Columbus Comedy Festival

Tim Fulton 00:08Welcome to the Confluence Cast presented by Columbus Underground. We are a weekly Columbus-centric podcast focusing on the civics, lifestyle, entertainment, and people of our city. I'm your host, Tim Fulton. This week: good comedy is a reflection of society. Next month, for five days, over 150 comedians will grace 10 stages throughout the city for the inaugural Columbus Comedy Festival. On the occasion of the upcoming event, I sat down with Walker Evans, co-founder of Columbus Underground and the Comedy Festival, and Hannah Romes, co-owner of Hashtag Comedy. We discuss the impetus for and the execution of the festival, the opportunities in the Columbus comedy scene, and their focus on increasing public awareness of the city's abundant talent. Admittedly, I tried to write a wittier introduction for this week's episode, but I've decided to leave the jokes to the professionals. You can get more information on what we discussed today in the show notes for this episode at theconfluencecast.com. Enjoy the interview. Sitting down here with Walker Evans, the co-founder of Columbus Underground, and Hannah Romes, the co-owner of Hashtag Comedy Club. How are you guys?

Hannah Romes 01:25Good, good.

Tim Fulton 01:26Good. We are here on the occasion of the upcoming Columbus Comedy Festival. Walker, for the video audience, is holding up stickers that are available. Yes. Walker, tell us about the fest.

Walker Evans 01:40It's the first year for the festival. There have been comedy festivals in Columbus in the past. It's the first year of this version, I should say, right? You know, we do some larger-scale event production through Columbus Underground, like the Columbus Coffee Festival, which is also coming up, first weekend in October. But yeah, I and my wife and co-founder of CU along with me have been comedy fans forever and ever. We love touring acts, we love the local scene, and kind of thought that it was ready for a reboot of the festival idea. So we sat down with a pretty large group of all the different venue operators and promoters and stuff, including Hannah, like last October, almost a full year ago now, and sort of said, what if Columbus Underground runs the festival as a whole, and we'll program some of it, but everyone else can kind of program their own venues, and we all promote it as one big collective festival? So everyone can kind of do their own thing, the best way they know how, and everybody wins.

Tim Fulton 02:39Rising tide. Yeah. Talk me through why that's a wide net, right? Like, was that the intent from the beginning? Sort of like, you're only going to get buy-in from everybody if you are involving everybody?

Walker Evans 02:56Yeah. And I mean, you've got like the Funny Bone, which has been sort of the default powerhouse of comedy in the city for 40-ish years now. But then a lot of sort of newer brick-and-mortar spaces, like Hashtag, which we'll talk about in a second; the Attic, which is just a little over a year old in Old Towne East; Don't Tell events, which are pop-up events, so they're not a brick and mortar, but they've been going for about two years now. And so it would definitely be easier to just say we're going to do a festival on our own terms without anybody else. And then all of a sudden, you've sort of driven yourself in as a wedge, I guess. And I would rather see something—because at the end of the day, the benefit should be, we want the festival to go well, but we want people to continue to support comedy around town. So if they can become fans of these venues and these comedians and these producers in the process, then they'll go out and hopefully keep coming back.

Tim Fulton 03:54Hannah, tell us about Hashtag.

Hannah Romes 03:56Yeah, sure. So we started as an improv troupe 10 years ago, actually, born out of a class from the Funny Bone, an improv class. And then from there, we were doing shows weekly at places like MadLab, Upfront, Shadowbox Live, Natalie's, and Grandview's Woodlands Tavern. And then we actually were going to open up a comedy club in March of 2020. I don't know if you knew this. But then COVID happened. Obviously, this is like—what's the—

Tim Fulton 04:21I don't know if you knew this about COVID? I think you're looking at me.

