First Mic

Nef Johnson didn't sign up for his first open mic. A friend signed him up behind his back, a comic onstage started roasting him, and he went up with exactly one joke to defend himself. That was 2019, at a comedy tent near Cloud City. Then COVID hit, then his daughter died, and stand-up stopped being a hobby. "I'm a comedian out of trauma," he tells Ira Cross. "My life only exists on stage." Six ye...

Robin Williams did 40 minutes right before him, and Dana Carvey warned the room it was about to get brutal. That's not an exaggeration. In the early '80s, San Francisco was a comedy mecca, and the Thursday night mic at Cobb's Pub was hosted by a local guy named Dana Carvey. Mike signed up, got the last slot, and then the biggest star in the world walked in and did forty minutes past closing. The b...

Tara DeFrancisco doesn't have a bombing-at-an-open-mic story. A director told her she'd never be the lead - that's where the comedian starts.   She's the first improviser to sit down with Ira Cross on First Mic. Her path runs through an Ohio University professor who taught a stand-up class and told her to go to Chicago; through iO, Second City, and ComedySportz, where she was among the roughly one...

G Davis was 17 at his first open mic — at the Columbus Funny Bone, not a basement — and he didn't bomb. He killed. Then he built the whole stand-up career backwards. G walked into a real club on a break from college with his grades falling apart. Jason Banks, Kenny Mock and Bobby Dodds were at the bar. Jason leaned over three seats and whispered the line that got him through it. What came next was...

Cameron Steele only started doing stand-up to get better at his radio job. Six years later: 200K on TikTok and a Michael Jackson parody past 1.7 million views. Before comedy, Cameron was the night guy at WZIP, the University of Akron's student-run station — 7 to 10 PM, 2017 to 2020. "I was your drive home." Somebody told him stand-up would make him sharper on air, so his first open mic happened in...

Should you move to LA to do stand-up comedy? Lukas Mateus did, and came back. He bombed his first open mic in a Columbus basement with exactly one friend watching. Ten years in, Lukas is 40, works at a grocery store, hosts the Tuesday open mic at Rehab Tavern, and has never once posted a headshot with eight tour dates on it. He's fine with that. Here he breaks down what actually changes when you l...

How to deal with hecklers, from a comic 14 years in: Jesse Pimpinella befriends them first, then lets the whole room turn on them. Jesse's real first mic was at 18, in the back of a Belleria pizza shop in Cornersburg — the Youngstown Comedy Syndicate, one show a week, Fridays only. Bomb in Columbus on a Monday and you fix it Tuesday. Bomb in Youngstown on a Friday and you wear it for seven days. B...

Terrance "ThaGawdshow" Davis signed up for his first open mic in Columbus and left before going on. The second time, he didn't get a vote. A comic he knew texted him to come watch her set. When he walked in, she told him she'd already put his name on the list. The only material he had was a throwaway line he'd made up over pizza an hour before. It flopped. He went to another mic the next night any...

Andrew Rudick knows how to deal with hecklers because he used to be one — he heckled his own best friend at his first open mic. Andrew's first mic was a music-and-comedy open mic at Baba Budan's, a long-gone divey bar on the University of Cincinnati campus. He went up, thought he killed, bombed. The second time, the friend he'd heckled threw a banana at his face on stage as payback — biggest laugh...

Ty Moore's first open mic ended with a headliner running on stage and taking the mic out of his hands three minutes in — and honestly? He was relieved. Twelve years later, he hosts Bobo's, the Monday-night comedy open mic at Cafe Bourbon Street, one of the most beloved stand-up rooms in Columbus, Ohio. On this episode of the First Mic podcast, Ty tells Ira Cross the whole origin story: getting cut...

A fight broke out at Zach Harley's first open mic — and the bartender brought out a wooden bat. The Columbus comic tells the whole story on First Mic. Zach spent over a decade behind microphones before he ever tried a joke on stage: high school play-by-play in Parma, country radio in Akron, then producing morning news in Columbus — including associate-producing his college's Boston Marathon covera...

Evergreen query targeted: "what to expect at your first open mic" — answered directly in paragraph two. Nickey Winkelman has done stand-up for 20 years and never left Columbus, Ohio — on purpose. Her first open mic? Eight minutes at a UCSB variety show at 19. That's over the line at most mics. At her first Columbus mic — the 2006 Funny Bone contest where Kenny Mock also did his first Columbus set...

