It was 113 degrees in mid-June when comedian Jeff Foxworthy played back-to-back shows in Reno and Laughlin, Nevada.
“I was telling my wife, ‘That’s just unbearable,’ and she goes, ‘You need to quit doing such hot places,’” he recalled. “I pulled up my schedule: ‘Oh crap, I’m in Tucson in July!’”
The Georgia-born Foxworthy, a self-professed redneck comedian who made a name for himself over a 40-year career poking fun at himself and fellow Southerners, is playing Desert Diamond Casino, 1100 W. Pima Mine Road, on Saturday, July 13; the high will barely top the century mark, according to early forecasts.
It will be his first Tucson show since he was here in early January 2019.
Back then, Foxworthy was doing 100-plus shows a year. These days, he’s doing “more like 40 to 50,” he confessed, “so I don’t get around as much as I used to.”
Wait: Could this be the first sign that Jeff Foxworthy is slowing down? Could the man behind the ubiquitous “You might be a redneck if …” schtick and architect of the early 2000s “Blue Collar Comedy Tour” that launched the career of the ultimate redneck Larry the Cable Guy be … gasp … contemplating retirement?
Well, not so fast there, Rita Hayworth.
“Slowing down? Yeah,” the 65-year-old will allow. “But not ‘cause I don’t still love it. There’s just other things I love a lot, too, like being a granddad. I still love the being on stage. After 40-plus years of airports and hotel rooms, the thrill of those two things has gone away. I tell them now, ‘You’re paying me to fly out here and spend the night; I’m doing the show for free.’ That’s the fun part.”
Who can blame him for tiring of the travel, really? Heck, most hotel chains have eliminated one of the biggest rewards to life on the road: The complimentary waffle bar.
“No, no, please. You can’t even get free coffee anymore,” he quipped in his rich Georgia drawl. “You know what is really crazy? Half of the places no longer have room service. They’re like, ‘Well, you can call downstairs and walk downstairs and get it; we’re not going to bring it to you.’ Really? I’ll pay you to bring it to me.”
These days Foxworthy is more focused on his new role as grandpa to his 3-year-old grandson and 1-year-old granddaughter. He’ll admit: Those little ones have a fierce hold on his heart.
“Foolishly, I thought I had gotten to the point where I thought I understood life,” he said. “I had no idea. And I watched it happen to my best friend. He became a grandpa and his nickname is ‘Crusty’ ‘cause he’s crusty about everything. Then he became a grandpa and he became the mushiest, gushiest. I told him: ‘Crusty, if other people acted this way about their grandkids, you would make fun of them.’ And he said, ‘You’re right, but they don’t have my grandkids.’
“Golly, it’s just a love affair,” he added. “I did not know it was going to hit me that hard.”
At some point, Foxworthy might incorporate the grands into his show, like he did with his two daughters when they were young.
“I was making good money off them” — until they became high school age and asked him to stop, he said. “They took away a good revenue stream. That’s the great thing about when they are little, they don’t realize you talk about them.”
At Saturday’s show, you probably won’t hear him fall back on his “You might be a redneck if …" routine; he stopped doing it a few years ago thinking that maybe his audiences were tired of it.
Perhaps, you suggest, you can reboot it for the 21st century; look at it through the prism of social media.
“That’s actually a good angle,” he said. “Because they (rednecks) still certainly exist. They’re trying to be hip and all but deep down underneath, it’s like, nah. God only made like 100 hip people in the country and the rest of us are pretenders. And I’ve reached the age where you quit pretending.”
About slowing down: Foxworthy said there are days when he has to get up at 4 a.m. to get to the airport on those back-to-back show weekends when he asks himself why he’s still doing this.
“But when you’re on the side of the stage and they turn the lights down and people start clapping, it’s like an adrenaline rush. You’re like, ‘I still get to do this!,’” he said.
“I really honestly feel like I have cheated the world in that I got to do something that I loved doing this much and made a fabulous living doing it,” he said. “I’m like, I gotta be one of the luckiest people on the planet because I would have done it for free.”
Saturday’s show starts at 8 p.m. and tickets are $60-$80 through ddcaz.com.
The Fox Tucson Theatre has been a Tucson landmark for decades. Its history has been captured in photos since the 1930s, when it opened as a vaudeville venue and movie house. Video by Pascal Albright / Arizona Daily Star
