“Meet the Boss Hogg of Ohio” - Dave Chappelle’s New Comedy Club is So Hot…

…It Had To Be Built In An Old Firehouse.

Last night, I heard Dave Chappelle sing the theme song from The Dukes of Hazzard. Waylon Jennings would have been proud of that rendition of Good Ole Boys because, like Bob Marley, it’s true rebel music no matter who's singin’ it. Some powerful people in Ohio probably don’t want Dave Chappelle doing what he’s doing with the art of Comedy in this state. Still, many more of us support this growing institution of local commercial art because we see the value it brings to our communities.

Comedy is Community, especially when the jokes land sour, and all that’s left is silence after the laughter dies. Comedians learn from that silence, and Dave Chappelle has built a Temple of Comedy to most properly work through it.

Dave sang the song as a riff just after the comedian philosopher proclaimed himself "Boss Hogg of Yellow Springs, Ohio." See, Dave owns this city now. Well, he owns a good sum of it. He is now one of the larger landholders in Yellow Springs, a community begrudgingly embracing him and his schemes, along with most Comedy fans within a three-hour drive from the middle of the great State of Ohio.

The City Council has given Dave a hella hard time about his cornfield shows and building this new comedy club from the renovated old fire station. Sitting there last night, enjoying the incredible music during the bumping pre-hype cocktail hour, I imagined Dave's first visit to this building. It was probably dusty, dark, and dirty from storing firetrucks and sweaty gear for many years. Maybe Dave looked around at the high ceilings and closed his eyes to see a vision of people gathered here at a public altar of laughter with a steep charge at the door. I imagine Dave Chappelle has seen a lot of bright lights in dark rooms throughout his life. I also think he’s had to be that bright light in dark rooms for a long time, and that can only wear down an artist’s soul if it doesn’t get refreshed in the creative spirit of the moment.

If Jazz music is a conversation between musicians through their instruments then Comedy is verbal Jazz between comedians and the audience. Chappelle’s Comedy Club is an arena for intense verbal Jazz; it’s not a place to sell alcohol with cheap laughter.

One of the last Yellow Springs City Council holdouts against this club was recently ejected from his Presidency through a vote of No Confidence by his fellow members. Dave Chappelle may have been involved through influence, like some folks bought themselves Supreme Court Justices and miraculously and suddenly started seeing old Laws in a whole new way.

It’s understandable why the Old White Guard is protective of this city. It is logical to expect a cultural impact after allowing a counter-cultural comedy club to operate within the city’s limits, just a block away from the main street hippy shops, unique restaurants, and coffee-dripping cafes that host the students and faculty of Antioch College during the week while drawing antique shoppers and white collar treasure hunters on the weekends. Some people in power clearly didn’t want Chappelle’s comedy to operate for profit in this community. Despite the money he’s poured into the community, they've been fighting his plans for years.

Well, Dave came out with a boner for this guy and didn’t let up the entire night. It was hilarious but also a roasting that any sensible person would see happen to our elected politicians who act in ways that make no sense to decent human beings who are simply about livin’ and let livin’. You know, the ‘Merican Way.

Now, I don’t know this ejected Councilman or any more about their situation than I gathered from the context of comedy during a performance inspired to make us all laugh. I also Googled the keywords “City Council President” and “Yellow Springs” and came up with this article. Dave told us he supported the Councilman who voted to oust the primary local politician who stood in the way of this Comedy Club opening for business.

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Comedy doesn't punch up or down. Comedy is shadowboxing with words that become ideas shared between the comedian and each audience member. The ideas twist and flop uniquely for each person, often revealing the absurdity of our mutual suffering by choice in a world of abundance fed by the heart of mercy seeded in every human soul. The profound injustices and demented realities of our fractured existences become shared laughter through the crucible of effective Comedy. It’s a form of transubstantiation, where sound waves in the physical world transform into those emotional waves of gravity that only operate inside the Human spirit. The audience that laughs together heals the community and strengthens the state, country, and world. People laughing in crowds together clap on the soul's lights. Even when it’s cruel on the surface, comedy heals with the kindest cut.

So here’s a prayer in passing: May those who think words are violence never learn how wrong they are about that assumption. Comedy heals even when it hurts, while violence can kill you where you stand without cause.

I imagine Dave Chappelle has been building a Temple of Comedy in his mind for over thirty years. Every time he’s stepped on stage and in front of cameras to open his mouth and speak for laughs, he has placed a new brick in the wall of the room I sat in last night to hear three Comedians and a Rapper bring healing into our troubled world.

