Primeau & Grose: Behind the Scenes

Now that Primeau's vacation is over and the Festival is done I've finally had time to sit back and look at my schedule and start planning for comedy shows. My November is looking very busy but, other than 1 show in Saskatoon and another in Drayton Valley, I should be able to do it all without missing work. This is the storm after the storm but I've been handling the November/December workload for 20 years now and it doesn't worry me.

Is it proper for me to admit I took the radio job just to get through the summers? There's very little work in June, July and August other than festivals and they pay surprisingly little. Just For Laughs, for example, pays $1000. That doesn't even cover my mortgage. The reason comedians do festivals is for the exposure and the fun. In Edmonton our festival offer a lot of the latter and very little of the former but then we pay way better than Just For Laughs.

While radio has become a really enjoyable experience for me and has taken the stress out of summer it has also taken 2 things away from me. I can't take club dates in Ontario because I can't afford to burn vacation days to do that given what clubs pay. I also don't get the week off before Christmas. I always looked forward to that last Christmas party show because it meant I could throw my suit in the dry cleaning pile and just sleep in every day until Christmas.

We have a new tradition instead. On the night of my last show the family piles into my car and we head to Wal-Mart, which will be open 24 hours, and we buy a pile of toys for 630 CHED's Santa's Anonymous. We deliver them to the station after midnight and then head to a Denny's for a late night breakfast.  I hope when my kids are older and married they'll still meet me there to do that because it's important to keep topping up the karma bank.