped out my hard drive
Now I have to use a floppy- Steve Smith
Jokes I don’t use anymore but liked
Went to the gym today, they had these free weights. So I took them home- Steve Smith
I was at this nice restaurant; I asked the waiter “what’s the fruit in season?” He said “My names Joel and it looks like spring” -Steve Smith
Recovery Comedy: What is your comedy dream?
Steve Smith: To book my whole year up with nothing but program shows. They are by far the best audiences and I absolutely love doing them.
To find out more information about Steve Smith or to book him for your next Recovery Convention just click here!
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Originally published at recoverycomedy.livejournal.com on October 7, 2012.