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Here is how the process went to get tickets.

First, you have to be stupid lucky. Second, you must know someone who knows someone to even hear about when these tickets go online to try to buy. These sold out in 5 minutes.

I’ve been lucky in friendship my whole life. I don't have legions of friends, but the ones I cherish are ride-or-die. One of my friends lives in Dayton, and she texted me this image on Tuesday at 10:25 AM with a note: “Inside tip…tickets on sale at 11 at his new comedy club. I can’t go.” I had 35 minutes to decide if I wanted to make the 90-minute drive twice on a Wednesday night after a day of work and if I wanted to drag my life partner into the adventure. There were at least nine reasons why I shouldn’t have bought these tickets. But I did buy them because Dave Chappelle has created something special for art in my great State of Ohio. He has evoked an arena for the elite expression of the art of human spoken words and music. I believe I have a civic, moral, and spiritual duty, as an artist and a human being, to support this institution and vibe. That’s what I told myself when I clicked the Buy button.

When I got into the Ticketmaster queue, there were 461 other people in the digital line ahead of me, with around 200 seats in the club. I guess most of those 400 people in front of me didn't want to travel on a Wednesday night to this small hippy-dippy city in the middle of hopey-dopey Ohio, to see one of the most effective comedians practice his art at the height of its power and influence. Or maybe it was the $100 price tag. Either way, I got my tickets, and we were up in the club.

This was the third time I’ve seen Dave Chappelle perform live. The first time was at Red Rocks in Colorado in July 2017, deep into Trump's first year as President. No one had a clue about the shit show we were all about to endure over the next seven years. John Mayer came out on stage during that concert, and we watched him do comedy with Dave in conversation while he played guitar riffs from classic TV show themes. I don’t remember anything said during that concert or any music they played (except the Good Times theme song), but I remember laughing so hard and so long that my face hurt for a week.

The second time I went to Dave’s Laugh Camp was last year at one of his cornfield shows, just a few miles from where his new Comedy Club lights up the quiet college town nights with laughter set to laser lights and bumping music. I heard some of the best Rap, Hip-Hop, and Soul last night at this performance. The DJ played a segment from one of the hardest Hip-Hop songs of the 1990s, Full Clip by Gangstarr. From that song on, I was all in on the soundtrack for the night, and it only got better.

The ticket price seems steep until you realize that you are paying to participate in the early stages of a comedian creating and honing bits that will become the digital content broadcast to the world in the spirit of inspiring laughter through tears, which is the greatest human emotion our breathing carcasses are capable of hosting while we briefly sustain kinetic motion forward in time. Trading a Benjamin Franklin is worth seeing Dave Chappelle serve as Master of Ceremony, warming up the stage for each comedian and gathering the energy of appreciation from the audience in the form of gratitude that sounds like clapping but is truly the food of a Comedian’s soul.

The audience had many faces and a few races, most of whom came from different places in Ohio. We each came to laugh at ourselves while laughing with and at others. Comedy works like a salve on the audience, and clapping with gratitude does the same in return for the Comedian—this is how Comedy works.

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Doors opened just before 8 PM. We signed waivers because they were filming and recording the show. Audience reaction laughter is the most valuable scenery in comedy performances recorded to be edited for broadcast production. You’d think the most important images in a streaming comedy special would be the comedian telling their jokes, but they’re not. People laughing at the jokes are the coin of the realm in the business of commercial comedy. If they ain’t laughing, they ain’t buying or clicking Play.

You turn off your phone and shut off your watch. Then a security guard takes them and puts them in Yondr bags.¹ Another security checkpoint gets you pat down and your bags inspected. Check your coats and get your two drink tickets. Final door security tells you to use those tickets immediately because once the show starts, the bar shuts down, and the audience is encouraged to stay seated during the entire performance.

If the anxiety of Comedy Clubs gets to you, no one will judge you for practicing self-care in a public space by standing in the back by the bar during the performance. In this club, that viewpoint will allow you to see the whole crowd and the comedian from a safe distance. Sometimes, watching the whole crowd and the stage from the back of the club is a powerful perspective. It’s okay to have anxiety and go to Comedy Clubs because these special places are where anxiety can be worked out together as a crowd like it was a social demon. Comedy Clubs are places where we can gather safely and be weird together. Laughing at ideas expressed by funny people working universal pain out loud on stage is a public service.

