Comedian to make first Alaska appearance

PALMER — Performing at the Alaska State Fair this summer will be kind of a double milestone for Brian Regan.

“I’ve never been to Alaska. This will be my 50th state that I’m performing in,” the comic said Tuesday by phone from his home in Las Vegas.

And the other milestone? This will be his first state fair gig.

“It’s unusual for me to be that far north, it’s unusual for me to perform outdoors,” he said. “I’ve never performed with caribou so close so you know there’s going to be a lot of things that are not the norm for me.”

But even though he’s never been here, his busy schedule’s only left him one extra day in the state.

“I’ve got one day to see all of Alaska,” he said. “I’m going to get a really fast car.”

Regan has been performing for at least two decades. In that time, he has built up a reputation among comics. The venerated Marc Maron on the website of his ubiquitous WTF podcast described Regan as “one of his favorite comedians.” No less than Jerry Seinfeld said close to the same thing in the introduction to an episode of his web series, “Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee,” that featured Regan.

“He’s one of my favorite, favorite stand-up comedians. Brian’s a good friend and just a straight-up goofball, and that’s the kind of guy I like to hang out with,” Seinfeld said.

Regan said he’s heard that praise and appreciates it.

“I’ve always been honored by that,” he said. “You know, if people who do what you do like what you do it makes you feel like you’re on the right track so it’s a nice compliment.”

As for his comedy style, it tends to be on the clean side, but more by accident than by design.

“When all is said and done, I guess it’s clean. That’s not the point of the comedy from my perspective. I just think of everyday things and then go on stage and talk about them,” he said.

In that same episode, Seinfeld and Regan discuss a joke they both had about the common method of griping that starts, “they can put a man on the moon but they can’t …” The two comedians took the premise in slightly different directions, but that they both riffed on it speaks to some commonalities in their styles. Seinfeld is referred to as an observational comic, a label that is often applied to Regan.

The style is generally meant to convey a comedy that seeks humor in the mundane — broken shoelaces was an example Regan tossed out. But the word can be kind of imprecise, Regan said, since all comedy is in a sense observational.

“It’d be like saying, ‘these are observational landscapes for a painter.’ It’s like, ‘yeah, I saw that mountain and I painted it,’” he said.

Maybe political comedy isn’t exactly observational. Or maybe it is.

“Even a political comedian is observational, they’ve noticed things about politics,” he said.

Regan said the observational style is the one he found that fit him best.

“I mean, when I first started I didn’t really know what kind of stuff I was going to do. I look back in my early days — and when I say ‘early days’ it’s like literally the first year — I did a little bit of everything and I think after you do it for awhile you realize what works for you and what doesn’t,” he said.

He said he even tried his hand at prop comedy.

“I used to walk on stage with this little bag that had little tiny props in it,” he said. “I look back on it and scratch my head and say, ‘what the heck was I doing?’ but it was a fun way to learn.”

Regan said he likes performing all over the country, which might be why he does it so often. He joked that his nonstop tour of theaters has been going on for decades.

“I started this tour in 1984 and I’m not going to stop until I’m famous,” he said.

As for future goals, he said he’d love to get a television show if he could find the kind of deal that would let him do what he wants with it.

Which is a tall order. There aren’t a lot of television deals like that, Regan said. On the other hand, looking at the relative creative freedom peers like Maron and Louis C.K. got, now might be a better time than past eras.

“The entertainment world in terms of creating TV shows is changing and it seems that because there are more networks, some of the more obscure networks can afford creatively and financially to allow people to do what they wan to do,” he said.

But that might be short-lived.

“As soon as they get some success, though, I think they’re going to start making cookie-cutter shows. That’s what always seems to happen,” Regan said. “As soon as a show is successful the network says, ‘let’s make more of these.’ And then the creativity gets squeezed out.”

Contact Andrew Wellner at 352-2270 or

andrew.wellner@frontiersman.com.