Kaylords.
That’s what Ottawa-born stand-up comedian Graham Kay calls the members of his fanbase, which has grown exponentially since he won the Home-Grown Competition at The Montreal Just For Laughs Festival in 2013. “It was far and away the most helpful thing,” the ever-busy Kay takes time to reflect. “I’ll always be thankful to that festival and in particular Zoe Rabnett who used to work there and is now producing Canadian TV. Because I won an award at the biggest comedy festival in the world, I was able to get big American agents and managers. They helped me get a work visa so I could move down permanently and break into a much bigger market.”
Kay went on to make his American TV debut on the after-hours staple Late Night with Stephen Colbert. It was a dream come true…mostly. “It was a major goal of mine to do a late-night TV comedy set,” says Kay. “Colbert wasn’t there, though; they filmed a bunch of comedians all at once in front of a live audience, then edited them in after. So, I never met him.”
That’s okay. Millions of viewers met Kay. Predictably, they fell in love with his wide-eyed naif in the big, bad world persona, just as Ottawa audiences did when he was first starting out. The local crowd was a little more prepared for it. After all, they had already experienced another homegrown-talent-made-good, the late, legendary Norm MacDonald, whom Kay, with his idiosyncratic decoding of life’s mores and folkways, echoed. His real influences, though, were the guys he started out with when he first moved to New York City, colleagues like Nate Bargatze and Dave Attell.
“I moved from Ottawa to cities where I knew there’d be more comedians—specifically, better ones than me,” Kay explains. “I wanted to work hard and challenge myself.” That he did, performing ten to fifteen times a week for over ten years. It’s a feat he doesn’t recommend to today’s funny people, given how much public attention has changed. “Today,” he cites, “you have to find a unique thing you do specific to social media and hammer that—like eat raw eggs on Tik Tok. Then, people will come see you.”
If that makes Kay the last of a dying breed, he’s sure taking his time petrifying. In fact, he’s alive and kickin’. He continues to tour, write TV comedy, and appear in movies. He’s also trying to sell a broadcast version of his Off Broadway show Pete and Me, which he’ll be performing in NYC July 9th to August 3rd.
Graham Kay has gone from local Yuk Yuk’s sets to Late Night with Stephen Colbert, building a career in New York through relentless touring, TV writing, and Off-Broadway comedy.
As a renaissance man, which is his preferred medium?
“TV writing sucks compared to stand up,” he maintains. “Office work stinks. The only good thing is you don’t have to travel so much and the pay and healthcare are consistent. Also, your girlfriend won’t be as angry at you because you’re not leaving every weekend.”
Ah yes—girls! It’s a pet topic of his; much of his act is devoted to the frustrating pursuit of love. In Kay’s life, it’s been a Road Runner-Coyote arrangement. Then again, there are understandable reasons for it. “It’s tough keeping relationships together when your first love is stand up,” Kay explains. “But I’m older and more mature/tired these days, so I’m currently seeing someone. She’s from New Jersey, though, so I may be in trouble.”
Kay also likes to explore his family, the original engine behind his sense of humour. “I think being a bit of a peace maker with loud parents and an autistic brother helped. You have to learn how to crack jokes to diffuse tension.”
Before he got so busy, Kay would periodically revisit Ottawa. “Howard Wagman of Yuk Yuk’s, who’s a Canadian Comedy industry legend, would always give me stage time. I was really appreciative of that. Still am.”
It was the Yuk Yuk’s chain, in fact, that inspired Kay to take the stand-up plunge full-time—that and scoring a TV ad for AXE Body Spray, in which he played “a clueless dork.” It’s the persona he still presents today, if in more refined, slightly savvier form. Kay may have his career all figured out—his hope is to start selling out theatres, affording him more clout—but making sense of the world, with which he confesses to feeling perpetually at odds, is another matter.
“I think most good comedians suffer from that problem,” he admits. “The only other route is to fight your whole life, so you have to laugh.”
