I'm Erica Lopez with your eblock Today.
We know and love him from
cohosting Daily Blast Live,
but today we're focusing on his
first true love stand up comedy.
Here to talk about his new comedy album.
We welcome Al Jackson.
Thank you for joining me today. Al,
thank you for being.
It's just like as you were talking, Erica,
I thought about myself as a 7th grade
middle school teacher just looking to
find an open mic to do stand up because
I wanted something to do at night.
I swear I had no intention of
ever doing this professionally.
I was locked into being a teacher
and things started happening.
Got 1/2 hour special and now
I'm sitting here with you.
So life is good.
Life is so good. It's been such a
journey for you coming from teaching
to this and you were born for it.
You're incredible.
I've been listening to in earnest
actually this morning you recorded it.
The stand up in Chicago.
Tell me a little bit without
giving away too much what we
can expect from the special.
Well, this special was really.
It sounds weird to say it was
special to me for a couple reasons.
One we were kind of dealing
with and coming out of COVID.
So I had my thoughts retrospectively of
what happened and how we as a people and
me as a person evolved during that 2 1/2
years that we kind of don't talk about.
And then right after COVID,
we fell back into real life.
And my literally the first weekend
that I went to go do stand up,
I came back to the airport,
my car was stolen and it was the first
time in my adult life that I knew in
real time that this was going to be funny.
Yeah. Instead of doing I I felt
myself going through the ohh,
I can't believe I just like, you know,
it's going to be funny and your
friends are going to make you laugh.
So be observant and find
out what's handle it.
But also, I just,
I stopped taking things as seriously
in the moment because, you know,
it's going to get dealt with.
We all deal with stuff that's part of life.
And honestly, comedy comes from the tragedy.
There's not,
there's nothing funny about
having a pleasant day.
No, it's fair.
And that's it's an art that you
have an incredible skill of doing.
You talk about some personal things,
but we're laughing all
along the way with you.
So was there anything different
about this process, this special,
this material that you, you know,
maybe didn't do previously?
This absolutely.
This is a lot more personal to me
and you know, I've my other albums
that are also available on iTunes.
You know, I always wrote jokes and
and they were personal to my life,
things that have happened.
But I put like a super funny spin on them.
And with this, I remember I was
doing a show in in Fort Collins and
this woman in the back because I
was doing some material that was
I was telling the audiences brand
new and this woman just yelled,
you can just talk to us. Yeah.
And it was the first time,
like being on stage,
that I just stopped really not telling
jokes but just really got to the
meat of it because that's the the
devil's in the details and the nuance.
And that's what kind of I think
real adults gravitate towards.
And once I did that,
I started writing in a different style
that was a lot more raw and real.
And it was not in terms of perverse language,
but just like getting to like
uncomfortable things that have happened.
But also taking that and trying to
turn it just 15 degrees and making
you look at it and making myself
look at it in a different way to
find where the funny is and where
the humanity is because it's always
right underneath the surface,
even if it looks like it's all
bad stuff on the outside.
Oh well, I'll It is fantastic.
Your work is definitely
showing up in a big way.
Tell everyone really quickly where
we can listen and watch. It's
on all streaming platforms.
You can go to my website,
aljacksonlive.com,
my Instagram, Al Jackson, IG.
But you can't miss me.
I'll be in your face.
I'll be throwing it everywhere.
But any streaming platform.
Spotify, Apple Music,
YouTube Music, anywhere.
You can't get away from me.
I got
you. Yay. Al, thank you so
much as always. So fantastic
to have you on. I appreciate you
being such a good friend of me.
You're really awesome. I got you.
The people should know that She's
a real one. She's a real one.
Thank you. And you all can also see
Al right here on 9 News on Daily
Blast Live weekdays just before
the 4:00 show at 3:00 and then
DBL 7th season premiere coming up
on September 11th. Don't miss it.