It's been 11 years since Danae Hays was in Tucson, proudly reppingΒ University of Alabama softball in the No. 15 jersey.
"I think I hit like three home runs that weekend," she recalled of the Crimson Tide's appearance in the 2014 Hillenbrand Invitational, since renamed theΒ Candrea Classic in honor of retired University of Arizona softball coach Mike Candrea.Β
"I actually had my 21st birthday in Tucson, and I drank a margarita before my game the next day," she said. "Don't put that in the newspaper because coach won't like that. But yeah, Tucson was very good to me."
Hays is hoping to hit a home run of a different sort when she takes the Rialto Theatre stage on Friday, Feb. 21.
Tucson is among 30 or so stops on the West Coast leg of the comedian's "The First Time Tour,"Β which Hays launched last February.
The first leg played to mostly 500- and 600-seat venues in the Southeast. This time out, she's hitting 1,000-seat-plus theaters like the Rialto.Β
"This is just absolutely insane. I just can't even believe what is going on right now, that we're going from West Coast to the Northeast," the native Alabamian said, channeling a solid Alabama twang. "It's just been absolutely, absolutely incredible."
Until those first shows last February, Hays had never done standup.Β She had never even stood behind a mic on a stage, although she had long dreamed of it.Β
"I just was obsessed with comedy. It was like the one thing that when I watched it, I could barely watch it because my anxiety would get so bad," she recalled. "The whole time, all I was thinking was, 'Am I doing enough in my life to make sure that I have a DVD that somebody can watch of me one day?'"
She was 10 when her dad bought her a camcorder and editing software and she started making home videos. She would play funny characters she created based on her Southern family members then make her family watch them.
After graduating college, Hays worked in the fitness industry first in Huntington Beach, California, then, when the pandemic hit, in Austin, Texas. In her spare time, she created prank-call videos but never posted them online.
"I didn't want people to think that I was unprofessional and they didn't want to work with me on the fitness side of things," she said.
But one day in 2021, she randomly posted a video to TikTok of pranking a taxidermist, asking him in an exaggerated Southern accent about stuffing her grandma's Rottweiler.Β
"It went mega viral. I think it got like 25 million views over the course of a few weeks" and hundreds of thousands of likes, Hays said. "And I was like, wait a minute, this is the first time I've ever had people actually 'like' my videos."
The success inspired her to continue posting comedy content throughout the pandemic, which "led to what we're doing now," she said.
"I knew I was always going to be in comedy. I just didn't know how I was going to get there," she said.
Which brings us to a little lie she told her agent last February that brings her back to Tucson a week after she celebrated her 32nd birthday.
It was a few months after her first-ever country comedy song, "Rode Hard," inexplicably skyrocketed in summer 2023 to No. 5 on the iTunes country charts and No. 3 on iTunes all genres, right behind Miley Cyrus.
Her agent emailed and said he and his partners wanted to meet with her. She showed up and "there's like 13 people there, and they look at me and they go, so do you do stand up?" she said.
Here was that big-break-in-the-headlights coming straight at her: Tell the truthΒ β "nope, never once did standup"Β β and you blow it; lieΒ β "Yes, I do a lot of standup" β and career doors open and dreams become reality.
"I just freaking lied out of my ass because I just believed that I could do it," she said, and even when her agent said he was going to book her for eight to 10 comedy clubs to let her warm up before sending her on tour, she never blinked.
"He's like, 'Do you have an hour written?' I was like, 'I do'; I didn't even have a joke written," she confessed.
Two months later, they announced those early shows, and within days, they all sold out.
"I'm like, holy sβt, I just sold out eight shows, and I've never even told a joke in front of a live audience," she said from home in Nashville, where she moved in 2023. "It was baptism by fire, learn as you go. And within the first five minutes of being on stage, it was so euphoric and so addicting that I was like, I want to do this for the rest of my life."
Hays' show at the Rialto, 318 E. Congress St., starts at 8 p.m. Tickets are $32.50-$52.50 through rialtotheatre.com.