Dave Chappelle has built a facility of weirdness in Ohio, an enhanced version of his show set from all those years ago. The sound in the YS Firehouse is pristine, clear, and penetrating. The lowest murmurs into the microphone move through the audience like shockwaves, bouncing off the brick walls of the old fire station, hitting everyone’s ears from every angle. The lights in there are like a Rush concert. Professional recording equipment is mounted around the room with foresight put into keeping paths clear for the mobile camera crew to move around the audience during performances and capture the natural state of human laughter under the tectonic forces of Comedy delivered through the deceptive format of dick jokes and absurd but poignant think pieces.

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An announcement is made as the show begins that there will be no heckling or usage of smart devices tolerated. They will throw your ass into the street if they see it or hear it. Except for clapping and responding to a comedian when they directly question the audience, performances in the YS Firehouse are to be crowd-silent with a soundtrack. The basic rule of artistic civility is expected and enforced in Chappelle's Comedy Club. It is this: Don't be a dick and pay attention to the person on the mic and stage.

On the subject of the stage, Dave didn't ash his cigarette on the floor for the first time in his career because this is his club, mf! No, he used an ashtray, probably branded with the Chappelle clothing logo that his crew sports as they run around and make shit happen to keep shit tight before, during, and after the performances. Safety and civility are prioritized in Dave’s club. 

There were fans in the audience with jackets and t-shirts commemorating their experiences traveling to see Dave over the years. I sensed that some of these folks travel around the country to listen to him speak his mind and work his craft. Such potent influence is a lot of power and responsibility for one human being to bear and use wisely, as Yoda would approve. Give a person with the wrong ego the power to make people laugh about cruelty, and the world can change for the worse very fast. That person could end up being President someday, and those words that everyone laughed at suddenly undergo a dark process of transubstantiation to become violence, death, and genocide.

Words are not violence but they aren't far from violence, either.

In the space between words and violence, we must become very sensitive, extremely careful, and, most importantly, merciful in applying forgiveness to ourselves and others, as Jerry Springer urged us to do in his show's closing monologues. Humans can endure the most heinous shit together and keep our humanity intact—it is possible. But influence over others by a person powered with a clouded spirit can smother all the mercy in a human soul and fill the echoing reservoir with a poison that pulls triggers for nothing. Leonard Cohen sang that America was the cradle of the best and the worst, and Comedy helps us work out the space between those opposites.

The best humans are those who win friends and influence others to ease the world's suffering while maximizing joy for themselves, a recipe for happiness on Earth. Comedy is not punching; it's surgery.

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Boss Hogg owns the land. He builds the businesses. He hires the politicians and makes his Boss Hogg rules. Ohio has a new Boss Hogg, and Dave Chappelle owns the land, has built the businesses, and has supported political careers. Now he’s making Boss Hogg rules for a top-tier comedy experience. Dave has finally built his first Temple of Comedy. Let’s see what he does with it. So far, so good. I had a ball in his establishment, sheltered under his concern, enjoying the safety and convenience his well-earned wealth afforded to give back.

Perhaps [Your City’s Initials] Firehouse Comedy Club becomes a franchise brand established in strategically selected, sleepy, rural college towns nationwide. Perhaps an entire crop of Comedians will grow from Dave Chappelle’s investment. We could use more Political Comedians and fewer Comedic Politicians in America now.

I can say with conviction that the YS Firehouse in Yellow Springs, Ohio, will now be known as a cradle of modern American comedy. Anyone who worships in the church of Pryor, Carlin & Hicks should consider a pilgrimage to this place where one of the great modern comedians hones his urban-born craft in front of one of the whitest audiences in the country, gathered together in the spirit of laughter coming from one of the most progressive cities in a deeply red State.

Dave Chappelle's comedy has always been forged in the crucible of Ohio audiences. He’s been speaking directly to and for Ohioans for decades. I recommend making the Mid-Ohio pilgrimage to watch Boss Hogg do brain surgery on the American soul.

PS

I didn’t get any photos of the club because all the phones were locked up, and it was too cold to fuck around taking pictures outside. Instead, enjoy this amazing Sopranos mobile hanging in the coffee shop we stayed warm inside before the show. Shout out to Dino’s Cappuccinos!

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Read my last essay from the last Chappelle show I saw.

1. Yondr Bags are little locking bags that comedians now use to have audience mes lock up their phones and smart devices during performances. The result is that no one knows what time it is, and everyone is learning how to enjoy two distraction-free hours of comedy.