The Boy With Tape On His Face & Tom Stade

The Boy: Have you ever been the wrong act for the gig?

Tom Stade: Oh I've totally been the wrong act. When I was living in Vancouver I had to drive all the way up to a place called Prince George and when we got into the venue the guy just looked at me and said "hey I thought I told you, you were never supposed to play here again" I have never seen a promoter so fucking mad in all my life.

TB: What do you think is the best thing about being a comedian?

TS: I find that the best bonus about this job is you have all that all this free time you actually have free time to live your life; you get to create happiness and live your life, and chicks dig you more because you have time to spend with them - the lifestyle that men like my dad always instilled in me. If you're going to work hard, work hard at being lazy.

TB: How do you create material?

TS: I have never sat down to write a joke. I'm like a Picasso, God works through me and I don't know when he's really working. He's working when I'm wasted it's like, man I'm drunk and inspired.

TB: Have you ever had a real job?

TS: I've had two real jobs. One, I was tree planting and the other one I used to pour industrial size salad dressing that they would put into buckets and send off so you could splash them on your fucking burgers. I used to have to wear a hairnet to make sure my greasy hair didn't get in your burger sauce, it just looked like a bunch of sploodge hitting the bucket.

TB: If you could redo anything then what would you do?

TS: Slavery. Then we could do humour about different races and without feeling bad about it.

If I could change anything about myself I would go back in time and I wouldn't have gotten so wasted. I would have seen the art form and I wouldn't have gotten so much into the lifestyle. I was good at the art form, it came very naturally to me, but so did the lifestyle, had I not gone so much into the partying side of things I would be way further ahead but it took my lungs to be destroyed for me to stop and actually realise that it was always about the art.  I made the mistake of believing that the lifestyle was the art.

TB: Do you think a lot of people expect a certain lifestyle from you?

TS: You don't know how many times I'm like totally sober and straight, but people will come up and ask me what I've been on. It's one of those stigmas that will probably always follow me now.

TB: Why are you going to Edinburgh 2011?

TS: I'm going because everybody else is, i'm following the herd right now. I've been out in the wilderness for so long I just want to have a decent meal.

I never thought that you could write a show in a year, and to write a really great show and try out on the circuit takes a lot longer than that, and so I was out in the wilderness working on a really great hour and a great routine. I'm not saying that there are people who couldn't write the show in a year but it goes back to my laziness thing, maybe God hasn't been talking to me for a couple of years but now that I've got it I'm coming back - but trust me I'm going back out there once I get some new supplies.