L
ike many future comedians, Cincinnati native Alex Stone discovered he was funny almost by accident. “I remember specifically having a moment maybe in seventh or eighth grade,” he says. “I don’t even know what was said or what happened, but I vividly remember a girl laughing, looking at me and going, ‘You’re funny.’ And that was the first moment where it occurred to me who I was, and maybe that I was a funny person.”
Shortly after that, a friend turned him on to stand-up comedy, particularly Brian Regan and Mitch Hedberg. Stone was hooked.
“I ended up staying up real late at night when Comedy Central would run marathons of those half-hour specials, just through the night. I would watch those all night long and that’s where I fell in love with it,” he says.
He made no plans to pursue a career in comedy, though, instead settling on becoming a recording engineer with the end goal of starting a record label. But before he could do that he had to graduate from Sycamore High School, which was a daunting challenge.
“I went through a pretty big bout of depression and anxiety between about eighth grade and eleventh grade,” Stone says. “And in that period I missed a tremendous amount of school. I got really far behind.”
He missed whole quarters, but still hoped to somehow catch up senior year and walk with his graduating class on time.
“For that to happen, I would have had to take seven academic classes plus two by mail, and then I had to sign something saying that I would take two additional classes in the summer,” he says. “For a guy that didn’t love school, that seemed crazy.”
So he simply dropped out, later getting his GED. From there he wanted to attend the Recording Workshop in Chillicothe, Ohio. But that of course was also school.
“I didn’t necessarily love going to school, so I figured I’d take a year off and just float around,” he says. “That’s when I did stand-up for the first time.”
His first foray was the 2005 Funniest Person in Cincinnati contest, held at Go Bananas comedy club in Montgomery — the same spot he’ll return to this weekend to record his first album.
His first time on stage, he did well enough to advance. “My second time on stage was in the finals,” he says. “The first time went well. The second time did not. It did not go well at all.”
The following year, though, he won the whole competition.
“I think after winning the Funniest Person in Cincinnati contest I was like, ‘I could do this,’ but I did it very passively. I think it’s very easy to do comedy passively in Cincinnati,” he says. “Just by the nature of how it is — there’s not a lot of stage time. So if you go up once a week, you’re working as hard as everybody else. Cincinnati has a great comedy scene, but it’s easy to not work as hard as you can.”
After a few years of doing stand-up casually, Stone had to make a decision about his future.
“It took me a while to feel like something needed to change and a few things in my life happened. I had a friend pass away and it put a lot of things in perspective,” he says. “That’s when I decided to take [comedy] by the horns and see what I could do with all of it.”
Stone eventually relocated to Chicago in an effort to find more stage time. This spring he’ll move to New York, where he already has a roommate waiting for him — an old friend from the Cincinnati comedy scene, Sam Evans. Before that, he has to record his first album. For a comic, deciding it’s time to record your first album isn’t easy.
“I don’t know when you decide. I think it’s different for everybody,” he says. “I waited a while. I’ve been doing this for a long time and I wanted to put out something that is good. I didn’t want to be someone who was just putting out something for the sake of putting out an album. I like to keep writing and making things as good as they can be.”
The album will be composed almost entirely of material written during his time in Chicago.
“It’s the best stuff I’ve done so far,” Stone says. “Plus a few good things happened to me career-wise last year, so now is a good time to put it out.”
One of Stone’s biggest moments last year was being recruited to be on NBC’s Last Comic Standing along with fellow Cincinnati natives Dave Waite and Geoff Tate. Only 100 comics nationwide were asked to participate, and while Stone didn’t make it onto the televised portion of the contest, he was prominently featured on the show’s website.
Over the years his comedy style has naturally progressed. “Early on I liked a variety of styles,” he says. “I was never drawn to one style.”
At first, Stone gravitated more toward what he describes as absurdist, set-up/punchline jokes. Gradually, he started spending more time on certain subjects, fleshing out the funny in things.
“Now I find myself in more of a storytelling arena and that’s what I’m drawn to now,” he says.
As for his difficulties back in high school, things are much better now.
“I don’t go to therapy. I don’t take any medication,” he says, reasoning that while it didn’t necessarily inform his comedy, it is a part of who he is and how he has turned out. “I have a normal-person-level of anxiety about things. From where I was to where I am now, I’m light years better.”
In turn, his comedy career is rocketing upward.©
ALEX STONE performs and records his first album at Go Bananas Thursday-Saturday. Tickets and more info: gobananascomedy.com.
This article appears in Jan 28 – Feb 3, 2015.