Hannah Romes 04:28Right? You've told me the story. Yeah. So eventually that obviously couldn't happen. But then we got through it. We were doing online classes and shows during COVID. And then about a year after the pandemic, we decided, you know, it was about time to try something out, open up a brick-and-mortar space, to continue our classes but also do shows and improv and stand-up and sketch. So we've really honed in on programming since about November of last year, and regularly since January, February. We've been doing shows every weekend. We still do our improv classes, and we have a sketch troupe now. So it's really trying to just bring on all different types of comedy, and kind of create a space that's very welcoming for people that want to try it, or have been doing it for a long time and might have a different, like, alternative style, or even just more traditional comics. But trying to break down the barriers of entry for comedy is something that we're really passionate about.

Tim Fulton 05:24And what's your background? What brings you to improv?

Hannah Romes 05:28Sure. So I started doing improv about seven years ago. And then I've been doing stand-up for about three and a half-ish years. I actually started with Hashtag—Hashtag started before I was involved. I started as a cast member about five years ago, then I started helping with the marketing, and then I became owner a couple years ago. And that's kind of what I think helped propel us into creating this brick-and-mortar space. Trying to just, after I saw the stand-up comedy scene, I really wanted to try to tie in the improv space with the stand-up space, because before, it was kind of two separate groups. And I think that we've really been able to successfully do that with different shows and things like that.

Tim Fulton 06:07So let's talk about the economics of it. There's different—MadLab, I imagine you're paying like a rental fee, right? Whereas, like, Natalie's, or a traditionally live music venue, it's ticket sales, right? Is there a spreadsheet where you were like, here's how we can economically make this work? Like, talk to me from a business perspective, like, what your plans were there.

Hannah Romes 06:35Yeah, sure. So my background is in business. My other co-owners—Chris Hyberger, he does business for his full-time job, and then our other owner, Matt White, is a corporate lawyer. So we're all very focused on trying to make sure that this makes sense, right? And we all have full-time jobs, and they're all business-oriented. So we definitely want to try to make this work, obviously, economically. The biggest driver for us to cover our rent and expenses has been our classes. And we've been doing classes consistently, probably the most out of everything else that we've been doing, outside of improv shows. So that's been a really big driver for us to be able to have the freedom to do shows and be a little bit more experimental, and take this time to really grow sustainably. We're in it for the long haul. And so we realize, like, there's no quick wins, right? Whatever you do, you have to work on building a strong foundation, right, which I think we've had with our brand for the last 10 years. And now building it into a physical space is a different kind of animal, but still really fun. So our classes—we have corporate workshops as well, where we'll go to different organizations and work with their HR departments, create like team-building exercises, things like that. And that all helps and funds the same thing of just bringing people joy, whether it's in the office space, or at a comedy show, or whatever.

Tim Fulton 07:52And is a goal that one of you guys gets to quit your day job?

Hannah Romes 07:56Yeah, hopefully. At least two of us, do it too. It would be ideal. But I'm really happy with my day job. And I really just am very passionate about this, the Columbus comedy scene, and trying to bring more eyes on it. That's why I'm so excited about the festival, but also creating a space for different performers. Like, as a female comedian myself, I definitely understand how a lot of comedy is kind of like a boys' club in a lot of ways. And so being able to connect with different performers from marginalized communities, and giving them a space, and being very open with that, I think is good. Another thing we're really passionate about as business people is trying to foster a very professional feeling for performers. I think that can be very difficult sometimes to do. But I always encourage performers to think of themselves—you know, I have friends in the comedy scene, but I consider everyone my colleague more than anything else. And I will always try to present Hashtag in that way, of, like, a business transaction. So we try to be very transparent about paying performers, paying people that work the door or the bar, and trying to give people opportunities. You know, we have payment plans; if somebody can't afford a class, we can try to work with you. But trying to be very open with that kind of thing. So yeah, something that we really are passionate about.

Tim Fulton 09:12And I assume you're making yourself available for rentals too?

