Comedy's king of impersonations brings his first show of 2024 to Tucson

Frank Caliendo will be 24 hours into his fifth decade of life when he takes the stage at Desert Diamond Casino on Jan. 20.

During an early January phone call from his home in Tempe, Caliendo said he doesn’t feel like he’s about to be 50 — his birthday is on Jan. 19.

But he was starting to see the signs of 50 creep into his personality.

Little things like using “I’m about to be 50. I can’t be expected to remember that” as an excuse when his two teen kids ask him a question.

And there was this: “I can tell I’m getting old because I tell a lot of people I’m about to be 50,” he said. “Old people tell people how old they are.”

“I’m going to start using halves again,” he added. “‘I’m 50 and a quarter.’ ‘I’m 50 and a half.’ Once you start using fractions, then you know you are on the way down.”

His Tucson show is Caliendo’s first of the new year, and, like all of his shows, it will largely be from the hip. He will dip into his bag of impressions, from Donald Trump and Joe Biden to John Madden. He might do Bill Walton, who he upstaged Jan. 4 when he joined Walton and Dave Pasch during the live ESPN broadcast of the University of Arizona-Colorado men’s basketball game and imitated Walton right down to his trademark meandering non-sequiturs.

You can expect Caliendo will throw out some personal observations of life as we know it and drag in his family for fun.

His dad, a former minor league baseball player with the Chicago White Sox before Caliendo was born, is a favorite target.

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“My dad will come to my show wearing a shirt with my name on it. ‘I’m Frank’s Dad,’” he said, adding that his father’s favorite conversation always centers on his softball stats.

His father apparently is quite the avid softball player. Right after telling his son that a family friend had died, his dad added, “but I went two for two” at bat.

“You can’t tell me about somebody passing away then give me your stats,” Caliendo responded.

“I wanted to brighten your day,” his dad said.

“Well maybe have a cushion in there,” Caliendo advised.

With the 2024 presidential election about to be in full swing, Caliendo has found that “a lot of my show has kind of become this Trump and Biden without any actual politics, just goofing around with those two voices a lot,” he said.

“I’m not political at all; I don’t take a side. I just make fun of both,” he said. “My take on Trump is he doesn’t play by any rules whatsoever and I’m not sure if Biden remembers the rules.”

Caliendo goes on Desert Diamond Casino’s Diamond Center stage, 1100 W. Pima Mine Road, at 8 p.m. Jan. 20. Tickets are $25-$50 through ddcaz.com.