Nick Hoff’s first stand-up gig was to an audience of zero in an empty cafeteria.
Not his fault.
It was 2005 and he was a recent addition to the Los Angeles landscape, after packing up his post-college life in Indiana and hightailing it to the City of Angels, where stages, open mics and a dream to do comedy called to him.
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After being turned down two times to perform in college, the second of which involved him asking if he could open for comedian George Carlin at a performing arts venue, he got a yes at Otis College of Art and Design. There were two comedians on the bill. After the first was done, the host brought Hoff on stage and promptly left. There was nobody in the cafeteria. He tried to interact with passing students and the cooks in the back, but to no avail.
The event actually wasn’t the worst thing that could have happened.
“Half of it was getting the gumption to get up there,” Hoff said from L.A., where he still lives. “It did take me a while to get up there. I sat in the back of clubs and open mics to gather up the nerve to do what over the last eight years I’d built up in my head. It was the best-case scenario to go up in front of nobody. It got the monkey off my back.”
Nowadays, his career looks a whole lot different. He tours the country and co-hosts a weekly SiriusXM show. He was featured in Netflix’s Comedy Festival, and his 2017 debut album, “Baby Daddy,” hit No. 1 on the iTunes comedy charts. Two specials, “Front to Back” and “America: The Final Season,” can be seen on YouTube. And he’s also got famous folks on his side: Comedians Jeff Foxworthy and Larry the Cable Guy chose him to open during their “We’ve Been Thinking” tour.
Hoff will perform Friday and Saturday at Loonees Comedy Corner.
Growing up in Nebraska, he first learned about stand-up in seventh grade.
“It was the show ‘Seinfeld’ when I found out his job was being a stand-up comedian,” he said. “I said that’s got to be it. I didn’t know that was an actual job until then.”
And it was likely Jerry Seinfeld, as well as Jim Carrey, who Hoff first emulated on stage. It’s only natural to mimic those you admire at first, he says. It took three and a half years in L.A. before he could drop the odd jobs and pursue comedy full time, and about half a dozen years of doing local shows before he found his own voice.
“You’re free to go up and be yourself,” he said. “That’s when I had loose premises, not fully formed jokes, and I’d go up and explain them and find the funny on any given night, but didn’t find the pressure to crush or impress anybody. That’s when I found my voice. That’s probably likely for most comedians.”
And now he has some natural sources of comedy in his life — his three kids, who are 10, 8 and 6: “I just watch them and write things down,” he said.
A lot of his act is about family, relationships and life values. And he likes to find original perspectives on hot- button issues, rather than say the same schtick as other comedians.
“My act is primarily PG-13, so vanilla in terms of what it could be,” Hoff said.
“But lately, with the election stuff, some of these topics keep coming up. I never want to do it so I’m pushing my feelings on someone or making them feel bad, but I don’t want to rehash something others are talking about.”