Hannah Romes 09:15Yeah, yeah. So if people want to—we actually have a wedding coming up, I think in a few weeks. Somebody's going to rent it out for a wedding, which is really exciting. Not me, but it's fine. But yeah, we have stuff like that too, going on. We've had pop-up coffee shops before, and just some other things too. But yeah, we try to keep it pretty open for the community. And we're right in the Short North, so there's tons of different cool starter companies that want to collaborate or get involved. I've definitely loved just being in that area; it's great.

Tim Fulton 09:45And are you guys basically presenting your company during the comedy festival, like your sketch shows and your improv stuff? Or did you bring in outside performers for it?

Hannah Romes 09:57We have both. So that's something that we're really passionate about. For our stand-up shows, we have—I think we have 13 or 14 comedy shows happening at the festival, which is a little over 700 seats, and our venue sits like 55 to 65 max. So I definitely was stressed booking all of those, but it's been a fun challenge. You did a great—I sweated a lot. But we're working with a lot of our internal cast. So we have a couple main casts. We have TBD, the improvised musical, which is a fully improvised musical; it has theater performers and improvisers, comedians from Columbus. We have accompaniment that always plays music. It's one of my favorite comedy shows in Columbus—I can say that because I'm not in the cast. They wouldn't let me in, and they shouldn't have. And then there's another improv show called True Story, which I am in, and it's like a story-based improv show. We have a sketch troupe called Hot People Near You, and they're also performing at the festival. And then we have a bunch of different stand-up performers coming in from Cleveland, we have people from New York coming in, all over. So I'm trying to really shine a light on the talent within Columbus, that's really something that I'm personally really passionate about, but also trying to build a network, so we can get the name out there as Columbus being such a popular comedy city outside of just Ohio. And that's why I kind of view the comedy festival as being a great anchor for that.

Tim Fulton 11:22And I—

Walker Evans 11:24I was just gonna say, like, one of the great things about working with multiple groups and multiple venues and multiple kind of showrunners in this is that we've been able to collaborate on some folks. And so we'll bring someone in, and I might book them for a show that Columbus Underground is doing at, like, the Performing Arts Center on Thursday, and then that person is involved in the show on Friday at Hashtag. And so we're able to give people multiple opportunities across the city and multiple spaces. And so that's been really fun.

Tim Fulton 11:54While you're—you're not saying—that is what makes it worth it for that person to come in, too, yeah?

Walker Evans 11:58If they were just coming in to do like a quick five-to-10-minute set and then leaving, it wouldn't be worth it, right? If they have multiple opportunities while they're here, that's pretty great.

Hannah Romes 12:07It's kind of a really good prototype for other talent to come in, even not during the festival too. I know a lot of cities, a comedian will come in out of town, and they'll be booked at multiple venues. So it's kind of a cool way to test that out with a more organized structure than maybe us having to reach out to independent producers. I think Columbus definitely is very fruitful for comedy and comedians. So trying to highlight that is great.

Tim Fulton 12:32And talk about the selection process that you went through. You put out applications, so there are both—first of all, tell us some of the headliners that you have.

Walker Evans 12:42Well, before I do that, I also want to shout out the Nest is another one of our venue partners. I didn't mention them earlier. So Funny Bone, the Nest, Hashtag, Attic, and Don't Tell are kind of the five main venue partners. And then Columbus Underground is booking shows at the Key, the Columbus Performing Arts Center, and MadLab. Don't Tell we buy out. So, yeah, we started booking headliners back in January. So we reached out to people to make offers to be sort of headliner level, right, or showcase level, and then opened up an application process for anyone that just wanted to submit to be a part of that. And that was open January 15 to March 15. It was a $10 entry fee to be considered. You submit a video, we had a team of people watch and score all of them. We had almost 250—we had two lists, we had a stand-up list, and then an improv-slash-sketch list, kind of two different buckets: stand-up—

Tim Fulton 13:39And other, right?

