Comedian Jeff Foxworthy’s varied career brings him back to Spokane

When Jeff Foxworthy began performing stand up, he thought he’d last two years before returning to his job at IBM with his hat in his hands, telling them he had made a mistake by leaving to pursue comedy.

“I thought I would get away with it for a couple of years, and it’d be a cool story to tell my grandkids,” he said. “I was a comedian for a couple years.”

Those two years turned into 42 years in the entertainment industry, a career that has taken Foxworthy from stage to screen to books and games, and has given him a lot of stories to tell the grandkids.

He will have another story to add to the list when he headlines the Spokane Tribe Casino on Saturday.

Before he became the expert on what makes someone a redneck, Foxworthy’s comedy career began while he was a child in school, constantly getting in trouble for reciting Bill Cosby jokes he had memorized.

Every report card, he said, included a comment about him talking too much and always trying to make others laugh.

“I made good grades, but once you discover that you have the gift of making people laugh, it’s real hard not using it,” he said.

Cosby, Bob Newhart and Flip Wilson were his favorite comedians, and he loved “The Andy Griffith Show.” As he got older, that list grew to include George Carlin and Richard Pryor as well as fellow “Blue Collar Comedy” tour member Ron White, who Foxworthy said can have people on the floor laughing from recounting his lunch.

Foxworthy’s proper career began when his co-workers at IBM signed him up for a competition for working comedians. He recalls thinking, “How do I put a set together?” and being so nervous he didn’t eat the day of the competition.

“I don’t think I made eye contact with anybody, but a minute and a half into it, I knew that’s what I wanted to do the rest of my life,” he said.

After that competition, Foxworthy began to gain momentum in Atlanta’s comedy scene. Still, Foxworthy was not sure about performing full time. Where he grew up, he said, people worked mostly blue -collar jobs that they did not necessarily like, but that paid the bills.

It was not until his wife Pamela, who he met the night of the comedy competition, told him, “You’ve got all this creativity inside you, and if you spend your life sitting in a cubicle, you’re going to be miserable.”

Pamela planted the seed, and comedian Steven Wright watered it. Wright watched Foxworthy perform during an amateur night at Atlanta’s Punchline comedy club, found him afterward and told him he needed to perform comedy for a living.

“I’ve always told my kids this: ‘Any good life, you’ve got to have a few hold-your-nose-and-jump moments,’ ” he said. “That was one of mine. It was like, ‘This is crazy. I’m quitting my job at IBM, but I’m quitting my job at IBM,’ and the rest is history.”

Foxworthy released two comedy albums, “You Might Be a Redneck If…,” which would go on to be three-times platinum, and “Games Rednecks Play,” which received a Grammy nomination, before starring in “The Jeff Foxworthy Show” for two seasons.

He would later go on to release a number of albums and television specials, star in shows like “Blue Collar TV,” host shows like “Are You Smarter than a 5th Grader?” and “The American Baking Competition,” and voice a number of characters in animated films.

Some comedians get into standup to use it as a springboard into TV and film, but Foxworthy’s foray into acting was a happy accident. All Foxworthy wanted to do was make it on “The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson,” a goal he achieved just five years into his comedy career.

Off screen, Foxworthy’s career has also led him to release a number of books, for children and adults, and even create a game called Relative Insanity after an experience with Cards Against Humanity during a family Thanksgiving.

His daughters and nieces were playing the card game, known for being a bit risqué, when Foxworthy said they could not play that while their grandparents were in the room. That got the comedian thinking that there must be a game that’s funny yet clean, and he whipped out a few notecards and started writing down ideas.

The next night, his family members were playing the game with those notecards and “gut laughing,” Foxworthy said. Relative Insanity ended up being a top seller on Amazon after its release.

He’s enjoyed all the places his career has taken him, saying the successes come down to taking a chance.

“Dreams without action are never anything but dreams,” he said. “I’ll take a chance on doing something different, and they don’t all work out, but you never know unless you take a chance.”

If he had to choose just one career path though, Foxworthy said he would pick standup every time. He hates the airports and the hotel rooms, but when the lights go down on stage and the audience starts clapping, he still thinks “I’m the luckiest guy on the planet. I’m making a great living doing something I would do for free.”

He is happy to offer younger comics advice on how to put a set or special together, and after numerous comedy albums and specials, Foxworthy is still excited about what he is writing, itching to get to clubs and test out new material as often as he can.

“The thing I think I love about standup is you walk out there and you look at and talk to real people,” he said. “You know two seconds after it’s out of your mouth if it’s funny or not.”

Foxworthy said his show in Spokane will consist of 30 minutes of new material, 30 minutes of “greatest hits” and a few bits that were on his most recent special “The Good Old Days.” With that formula, Foxworthy is certain there will be something new for everyone in the audience, no matter how many times they have seen him perform.

“Lord knows we need to laugh these days,” he said. “There’s so much bad stuff going on in the world, and I’m not naive enough to think laughter makes it go away, but it’s the release valve that keeps the boiler from exploding. If we can all put down the burden for a minute and laugh, the burden’s not quite as heavy when you pick it back up again.”