Dead Men Walking Podcast with Comedian John Branyan

Dead Men Walking

Subscribe

Download

Share

00

00:13

Hello everyone! Welcome back to another episode of Dead Men Walking. We've got our live audience out here.

00:20

Yeah, we've got a live audience out here. We're at Fight Lab Feast. Rolls on. Number two.

00:25

We're on interview 99. Yep. It feels like. Yep. It's two days of absolute madness, but good madness.

00:33

Yeah. And we're in Rapid City at the Fight Lab Feast conference, or rally rather, in South Dakota.

00:39

And we have a special guest on today. He's part of the Fight Lab Feast network now.

00:46

He's got a new podcast out, or well, new to their network. Maybe not new altogether. Has a new book out called

00:52

Life is Hardy Har Har. Stand -up comedian John Branion. John Branion, how are you, sir?

00:59

So much better than I was before I sat down and started talking to you guys. Oh, a little sarcasm.

01:06

I like it. Immediately. That's not sarcasm. You have enriched me already. Well, we were going to sit down with you 45 minutes ago, but someone decided to take an extra long lunch break.

01:17

I know. I don't want to mention any names. I couldn't keep. Yeah. So tell us a little bit about yourself, man.

01:25

I have been a Christian person my whole life, and I've been a stand -up comedian for the last 30 years.

01:33

Oh, wow. Yeah. Okay. So this isn't something new for you. No. Been doing it a little bit. I've been doing it for a while.

01:39

Yeah. Not on purpose. It was a career decision that I did not make.

01:45

Okay. And it basically followed me, chased me down, and tackled me. Yeah. Really?

01:51

Yeah. You know, some people struggle to know what God's will is for their life, and I struggled with not really caring what

02:01

God's will was. So you've done clubs.

02:07

You've done probably regional and probably big tours and stuff like that in the 30 years? I've done many clubs.

02:13

I've done cruise ships. I've done a lot of corporate events. I've done haywagons. I've done gazebos.

02:19

I've done family rooms, church basements, family rooms, patios. Anywhere there's an audience, right, when you're a stand -up.

02:26

Or where there's not an audience. Yeah, right, right. Well, if there's not an audience, at least if you're getting paid. Those are usually college shows. As long as I get paid, right.

02:32

And I've talked to people that are not really that responsive.

02:38

I've said, you know what? I don't even need you people here. So if you're as bored as you seem, you can walk in.

02:44

It's Nick walking into our shot. What's going on? Say hi to the camera there. The reformed sage.

02:52

Maybe you should jump on in here. Yeah, yeah. You can come in,

02:58

Nick. That's hilarious. We'll get you here in a few. Nick looks like Juan De Vivo from Casting Crowns.

03:05

Oh, yeah, he does actually. Yeah. Am I kidding? I'm not kidding. It is fun doing these live shows.

03:12

So for people listening, we're obviously at a convention center. There's people walking around. We kind of get to know everyone. And some people don't always see the camera set up, which is fine.

03:21

That happened all the time in Nashville last year. But, John, getting back to what you were saying, you know,

03:26

I know Gene is an internationally tourist musician. He just wanted us to say,

03:32

Lord, it's one of the episodes. You're coming on later, buddy. And he walked right in front of us on purpose.

03:39

This is a comedy one, though. This is funny. Yeah, people keep walking in front of our shot.

03:45

Hilarious. But Jason is a touring musician. He's always said that, too.

03:51

He's like, you just show up and you're like, hey, this is where I'm at this week. Like all kinds of colleges, different places, backyards, right?

03:58

Yeah, wherever they needed us at, you know? I mean, you know, if somebody was like, just do a song.

04:03

It's like, you know, it gets to that point, too. I'm sure people say to you, tell us a joke, man.

04:10

Be funny. Yeah, yeah, right. Yeah. Your be funny is his free bird.

04:18

Yeah, yeah, right. One guy in the audience just, you know, heckling like free bird.

04:24

Do people ask for free bird? Oh, totally. Yeah, totally. That's a commitment.