Walker Evans 13:43Kind of, yeah. Stand-up is the more popular form, but we wanted to have a variety of things. So we have like film-based shows, we have variety shows, we have a puppet show. Like, there's a lot of stuff going on all week long. So everyone's tastes should be—yes, fine. But in the selection process, we had almost 250 people apply. I think we were able to book like 75 out of that, across all the different venues.

Tim Fulton 14:08And—okay. I mean, is it, as you have on your website, it's 150-plus comics, right?

Walker Evans 14:14Yeah, that's across all venues, all days. You know, whether someone is like a full hour-long headliner in the biggest venue, down to someone who's doing like five minutes, or is a part of an improv troupe, like, we're trying to recognize everybody involved. So top to bottom.

Tim Fulton 14:30Talk through that—sort of, like, after the applications, you've got, what, like a spreadsheet, just like a big old spreadsheet, and you're watching all the clips that they submitted. And, like, I was one of the judges, so I watched every single one. Did you have other judges? Did you end up having a pool of judges that kind of went through, so it wasn't just like one person's opinion, right?

Walker Evans 14:48What—they were—

Tim Fulton 14:51The comedy festival where it's just, these are Walker's favorites.

Walker Evans 14:55Exactly, yeah. Well, I mean, you know, everyone's taste is different, and you want a variety of stuff, because that's something that I don't like, somebody else might, and vice versa. So, yeah, good to have different tastes involved. And so once the score was assigned—that one form, so it was a $10 entry fee, and then you could be booked by Hashtag, Nest, Attic, Funny Bone, us, and Don't Tell. Like, it all went into the same pool. So you didn't have to reapply for each group, right?

Tim Fulton 15:23Yeah. Well, and that scoring, I imagine, was like a good guide for folks, but, like, maybe they're not gonna watch the lowest-scored one, right?

Walker Evans 15:33Right. And some of them are like, oh, I recognize this person, and even though they got a six out of 10, like, I liked their material, and maybe that wasn't the best video they sent. A lot of people are just sending us like iPhone videos with bad sound. So, like, you can't always get a full sense of that person. Can I tell you my personal favorite of the application process?

Tim Fulton 15:55Does this person get in?

Walker Evans 16:00Oh, of course.

Tim Fulton 16:00Okay. Yes. Making sure. Yes.

Walker Evans 16:00Peter Brick—oh, man. I don't know if you watched it.

Hannah Romes 16:04I love—

Walker Evans 16:05He's great. I've seen him perform before, so I was already familiar with his style. But special shout out to Peter. He submitted a full hour-long, like, professionally produced hour set. And it was amazing. And I watched the whole thing from start to finish. Like, I started watching it, and he had Nikki Winkelman introduce him, or bring him on, which is just like, okay, well, that's off to a good start. And he starts going in, and his jokes are hitting, and it's great. And I'm like, live audience—I assume live audience—MadLab. Yeah.

Hannah Romes 16:35I think it was—I will say, I think it was his—he recorded a special, right, so that was, I think, late last year. So that was probably what he sent in. But it's Peter B. Rieck, if you want to give him a shout out. He's one of my favorite comedians in Columbus. He's amazing. It's great.

Walker Evans 16:52But I started watching this, and after a couple minutes, I paused it to look at the timestamp. And I'm like, oh my God, this is a full hour. Like, is it—you're just in the mode, you're just watching, watching, watching, like, this is really funny. And I watched the whole thing.

Tim Fulton 17:04And so what was the logistical nightmare then, of, like, getting all these people slotted?

Walker Evans 17:15Just spending a lot of time with spreadsheets.

Tim Fulton 17:17Was it just a lot of, like—say I'm a comedian that got an email and was like, hey, we'd like to have you in the festival. May I have gotten three emails, like one from you, one from Hashtag, one from the Attic, we're all, like, potentially—okay. And what were your emails like? Were they like, I would like to consider you for a slot in this show?

Walker Evans 17:41Are you available Thursday at 10pm to do a 20-minute feature set for this headliner, and here's what it pays. And basically I just copied and pasted and sent the basic details for each of the shows out to people.