Murph Henderson flew to New York to do his first stand-up set — and to see a girl. She said no, he never got on stage, and Columbus comedy won. Back home, his actual first open mic happened at Shrunken Head, right before the legendary Columbus venue closed for good. The first laugh hit like a drug he didn't know he needed — and the self-described nervous guy who takes his shoes off to feel grounde...

Henry Allen brought his mom to his first open mic — because at 17, he wasn't old enough to get into the club. It did not go smoothly. Sixteen years later, Henry sits down with Ira Cross at Rehab Tavern to tell the whole story: the Bo Burnham special that convinced him to start at 17, the bottle of Smartwater that turned his mom into a tornado at the host stand, and the legendary opening line he co...

Barak Lesner moved to Columbus with three outfits in a garbage bag. Today he co-runs The Attic Comedy Club, has five kids and a mortgage, and a blunt message for anyone starting out: you suck — and that's exactly the point. In this episode of First Mic, Barak takes Ira back to his real first set in 2013 — a two-minute open mic in Gainesville, Florida, on his 25th birthday, the same night Ray Allen...

Caitlin Menosky's first Columbus open mic went about as badly as it can go — only woman on the lineup, put up last, and heckled through her whole set by a room full of comedians she'd never met. One comic's apology afterward is the reason she didn't quit. Now she's headlining 45 minutes and building toward an hour.   Caitlin sits down with Ira Cross at Rehab Tavern to talk about memorizing Jim Gaf...

Dan Sebree has been obsessed with stand-up since he was five years old — but it took watching the finals of a Dayton comedy contest, thinking "I could do this," to actually get on stage. On this episode of First Mic, Dan tells Ira about his very first open mic on January 19, 2014: a full shift at Family Video, a nervous sweat-through-the-shirt entrance at 330 pounds, and the 25 friends and family...

Jessi Sisson didn't plan to do comedy. She signed up for a speed dating event in Columbus, never saw the email saying it was canceled, and walked in to find an open mic instead. Five years of jokes had been sitting in her phone since one improv class back in Philly — so she went up last, read them off the screen, then ran straight to her car. That was the fall of 2022.   Since then she's bought an...

Josh Stovall is a preacher, a comedian, and the kind of guest who'll sip Zinfandel like it's communion and then tell you about the last time he made his mom laugh before she passed six years ago this March. He spent two and a half years writing jokes in his phone before he ever set foot on a stage — and when he finally did, at an open mic at Fours on High in Columbus, the host was so drunk he butc...

Janaris Cain (@PrincessNaris) thought she was going to dance for Missy Elliott. Instead, the wig got snatched off her head on a Wild 'N Out tour stop, her friends told her she had to do comedy, and she said "f it" and walked into Shrunken Head for her first open mic. She bombed. Then a stranger in the crowd yelled "your booty though," and Janaris took it as the green light to get back into her jok...

Happy Mother's Day. For this special episode, Ira sits down with the woman everyone in his life has called hilarious for as long as he can remember — his mom, Sheila Taylor. She's the first non-comic guest on First Mic, the first mom, and (sorry Murf) the first one to take her shoes off on camera.   They get into her first live comedy show at Powers Auditorium in Youngstown back in the late '80s,...

Tanya Vora doesn't wing anything. Before her first open mic in July 2023, she recorded herself practicing in her closet, showed up at The Attic early to visualize the stage, and went ninth on the lineup so she wouldn't have to go first. She also Googled what a "tight five" was the week before — because she thought it meant five jokes. She was wrong. She was also great. The comic who followed her,...

LeRon Crowder is the reason First Mic exists. Before this podcast was a podcast, he and Ira Cross sat in a Columbus library sketching the idea out on dry erase boards like a couple of professors. This is his first mic story — and it starts with Tony Rock at a Cheesecake Factory telling him, "You need to get on stage." After two years of driving up to open mics, looking at comedians like "dorks and...

Def Goldblum is a Columbus-based music comedian, open mic host, and show producer who brings guitar, keyboard, and an absurd love of Facebook Marketplace to every stage he touches. On this episode of First Mic, he sits down with Ira Cross to talk about growing up on Redd Foxx records and George Carlin albums, stepping on stage for the first time at Scully's Music Diner right after COVID, and build...

Jules Wagner didn't plan on being a comic — her therapist basically prescribed it. After a cancer diagnosis, chemo, and a brutal first attempt at stand-up in Virginia Beach surrounded by frat bros, Jules walked away from comedy entirely. Then she moved to Columbus, gave it one more shot at Crescent Lounge on February 29th, 2023 — and three mics in, Johnny Collins gave her a piece of advice that re...