04:30

If they're willing to commit to listen to free bird. Yeah, right. So what we're saying is be funny and go. Yeah, you're actually doing a little set for us later tonight at the

04:41

Fight Lab Feast. Yeah. After dinner. Awesome. Doing something. Tell me a little bit about this book.

04:46

Because I see the copies flying off the table there at your booth. Flying off the table. And that's concerning since there's nobody there to take money.

04:57

So yeah, the book is the response to being asked over the years many times.

05:04

How do you think up your material? Where do you get your ideas? Number one question. Yeah. And so I would say,

05:10

I don't know. Yeah. For many, many years ago. And it occurred, I felt convicted a little while back that I should have a better answer than that.

05:18

I should have some idea of what what's going on when I'm creating material. And so I sat down and over the course of a few years, started making notes and analyzing what's going on in my brain.

05:31

And the book is the response to to that question. And how does comedy? How does comedy happen?

05:38

Yeah. Wow, that's pretty cool. infused with it is the is the message that your sense of humor is either it's going to make your life better, or, or your life is going to suck.

05:51

You don't have a well developed sense of humor. And a lot of Christian people don't have a well developed sense of humor.

05:57

Yeah, we were talking about that offline a little bit like we, you know, they don't like to be offended, but boy, they can become offended over some things.

06:05

And I know you and I were even talking about comedy and what its role is. And look, I firmly believe that the arts belong to us, right?

06:12

They don't belong to the world. They belong to Christians. God created them for us. Every chord, every seventh, every comedy, every painting, every sculpture, we redeem it, and we do it under the glory of God.

06:24

And sometimes I feel like you get a pushback from Christians a little bit when you when your comedy, I don't know, doesn't isn't kind of that middle of the road, sappy comedy, if it has a little edge to it, or a little bite to it, or it's making a statement that's thought provocative.

06:39

Sometimes, I think churches and organizations shrink back from that. Have you ever experienced that? Yeah. I like that laugh.

06:47

Yeah, well, the provocative is a bad word in church now.

06:57

Christians are basically, you're not doing God's will.

07:03

You're not doing God's work when you are provoking people to think about things.

07:08

When you provoke people to have some sort of a visceral, emotional reaction to something, that is not good.

07:15

And I think that that's basically a mistake. I think that we are compelled to...

07:22

Jesus did that. Jesus provoked people everywhere he went. In the book of Acts, you read the book of Acts, every place those salty apostles went, there were people throwing them in jail and whipping them.

07:34

And then somehow in 2021, we read that and we go, I think we're supposed to be nice so that everybody kind of likes us.

07:41

Do you think Paul was wrong? Do you think Jesus did it wrong? He wasn't decent enough in his candor?

07:50

No, I think that you're going to get into trouble if you say the truth. But the advantage that we would have, we would enjoy if we learned how to do comedy, is that we could say really offensive things to people and make them laugh.

08:08

They're actually less likely to be upset with us, because they kind of like us.

08:15

Because we're funny. Yeah, absolutely. There's something about that too, you know, comedy, and how it can kind of ease a situation sometimes.

08:23

It can open up the communication between people.

08:31

It's been a long two days, just had a brain fart there. We'll edit that in post. No big deal. We need to have a drop over there that's like a fart.

08:44

Do you not have one? You have to have a fart drop.

08:51

That's great. Well, a few weeks ago, I was on the highway, and there was a couple of deer that just darted out of nowhere.

09:02

There was a semi -truck just barreling by me. And on my brakes, the two deer just like went under the semi -truck.

09:13

Like blood and guts all over the place. I mean, just all over, like the traffic just stopped, like we were all freaking out.

09:22

Anyway, I jump out to see what's going on, make sure everybody's okay. And luckily, everybody was fine. Except for the deer.

09:28

Yeah, yeah. Everybody's fine, except for the deer. And that's all I could think to myself while I was just standing there looking at this devastation was,

09:39

I'm still balding. Denied.

09:46

Nope. That's not a good one. That's exactly what comedy does. That's exactly what it does.

09:52

It sees the same situation as everybody else, but from a slightly different angle. I am still losing my hair.

09:58

I am still balding. So what kind of stuff do you focus on in your act? Like, is it family stuff?

