Comedian Nate Bargatze is now officially a drive-in show headliner. It’s something he wouldn’t have dreamed about pre-pandemic, but desperate times call for innovative measures and he was one of the comics to plot out a safe and socially distanced tour early on.
The Tennessee native has now performed at nearly two dozen drive-in comedy shows and will bring his “One Night Only” tour to City National Grove of Anaheim’s Drive-In OC on Sunday, Dec. 6.
“It’s very different and you kind of have to just wrap your head around it,” he said during a recent phone chat. “When you go up there, you just have to go, ‘OK, I’m doing this,’ because you really don’t hear the laugh. In Chicago, people were honking for laughs, which was actually pretty great. The people that come out to the shows, they’ve been awesome and they’ve loved it. You can tell their appreciation, just how excited they are to be out doing something. I’ve enjoyed doing these shows.”
When he’s not on the road for these tour dates or out playing golf, he’s at home hunkered down with his wife, Laura, and their eight-year-old daughter, Harper. He admits to struggling with helping his daughter with distanced learning. Those issues have made their way into his latest material.
“I do have some COVID jokes, but I don’t want to try to do too many of them,” he said. “I didn’t just want to have an hour-long session about COVID. You don’t want to overdo it, but you got to address it.”
Bargatze is known for his numerous appearances on “Late Night with Conan O’Brien” and “The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon” and he dropped an hour-long special on Netflix, “The Tennessee Kid,” last year. He’s toured with Chris Rock and Fallon and has done several tours overseas for troops in Iraq and Kuwait. He’s a clean comic, and his comedy is observational, sharp and relatable.
He’s the son of Stephen Bargatze, a world-renowned comedic magician and the inspiration for his 2014 comedy album debut, “Yelled at by a Clown.” The comic said he’s happy he decided to somewhat follow in his father’s footsteps.
“I don’t think I ever contemplated doing magic,” he said. “That takes a lot of work. He had done that professionally my whole life. It wasn’t a hobby for him; he did it and was very good at it. When I went into comedy, my parents were thrilled and super supportive. He’s definitely had an influence on me. I think my timing, it comes from him, and just being funny. It was all there just brewing for them to have a stand-up comedian kid.”
His daughter boldly took the opportunity to introduce Bargatze and bring him on stage during the taping of his Netflix special, so perhaps the comedy gene will be passed down another generation.
“She is very funny and animated, way more than I ever was,” he said. “I asked her if she wanted to do comedy, but she’s obsessed with horses right now. She goes to a horse camp and works with them and tries to help them, not just like riding them. So she’s showing a full-blown obsession for horses, so we’re sticking with that right now.”
To cure a bit of his boredom and stay connected with his fanbase during quarantine, Bargatze started the “Nateland” podcast over the summer with his buddies and fellow Nashville-based comics Brian Bates and Aaron Weber.
It’s a podcast that tackles everyday topics from marriage and fast food to hoaxes and urban legends. Bargatze said it was created to be a mental break for himself and the listeners. A new episode is uploaded every Wednesday and video of the podcast is shared via his official YouTube page.
“Part of being a comedian is you need to be funny and you need to try to like constantly be funny and try to make jokes just in regular life because that helps you write a new act,” he said. “It keeps the muscle going. We had this idea to do a podcast that was clean and we don’t talk about anything serious. We’re in a time right now where everything’s so polarizing and everyone has an opinion on everything and politics and all this. People can come and listen and not have an opinion jammed down their throat and just have some fun talk.”
Nate Bargatze
When: 8:30 p.m. Sunday, Dec. 6
Where: Drive-In OC at City National Grove of Anaheim, 2200 E. Katella Ave., Anaheim
Tickets: $185-$350 (per vehicle with up to seven passengers) at AXS.com