Tim Fulton 17:55There was a lot of mail merge of, like, you know—a mail merge, yes. Do you—

Hannah Romes 18:00I don't—mail—

Tim Fulton 18:02Mail merges. I don't even think people really do it anymore, because we have CRMs. But you have, like, a spreadsheet of, like, here's somebody's name, here's somebody—the data—and now I don't know, I'd have, like, unique fields to fill in.

Walker Evans 18:15No, because it was a little more high-touch than that. Yeah. But then I was able to—yeah. So it was, you know, and then creating contracts and having, like, everybody sign something. Yeah. So it was a lot, but I mean, we started in January.

Tim Fulton 18:34And then the process—so with the headliners, is it all different with them? Like, some have guarantees? We're back to economics.

Walker Evans 18:43The weeds. Yeah, it's a mix. Because a lot of the headliners, like the big folks, kind of up on the top of this flyer, are Jason Banks, local guy; Michael Ian Black, who's huge, che knows him from back in the '90s; Tony Rock, who was booked by Funny Bone, so he's doing like five shows at the Funny Bone—one of Chris Rock's brothers. Oh, okay. And his other brother, Jordan, also on there.

Tim Fulton 19:07We got two out of three Rocks. Yeah. And I hope they make jokes about, well, one of them's bigger than the other.

Walker Evans 19:12He's, like, "I'm related to all the"—right, I'm gonna butcher it—he's related to all the Rocks, Chris, Tony. He's like, but if you haven't heard of me, that's okay, I've been living under a lot of rocks. He was on the show Love on Netflix. Did you watch the Paul Rust show? I don't think so. Julian—what's her name—she's on The Bear too, and Community.

Tim Fulton 19:38Julian—I want to say Henderson, but I know that's not right. Gibbs. Julian—

Walker Evans 19:42He was on that show. Anyway, I digress. Reggie Watts—Ave, Dan Smith, Clay Ratcliffe, Jeremiah Watkins, Sam J. But, you know, these are a lot of like mid-to-high-range comics, I would say, and a lot of them are on the way up, growing by leaps and bounds right now. So I think it's kind of cool that this is a festival where you can pay 20 bucks to go to a show and see someone on their way up. Yeah? Versus, like, oh, I'm going to see Bill Burr at Nationwide Arena, and it's $150 tickets. You know, like, these people hopefully will be the next arena comics that you'll see. Yeah. This, like, Nate Bargatze was in town earlier this year, and he played Nationwide, I think he did two nights at Nationwide Arena. But, like, you could have seen him at the Grandview tavern, like, eight years ago for 15 bucks. I was gonna say, Grandview—what's the—Woodlands, thank you—in Grandview, yeah, Woodlands Tavern. So the original question, though—sorry—was there contracts? Yeah, their contracts. Like, you want to see their contract?

Tim Fulton 20:49No, just curious. Like—and I'm not going to do—please don't tell me what's in the contract. But I imagine they are all different, and they all have some nuance. And like, some people are demanding a guarantee, some people are like, I'm this flat rate, some people are like, hey, I need a hotel.

Walker Evans 21:05They're all a little different. Yeah. So with headliners and stuff, some of it—like, we had boilerplate contracts that we sent out that they signed, and some of them have agencies and management. So we're actually dealing with their contract, right. And they're sending us their boilerplate. And so you start looking at it, and a lot of it is more for, like, if they were being booked at something like the Funny Bone, and it doesn't make sense for a festival. They're like, we need the right to be the sole seller of merch on the night of our performance. And you're like, that sounds like maybe at the Funny Bone that makes sense, if you're headlining a Funny Bone show. But this is a festival, and they're like, just redline out anything in the contract you don't like, right? So we took a heavy pen and went through everybody.

Tim Fulton 21:46Do they have, like, riders of, like, one must have a bowl of green M&Ms?