10:04

Is it life stuff? What are you talking about? Well, everything is religion.

10:13

Everything that matters is religion. And so my stand -up is basically about religion, which encompasses everything that you mentioned above.

10:25

What about those Buddhas? Yeah, just life in general and how when you have the proper attitude.

10:35

That's why people ask the question, how do you think of material? How do you think of material? I just live life. I just live my life and I keep my eyes open and I pay attention to stuff.

10:44

It is extremely introspective to be aware of what you're thinking when that semi hit those you know, that's that's what that's what a comedy brain does.

10:55

Comedy brain goes, you're always aware of what you're thinking in a situation. Most people aren't.

11:00

Yeah, most people go through. Oh, I just knocked over this thing. Most people go through their circumstances and they don't respect and think about, you know, what they're thinking.

11:12

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, you can get a tight five just by, you know, people watching. Yeah, yeah, definitely.

11:17

Yeah. But if you if you make yourself one of the people and you just then you just observe and report.

11:24

That's all standup is here's what happened to me. This is what I thought about it. And people laugh.

11:30

Yeah. And why do they laugh? Because most people aren't doing that. Right? Yeah. Yeah.

11:35

And when you but when you tell a when you tell a really effective joke, you tell a really funny joke, people nudge each other and go,

11:40

Oh, that's true. Right? Right? Yeah. Yeah, exactly. It's like, absolutely. We're all experiencing this.

11:46

I'm just the one that's talking about right, right. So as we're wrapping up here, why don't you throw out the name of the podcast and give us a little information on what it's about.

11:55

The podcast is a comedian next door. And it is myself and mostly my daughter,

12:01

Amanda, who goes by the peaches. Okay. And we started a podcast about four years ago, that was just a conversation around our kitchen table with our family and our friends and so on.

12:13

And we thought, well, this is this is we're funny people. And so the conversation might be of interest to folks.

12:20

And so the it's an iteration of that podcast. Basically, we've got three main sections sections that we deal with on the comedian next door.

12:29

The idea is that we are your comedy resource, and we live right next door to you. So if you've got if you have a need for sage advice for how your sense of humor can be applied to your life, just come over and knock on our door.

12:42

And we will be happy to have a conversation. Yeah, we've got a segment called good grief, where people will write in and tell us about the pain in their life.

12:52

And we will explain to them what's funny about it. That's a good bet.

12:57

Yeah, yeah. Good grief. And, and then we've got peaches in a world, which is where my daughter gets her underwear in a knot about some sort of or political or religious issue.

13:09

And she rants about that for a little while. And then we have John Brannan's hill to die on, which is our final segment.

13:16

And basically, I just plant a flag every week and say, Yeah, here's a thing that I will not be moved on.

13:23

And that's the result of having many people in the culture. If you take a stand for anything, they'll say,

13:29

Oh, is that a hill that you want to die? Is that a hill you really want to die on? And my response is,

13:34

I don't know, is that a hill that you're going to kill me? Right, right. So, I mean, if you're, if you're gonna try to kill me on this hill, then

13:41

I guess, yeah, we're gonna have a killing me small. But, yeah,

13:46

I think that there are, it's become a bad thing, even in Christian culture to, to proclaim that this is a hill that I'm going to die on.

13:55

Right. And I think we should, I think we should be saying, Yeah, yeah, I'll stand on this principle.

14:01

Absolutely. Well, john, we're gonna wrap it up. Thank you so much for coming on the podcast, introducing yourself to our listeners, guys.

14:07

It's john Branion, make sure you check out that podcast. We'll link you up to all of our stuff, too. So people can jump over, check out.

14:17

We'll make sure we give you some love there. We love our Christian comedians, and we got to support them. We'll just comedian that happens to be a

14:24

Christian. I don't like the label on the front. I don't either. Yeah, we didn't even talk about that. Yeah. Next time.

14:30

We agree about that. We didn't even talk about it. Yeah. All right, guys. Thanks for listening. And as always, God bless.

14:36

Be sure to follow us on Facebook and Instagram at dead men walking podcast for full video podcast episodes and clips or email us at dead men walking podcast at gmail .com