Today we’d like to introduce you to Rik Wayne.
Rik, let’s start with your story. We’d love to hear how you got started and how the journey has been so far.
I worked in music for ten years with a childhood friend David Roper. He left about 6 months before the music store had been sold. He went to the Strand Theatre and got a job as a bartender and started Show Up Go Up Open Mic Comedy. He would send me invites on Facebook and constantly call me telling me I should come to check out his new room and go up because he said I was funny. I had a podcast at the time where the name on stage I use as Nickelbag Rik I was on called Pod Vomit. David was a subscriber and frequently listened to my show I did with my friend Justin Beals. On January 1st, 2016 my music store closed and I was out of a decade long job. So I called David and ask him if the Strand Theatre was hiring. He said he would see if he could get me an interview and 15 minutes later he called me back and told me I have an interview tomorrow at 11:30 in the morning.
I got the job and to thank my friend David, I came down the following wednesday night to check out his room. I’ve always secretly wanted to do stand up but was satisfied doing my podcast. I was very impressed that David put together such a good weekly show. He was always a musician, not a comedian. He & I started our first band in high school. We were a terrible metal band called “The Hellrats”. We sucked but liked being in a band with a ridiculously evil name. So years later to find out he put together a comedy open mic was curiously interesting to me. I went every Wednesday night and watched and met many of the comedians that went up. I thought I could just write jokes for several comics and that would be the extent of it. Every comic I pitched jokes to would tell me “You should go up and tell these jokes, you’re funny.”
So after about five weeks of going to his room, I decided to be brave enough to go up last. Only 15 people in the room and I tried out some of my material I tried to write for these comics. I killed. I also couldn’t believe that I killed. On my way home I was so excited that I made 15 people laugh at my jokes. The following Friday David was putting on his first big stage comedy show in the theater The auditorium seats 530 and he sold around 150 seats. Yet again I’m impressed. That evening then girlfriend my podcast partner Justin his then wife and two other friends went to watch David’s production titled “The Comedy Big Show”. I sat in the audience very impressed by his production and how funny these comedians were. When the third comedian went up I received a text that read “Come backstage now, There is a comedy emergency.” Comedy emergency? Those two words don’t even belong in the same sentence. So I excused myself and went backstage. He tells me that one of the comics (Clint Grier) has had car trouble and he needs someone to take his spot. I asked him “Do you need me to help you pick someone?” He then tells me he wants me to go up and he’s not taking no for an answer. I explained that when I did this last Wednesday it was only 15 people in the room and that there are at least 150 people out there if not more. He was adamant about me going out with no real prepared material. So I decided that I was going to be good or bad. Let’s see.
He introduced me I walk out and do eight minutes of material that I’m praying will go well. It did. Yet again I couldn’t believe I made an auditorium of people laugh. Not chuckle but laugh. As I walked off stage and handed the microphone back to David I thought to myself this is what I want to do for the rest of my life.
I continue to go up every Wednesday in David’s room. Then I started going to every open mic in the Atlanta metro area that would have me. David then decided to bring me on as a partner to the Strand’s weekly open mic. It was rebranded as “David Roper & Rik Wayne’s Show Up Go Up Open Mic Comedy Night “. Within six weeks of this happening, I started a second comedy open mic at a restaurant called Stoner Burger. It was built as “Stoner Burger presents Nickelbag Rik’s Comedy Open Mic”. It was very successful! I was running two comedy rooms in less than six months of getting into the comedy scene. From that point, I started constantly writing and trying to keep hitting rooms all around the Atlanta area including Laughing Skull & The Punchline.
Then David & I were approached by Strand management to produce four big stage shows quarterly through the year. We came up with Comedy Heartbreakers in February, Comedy Luau in July, Comedy Grind in September and Thanksgiving in November. The following year I was asked to be on several comedy podcasts and then to be an opening comic for Eric Tucker in Anniston Alabama. I said yes and that open doors to more shows in Alabama, North & South Carolina & Tennessee.
After two years of running then room in partnership with David, he left to go on the road with comedians HT Rosen and Vinnie Paul as their drummer in a newly formed comedy trio called “HT & the Kind”.
Now the Open Mic Comedy that I was being asked to come checkout relentlessly a couple of years ago had become my room. It was rebranded yet again as “Rik Wayne presents Show Up Go Up Comedy Open Mic Night. It has become one of the best comedy rooms outside the perimeter. I have weekly featured comics that I don’t repeat throughout the year. Guest host and four resident comics I change out every two months throughout the year. On average I have anywhere to 30 to 35!comics sign up weekly. I’m still producing the four quarterly shows and growing the audience bigger each year.
I just wrapped up my latest show. Thanksgiving four and recently just got my dates for 2020 upcoming shows. I have no intention of stopping as I begin my fifth year of comedy.
Has it been a smooth road?
I would say the relationship with my ex-girlfriend. She started my journey with me but as my new popularity was growing and be in demand running two rooms, doing promotional things for my room, interviews, podcast and road trips constantly doing the booking for my rooms, answering text/calls at all hours of the day and night began to push us farther apart. We are still very good friends but have been broken up for the last year in a half. She understood this was very unexpected for me but would never ask me to walk away from it. Not to sound like a dick but I wouldn’t walk away from it. I’m glad we are still friends.
Please tell us about your business.
My other love is comic books. Me & my best friend Justin Simmons have Mind Invaders Comics. We are currently working on an upcoming comic called “Storm Area 51 the comic” He is the artist and I am the writer. We have also released a very successful character named “Cobbzilla” which is a cross between Marietta’s famous landmark The Big Chicken & Godzilla.
We have sold out of both Area 51 prints & Cobbzilla prints along with our recent Cobzilla t-shirts orders. But don’t worry we have more coming due to overwhelming interest.
Let’s touch on your thoughts about our city – what do you like the most and least?
Traffic. I think that’s the number one answer though out the city.
Pricing:
- Cobbzilla shirts $24 available at storfrontier/mindinvadercomics
Contact Info:
- Phone: 6789829654. / 4049217383
- Email: mindinvadercomics@gmail.com
- Instagram: mind_invader_comix
- Facebook: Facebook.com/mindinvadercomics
Image Credit:
Justin Simmonds Justin Beals (Pod Vomit)
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