Walker Evans 21:50Only one has a rider.

Tim Fulton 21:59Okay. Do I call them out for it? No, I don't do that. I like it.

Tim Fulton 21:59Is it—don't tell us who has the rider, but is there anything funny in the rider?

Walker Evans 22:03It's a very specific bottle of tequila, and, like, a sparkling water grapefruit juice mixer. And I'm like, that's pretty badass. We're doing that, of course. I was always kind of, when I was at the Wex, it wasn't like a bowl of M&Ms kind of situation.

Hannah Romes 22:20That's what mine is, my—

Walker Evans 22:23M&M-flavored—

Hannah Romes 22:24Vodka. Like, to be infused with—

Walker Evans 22:28Like, dissolved in the bottom.

Tim Fulton 22:29And how did you guys—Hannah, when you were sort of looking at the weekend, like, you're putting your—obviously, our content is going to be there. And then did you sort of say, like, okay, how much else can we fit in?

Hannah Romes 22:43Yeah. And, you know, I kind of realized we had at least like one main show that we wanted to do for every single night of the week. So I also forgot the show that I do, which is called Me Mom's House. I dress up like my Appalachian grandma, and there's a possum puppet that's like my sidekick. It's kind of like Pee-wee—

Tim Fulton 23:01Are you—are you a ventriloquist in this, or is the puppet performed by someone?

Hannah Romes 23:06Lindsey Bo's a savage tech, who also is doing a show during the festival. But yeah, she will also be voicing—his name is Kyle the Possum. But we have a show every single night of the week. That's kind of like one of our main shows. So our schedule, improv shows, stand-up shows that we do. And then we have more than one show every single night of the week. So I tried to filter in some more, like, stand-up-centric things. We're also partnering with Imposters Theatre in Cleveland, who's been a really great supporter—we've collaborated with them multiple times, they're great. They're coming down on Saturday, actually. Michael Busch, the owner of that, was on Community for a very small moment—I think he had a scene—that's on the Saturday. We have the big Imposters Comedy Night, is what they'll be doing. But basically trying to shine a light on things that people can see regularly, you know, every month in Columbus at Hashtag, while also adding some fun freshness of people from out of town, or maybe bigger comics that we don't always collaborate with. So trying to kind of diversify our content has been a main focus for how I approached booking. But also, using the spreadsheet was a really big help too. And that was a monster in and of itself. I'm so happy I did not have to—

Walker Evans 24:23Like, Walker did. Yeah, it was fun, I enjoy it. And I started early, because we started accepting applications January 15, and they started coming in—yeah, I'm like, I'm gonna start watching, I'm not gonna wait for it to close, right? I start watching the videos right away. So you just watch a couple a day.

Tim Fulton 24:38And what are the logistics—are you only worried, Walker, about basically your shows? Because obviously the other venues, everybody, well, yeah, but you can handle the—they are venues, they know how to handle and do their own stuff, right?

Walker Evans 24:52Like, we were not, like, staffing Hashtag, or having someone scanning tickets at the door at the Funny Bone, like, that's all on them. Yeah, we're also not taking a portion of any of their money for any of the venues. Columbus Underground is just doing the events that we're booking, and we're handling, we're running those from start to finish, and making our money back from those.

Tim Fulton 25:13What are the other logistics that people don't think about? I think you do have, like, a transport person.

Walker Evans 25:19We hired a guy, Will Hancock—I'm referred, dropping all the names, you know, Will Hancock.

Tim Fulton 25:28Who is the driver? He is not in a show?

