The Strength of Colorado’s Stand-Up Comedy Scene May Surprise You

What the Colorado scene is like

Stand-up comedy is having a moment right now, and Colorado is no exception. You may have noticed the growing number of comedy specials on streaming sites or seen the numerous up-and-coming comics on your social media feeds, but in-person attendance is growing as well.

Although once heavily associated with Los Angeles and New York City, stand-up comedy is experiencing new growth across the nation. The post Covid landscape showed many comics that they no longer needed to move to one of the major coastal cities to gain an audience or become successful. The positive result was that many other areas are experiencing a boom in the number of live shows, local comics, and support for the scene.

“Crowds are bigger than they’ve been. You know, after being cooped up indoors for a couple of years, a lot of people are very excited to get out again,” said Steve Hofstetter, who visits Colorado about once a year.

“Denver’s one of the best scenes in the country,” Hofstetter said. He added that “the only problem with it, it’s such a good comedy market, but the one drawback of the scene in Denver is that you’re not near a lot of other [major] markets.”

It’s not just Denver, local comedian Zoe Rogers, who hosts the Boulder Comedy Festival, shared that “Every time I have comics come out for the festival, they’re very shocked. Colorado has a bunch of little sub scenes. There’s all these different areas with comedy. I felt like there were lots of women in comedy, not just performing, but producing.”

Colorado audiences differ a bit from other regions of the country as well. “If anything, I do let comics know in Boulder, ‘they are very, very liberal and very progressive. There is a chance that you might make a joke, and you might hear ‘Aww!’ instead of a laugh,” Rogers said.

She also explained how there are many venues to see comedy shows across the North Metro region as well. You do not necessarily have to drive to Denver or even Boulder to see a show. There are plenty of breweries, bars, and local festivals to attend likely in your city.

Building audiences, finding venues

Locally, it was not just Covid that impacted the entertainment sector. The Marshall Fire destroyed homes, displaced people, and deeply impacted local businesses as well. Restaurants, bars, and other places where people gathered were hurting. Once lockdowns were eased and rubble from the Marshall Fire was cleared, Rogers had an idea.

She started to approach business owners with a pitch: “I would say to them, ‘Hey, what would you think of doing a comedy show here? I want to bring in foot traffic. I want to earn new bar sales. Can we help each other here?’ Whereas other times they would have said, ‘No.’ At that time, they were like, ‘Sure.’”

“I always say, if anybody has a venue, like, if it’s an art gallery or if it’s a restaurant or a winery or anything where you could do live music, [you can do comedy],” Rogers emphasized.

Hofstetter has also found this approach to be successful. In fact he recommends it to younger and up-and-coming comedians. “One of the great things about people being able to build their own audiences now is you can rent out the backroom of a bar, sometimes for nothing, sometimes for a couple hundred bucks. You sell 50 tickets, and you’ll make more than you used to make headlining a small club.” Comedians have become their own talent scouts by finding audiences online.

“Now, if you have enough followers on social media that you can sell 50 tickets, you can be independent for the rest of your life,” he elaborated.

But the audience really is the most important thing, and turning those social media views into ticket sales is the real trick. Killing a set is nothing new, but getting people there via FaceBook, Instagram, X (Twitter), or TikTok is. As for many industries, the shift towards marketing yourself online is relatively new for artists, musicians, comedians, and others in entertainment. Some have embraced it, some have not quite yet figured out how to make it all work.

“Part of it is that, you know, there are a lot of people who will bristle at the thought of concentrating on digital. They say, ‘I just want to be an artist. Why do I need to learn how to use Instagram successfully?’” Hofstetter said. “Before this, you had to learn how to do morning radio. I would much rather learn how to do something that doesn’t make me wake up at 6 a.m. and have to listen to some idiot with a slide whistle.”

Advice for up-and-comers

Hofstetter is known for helping comedians successfully navigate social media to build an audience that values the material rather than just a media feed. About Hofstetter, “He’s really good about helping people market and get their material out there. He’s also really good about being like, ‘Now wait for the hate stuff that’s going to come too.’ That does come when you’re a woman on the internet,” Rogers shared.

“One distinction I’d like to make that hopefully will help some of the up-and-coming comics is that the shortcut to a bunch of followers is reaction videos. But that’s not the shortcut to selling tickets. If people are following you for reaction videos, they’re not following you for you. It’s about being creative, being true to yourself,” Hofstetter explained.

The way to be true to yourself is to lean into who you are outside of comedy and entertainment. “You can lean into whatever it is. There are comedians like Luke Severied right now building a following of heavy metal fans. There are comedians who do parenting content. Joe Dombrowski does a ton of stuff about how he used to be a teacher, and he’s got a huge teacher following. So you can really just lean into who you are, and your audience will find you,” Hofstetter recommended.

