The last time New York comic Joe Zimmerman performed in New Orleans it was at the Smoothie King Center in late March while on the road opening for Nate Bargatze, with whom he tours regularly.
Bargatze has broken attendance records for comedy tours, and he typically performs in arenas. Performing in the round for 18,000 people was a new experience, Zimmerman says. And there was only a slight adjustment for Bargatze’s “church clean” comedy and fans. Some jokes from Zimmerman’s 2023 debut special “Cult Classic” weren’t on the menu.
“I do a long bit about the time travel baby Hitler paradox in the special,” Zimmerman says. “But I don’t do that at the Nate arena shows. I do not talk about baby Hitler.”
Zimmerman is returning to New Orleans to headline his own show, and there’s plenty of clean comedy, and maybe a few darker jokes. He performs Friday, June 12, at The Howlin’ Wolf.
Bargatze directed Zimmerman’s special and advised him to go for an indie feel instead of recording it in a comedy club. So Zimmerman did the show at the Grey Eagle Music Hall in Asheville, North Carolina. It was a familiar environment, since Zimmerman first pursued comedy full time while living there.
“Asheville has an arts scene and it kind of felt like a good place to be broke,” Zimmerman says.
In “Cult Classic,” subjects range from the strange revelations of bird watching and oddities of male friendship to the gender equivalents of mansplaining.
And then there’s some edgier stuff about horoscopes, true crime documentaries and more. He tells a story about visiting New Mexico and going to see ancient petroglyphs of what looks like a snake. A stranger also looking at the scratchings notes that if they had a time machine, it would be great to go back and ask what it really is.
Zimmerman responds that it probably isn’t the best use of a time machine. Then he picks someone from the audience to ask if given the chance, would the man go back in time and kill Hitler as an infant, denying him the chance to grow up and later inflict great harm.
The man hesitantly agrees that he would kill baby Hitler.
Zimmerman then asks how he would do it.
As the man seems stumped, Zimmerman pleads that the fate of his debut comedy special hangs in the balance, and he wants it on a good platform.
But most of the comedy is less troubling. Bird watching is a much bigger subject in the special. Zimmerman fears that being able to identify birds “doesn’t seem good” in what it says about what he’s doing with his life.
But since the pandemic, he actually has become a bird watcher. A big part of it is living in New York City and looking for green space.
Coincidentally, Central Park was the site of an incident gone viral in 2020, when a woman in a bird-watching area of the park threatened to call 911 and say a Black man was threatening her when bird watcher Christian Cooper asked her to put her dog back on a leash.
What Zimmerman learned was that Central Park was a great place for bird watching.
“I assumed that New York City wasn’t great for birds,” he says. “Then I looked into it, and Central Park is one of the top birding spots in the country. All these migrating birds pack into this one little spot as they’re passing through. Different species come through every few days. It’s like if you like dogs, but you can only see golden retrievers on a few days, when they’re all passing through.”
For comedy, Zimmerman says he spends some time in Manhattan clubs, like The Stand, but he does more regular shows in Brooklyn and spends a lot of time on the road.
Zimmerman moved to New York in 2012, to get more serious about his comedy career, he says.
He also was interested in writing, and he was able to get some humor pieces published in The New Yorker’s “Shouts & Murmurs” section. He’s also contributed pieces to the New York Times.
Zimmerman got what ended up being a break in 2021 when Bargatze threw his name out as a comic he liked. Zimmerman then reached out and invited Bargatze onto his podcast. They became friends, and as Bargatze has become one of the best-selling comics on tour, they now do short stints together regularly.
‘Watching the two back-to-back has a profound effect on the experience.’
Zimmerman is currently working on his new comedy set and expects to keep honing it before recording it next year.
He’s also spending more time writing but on longer fiction. He just finished a draft of a novel about a bird watcher who spends a lot of time in Central Park.
“It’s kind of like ‘High Fidelity,’ but with birds,” he says.
Zimmerman is on a short tour in the area, hitting Lafayette, New Orleans and Mobile with Alabama-based comedian Chris Ives.
While in New Orleans, he also hopes to see some of the local birds.
“I am going to try to wake up and see some birds while I am down there,” he says.
Joe Zimmerman performs at 8 p.m. Friday, June 12, at the Howlin’ Wolf. Tickets are $25 via laughlife.standuptix.com.
Keep up with the latest New Orleans events at calendar.gambitweekly.com.