Walker Evans 25:30Correct. Yeah. But Simon Fraser—there's a name drop for you—Simon recommended him, because this guy has helped with other comedy festivals and run transportation for other comedy festivals. So basically, like, you bring in all these headliners, or even just other performers from out of town, and it's like, cool, you know, I'm there, and I'm getting paid to be there. But now I'm spending all this money on X, Y, and Z, and, like, Ubers can eat up a lot of that very quickly. So basically, we have complimentary drivers—not for the attendees, don't think we're paying for your Uber home—but for the performers, so they have a ride to and from the airport, from hotel to venue, venue to venue, that sort of stuff. So there's some logistics there. But it's nice to have someone who is experienced in that, kind of running that from start to finish. We're operating like a little festival headquarters check-in area, so everyone can kind of check in and get their itinerary. There's some food and drink there, some comfy seating, sort of almost like a pre-show green room where you can kind of relax, check your email. This is for the performers, again—performers and volunteers and staff and stuff—not for the general public.

Tim Fulton 26:38Do we have badges?

Walker Evans 26:40Can we have badges? Some will have like badges or lanyards.

Tim Fulton 26:44Can I? Yes, done. Thank you.

Hannah Romes 26:47You'll have a lanyard in this room.

Tim Fulton 26:48I have the code to get into this office. Yes, I should get it.

Walker Evans 26:51It might be plastic, and it might say Sheriff, but you will have a badge.

Hannah Romes 26:56And he might need a bag before.

Walker Evans 27:01But yeah, there's a ton of logistical stuff. We are working on an after-party as well, on the Thursday, Friday, Saturday. And so I'm someone that's going to be running all of that, and that will be open to the public. Yeah. It's sort of, come hobnob with your favorite—yeah, it's just a place for people to go and have fun afterwards. So, but yeah, we're working with Nass as a hotel partner. So the headliners that we've promised a hotel room to, if they're staying for more than a day, we've got a good downtown hotel partner for that. We've got a lot of great restaurant partners. I'm not going to read the whole—yeah, sponsors—but thanks, GCAC, and, you know, Downtown Columbus.

Tim Fulton 27:38Do you want to talk about the other, like, the workshop type things that you've got, too?

Walker Evans 27:45Not really for the general public. I mean, we are doing some like industry development stuff. So that, like, the comedians, especially like the smaller local, younger, fresher comedians, can have access to some sort of class-type panels, on the topics of like marketing, how to get booked in clubs in other cities, the roles that agents and management play. It wouldn't really be something interesting to the general public. I think it's very, like, insider-basis thing.

Hannah Romes 28:15But I will say, Hashtag is going to be doing a couple public workshops. So Michael Busch from Cleveland, who I mentioned earlier, he will be doing some kind of workshop—we're deciding if it's writing or improv-focused, but we'll have something like that. We also are doing a free improv workshop for anyone who's ever wanted to do improv. And these are open to the general public, or comedians coming in. And then we also have a writing workshop we're working on, likely with professional comedian and writer Mike Larson, who's from Columbus and is booked on the festival as well. So we have a few different things as well. But that's at Hashtag—we'll be doing that over the weekend. But those are general public, in case if anyone here is like, listening, they're like, damn, I think I could do stand-up. Or, yeah, check us out on our website.

Tim Fulton 28:59Okay. Very cool. And a comment I think I made to you at the beginning of this is, like, there's a lot to navigate, right? There's a lot to—how would you suggest that people who are like, I'm going to go, and I'm going to take in two or three nights of the festival, or two or three events—how would you suggest they sort of navigate that?

Walker Evans 29:22Well, on the website, ColumbusComedyFest.com, there is a schedule page, and everything is listed chronologically, by date and time. So that's a really easy way to sort of see what you want to go and do each day of the week. You can also sort by performer, you can sort by venue. So there's a lot of different ways to kind of look through all the information, see what you want to do. We decided to take the approach of just making it fully à la carte, but all of the tickets are pretty reasonable. I think the most expensive ticket might be like 35; most of them are like 20. I know several at Hashtag are like 17, roughly. There's some shows that are 10, you know, like, canvas—there's a free class, you know. So it's all up and down across the board, rather than making people commit, like, $300 to get a wristband and then be able to get in everything. Logistically, that also would have been a nightmare, because everyone has a different ticketing platform and all that. But if you look at the Netflix Is a Joke Festival, which might be the largest comedy festival in North America now that Just for Laughs was canceled for this year—okay, they're planning on bringing it back, they filed for bankruptcy—but the Netflix Is a Joke model is also à la carte. So it's like two weeks of shows happening all over Los Angeles, and you pick and choose what you want to go to.