Rogers started building her following partially on her parenting content. “People would come up and be like, ‘Oh my gosh. I’m a mom. I didn’t think I would see another mom on stage. That’s so cool to hear someone talking about my life.’”

“My recommendations are to find your own voice. Listen to a lot of specials. See a lot of stand-up, go to a lot of shows, see what you like, and see what you don’t like,” Rogers said. She also elaborated on how to not get too lost in your niche: “The other thing I would tell people is to write with other comics because sometimes something’s funny to you, but it’s not accessible to a whole audience from different demographics.”

Responsibilities of having an audience

Although BOCO may be more open-minded and accepting, not all regions and audiences are. One major shift of comedy after Covid was the growth of conservative comedians aimed at uplifting the anti-lockdown crowd while punching down at marginalized groups like transgender individuals.

“A negative from Covid is that it pushed stand-up further to the right than it’s ever been. Partially because the most valuable thing to a comedian is stage time. There are some comedians that value stage time over everything, including other human beings. And because the left prevented stage time, there were a lot of comedians that said, ‘That’s too much for me,’ and then moved toward the right,” Hofstetter said about the trend.

Suddenly, comedians were finding new conservative-leaning audiences willing to support them. It did not stop at Covid jokes either. Big names like Dave Chappell put out special after special consistently failing to understand and mocking transgender individuals. Some of the hateful rhetoric normalized by the Trump era seeped into the national stand-up scene. Austin, Texas, in particular, is today known for its “alt-right” comedy.

“One of the things I love about performing in Colorado is that you don’t run into that nearly as much as you do in other scenes,” Hofstetter shared.

Of course, Colorado is far from perfect. “I feel like things are moving in the right direction. But then I will go online, and I will see flyers again with all straight white guys,” Rogers shared her frustration. She has played her part in trying to ensure that audiences are enjoying themselves. She recalled one especially offensive set at an open mic. After receiving complaints from the audience, “I spoke to them and said, ‘You said some things that made everybody in the room really uncomfortable, and I’d like you to not come back.’ They were like, ‘I’m edgy, you know, I’m not afraid of being canceled.’ And I was like, ‘Well, I hope you’re not afraid of not being booked either.’”

Sometimes Rogers has had to try to get the comedian to see others’ perspectives. “How long do you think that felt to everybody else in this room? How long do you think it felt for every woman in this room? Please don’t come back. I want to be like, ‘Go to therapy,’” she said.

“It’s easy to say this was my viewpoint in high school, so it’s my viewpoint for the rest of my life. It takes work to move forward,” Hofstetter emphasized.

In the spotlight

Despite trends towards punching down or sympathizing with hate and fear, comedy as a whole is in the spotlight. It’s not just because of a new conservative following either. Comedians across the board are finding new audiences through short clips, filling seats with social media marketing, and landing specials on various streaming platforms, and big names are selling out stadiums to larger-than-ever crowds.

There are shows about the craft of comedy, comedy awards shows, YouTube specials, etc. The entire city of Los Angeles was recently taken over by the Netflix is a Joke Fest, which streamed live events and hosted comedy in nearly every venue in the city.

It may be that audiences are yearning for some truth to be told to power. It could be that we all need to laugh for an hour with all the doom-and-gloom headlines around us. It may be that the craft itself is being performed at the highest level we’ve seen in decades. It may just be to have fun. Whatever it is, there is an appetite for stand-up and no reason for you not to check out a nearby set.

Colorado comedians to check out

Andrea Vahl
David Rodriguez
Stephanie McHugh
Ricky Ramos
Hannah Jones
Christine Buchele
Steve Vanderploeg
Jesse Carter
Sumukh Torgalkar
John Novosad
Gabby Gutierrez-Reed
Zoe Rogers

Local Venues to Visit

The best way to experience stand-up is live, not necessarily on screen. Luckily options are growing. Here are some places you can head to check out local comics:
Boulder Comedy Show – weekly, Boulder
Rotating Tap Comedy – various shows, various locations
Comic Cents  – Thurs., Fri., Sat., Boulder
The Louisville Underground – various shows, Louisville
Gluten Free Comedy – occasional, Boulder
Junkyard Social Club – 1st & 4th Sundays, Boulder
Vatos Locos – annual, Greeley
High Plains Comedy Festival – annual, Denver
Laugh Out Loud Loveland Comedy Festival – annual, Loveland
Boulder Comedy Festival – annual, various locations
Open Mike at Dickens Opera House – select Thursdays, Longmont
Vail Comedy Festival – annual, Vail
The Comedy Fort – various dates, Fort Collins