Tim Fulton 30:37Got it. Yeah.

Walker Evans 30:38I mean, there might be VIP packages too, I'm not sure. But if you just wanted to go there and go to one show, you can do that and spend that one ticket. There you go.

Tim Fulton 30:47Yeah. Walker, what has surprised you about putting this together?

Walker Evans 30:54I mean, it's been really nice that everyone's been very eager to come to Columbus. Everyone's been really great to work with, not just performers, but the agents and stuff too, because it's something that I've never really done before, is talk to talent agents in Los Angeles and be like, let's talk contracts. But everyone's just a person trying to do a job. You know, they want to see the people they represent get work. And so, yeah, it's just a conversation to have. But no major hiccups or hang-ups. I think we've tried to create something that, like, there's enough room for everyone to kind of do their own thing. And hopefully it continues to get bigger and better every year. If we hadn't been doing the Coffee Festival for eight, going on nine years—we've already kind of run larger-scale events, so we kind of know the ins and outs of, like, what could go wrong. So, yeah, I mean, knock on wood, but no surprises so far.

Tim Fulton 31:52Yeah. And then we'll do the music festival next year.

Walker Evans 31:52Let's do it.

Tim Fulton 31:52Hannah—I have Walker on a couple times a year. Every—I end every interview with the same two questions. They are: what do you think Columbus is doing well, and what do you think Columbus is not doing so well?

Walker Evans 32:09Okay. And it doesn't have to be comedy. It can be something completely off the rails.

Hannah Romes 32:15Oh, well—keep it to comedy-related. Speak out of pocket. I think the comedy scene has grown really fast in the last year. I've seen a lot of great comics coming onto the scene, and from feedback I get from comics that come from all over, Columbus has a lot of opportunity for growth, and for giving different comedians platforms maybe earlier than they would be able to otherwise. And it kind of helps create this snowball effect of getting better and better. And I think that's been really exciting to see, that with improv as well. I think something that we can—an opportunity that we can grow with—is getting more eyes of the general public on the comedy scene. Right now, it's like almost Columbus's best-kept secret, how many comedy clubs there are, how many opportunities for live entertainment. You know, people are on their phones on Instagram, watching comedians all the time, but they're not aware that there's over 100 really talented comedians in the city that are performing at any given weekend—any given night, right. Like, there's open mics throughout the city, all these opportunities to find things. And so, you know, even at Hashtag, we have not—I booked most of the shows, and I'm working with local producers, if they do an independently produced show, and we do not really repeat talent. And in the last six, seven months that we've been doing regular programming, I think that is definitely a nod to how diverse Columbus is. I don't think any Columbus comedy venue is competing against each other. We've had multiple shows sell out at different venues on the same night. And really, it just gets to getting the general public excited and aware of the comedy scene. And I think that's why I'm so excited about the festival. I think that really addresses a huge need right now, and I'm really excited to see how this grows.

Tim Fulton 33:56Absolutely. Thank you both so much.

Hannah Romes 33:56Thank you, Tim.

Tim Fulton 33:56Thank you for listening to the Confluence Cast presented by Columbus Underground. Again, you can get more information on what we discussed today in the show notes for this episode at theconfluencecast.com. Please rate, subscribe, and share this episode of the Confluence Cast with your friends, family, contacts, enemies, your favorite comedian. If you're interested in sponsoring the Confluence Cast, get in touch with us. We can be reached by email at info@theconfluencecast.com. Our theme music was composed by Benji Robinson. Our producer is Phil Cogley. I'm your host, Tim Fulton. Have a great week.