Tucson lands a slew of big-name comedy shows for the first half of the year

Nimesh Patel will probably not share his testicular cancer journey with his Tucson audience on Friday, Jan. 12.

Not that we wouldn’t appreciate a little medical humor from his early 2023 comedy special “Lucky Lefty,” but this is 2024; Patel wants to know why America is so obsessed with Hunter Biden.

“I really don’t know why people are mad at that guy,” Patel said during a mid-December call to talk about his Fox Tucson Theatre concert. “His dad’s the president. You wouldn’t be doing coke and hookers if your dad was president? A lot of people I know live that life and their dad doesn’t do anything remotely close to being president.”

And, no, he won’t talk about how as the son of a liquor store owner he is at the lowest rung of the Indian hierarchy, a joke from his early days of standup a dozen-plus years ago.

But he may talk about something strange he’s noticed about his recent conversations with his dad.

“Whenever I ask him how he’s doing, he will tell me what he’s doing,” he said, and when he points this out during his shows, he sees folks in the audience nod and he knows that it’s not just a thing in his community but a universal language spoken by parents to their adult children.

Patel’s six-month-old “Fast & Loose Tour,” which was initially set to be at the Fox on Dec. 1, is more, well, fast and loose than his recent self-produced comedy specials and standup shows.

“The material is kind of all over the place,” the New Jersey native explained. “Every show is kind of different; I change the order up, I mess around. I add new jokes. I delete a lot of jokes. Right now the set includes everything from Hunter Biden to my parents. It’s a whole range of stuff.”

Patel’s concert is the first of 19 comedy shows heading our way now through early June.

This is Patel’s second Tucson concert. He played 191 Toole in August 2022 as his standup career was starting to take off post-pandemic.

Patel, like many of his entertainment colleagues, turned to TikTok and other social media platforms to engage with his fans during the pandemic.

“I started putting stuff on TikTok for real in November 2020 and in a few short months, I went from zero followers to like 80,000, 90,000, and it’s just been growing from there,” said Patel, who now has 1.3 million followers on TikTok and 281,000 on Instagram (both are

@findingnimesh).

Once comedy club venues and theaters reopened in late 2020/early 2021, Patel started using his social media to promote his live shows.

As a result, he said he has been drawing fairly diverse audiences like the one that turned out at 191 Toole.

“The people who came out to that show were all walks of life, all colors, all ages. It was great,” said Patel, who started his comedy career at an open mic in New York City in 2009 and has never looked back.

Patel, who studied pre-med and then finance at New York University, turned to comedy because he liked to write and “I graduated with a degree in finance in 2008.”

That was right in the middle of the global financial crisis that in many ways rivaled the Great Depression.

“I think it’s safe to say I wasn’t good at finance or being pre-med,” said the 37-year-old Patel, who was the first Indian American comedy writer for “Saturday Night Live.”

“Fast & Loose” draws much of its inspiration from Patel’s personal observations and everyday life. But there’s one joke we probably won’t hear about eating a Juicy Lucy burger and experiencing a “loosey juicy.”

“It was funny when I first wrote it,” he recalled, but when he told it, the audience gave him the kind of look that said, “Wow, a 37-year-old seemingly intelligent man just told a diarrhea joke.”

Patel goes on stage at 7:30 p.m. Friday, Jan. 12, at Fox Tucson Theatre, 17 W. Congress St. Tickets are $39.50 through foxtucson.com.

Ha-ha’s heading our way

The comedy gods are smiling on us.

That or they think we are in desperate need of a good laugh.

Between now and June 2, 19 big-name comedy shows will grace Tucson stages.

That’s 19 that have been announced; the AVA at Casino del Sol, which hasn’t announced its 2024 lineup, is usually good for one or two big-name comedy shows.

These are standups who sell out big cities like Vegas, Los Angeles or Phoenix.

Guys like Matt Rife, who went from struggling standup to selling out a world tour after blowing up on TikTok in 2022. His two shows at Linda Ronstadt Music Hall on May 16 are sold out; ditto for his shows May 15 and May 17-19 in Phoenix.

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And Bert Kreischer, aka “Machine,” who is the inspiration for “National Lampoon’s Van Wilder” and the 2023 comedy “The Machine.” Kreischer is best known for performing shirtless, hence his latest “Tops Off World Tour” that swings into Tucson Arena, 260 S. Church Ave., on Jan. 18.

We also will see former D-Lister Kathy Griffin at Fox Tucson Theatre, 17 W. Congress St., on April 3 — her first show here since she played Desert Diamond Casino in February 2017. Her life got decidedly more difficult a few months after that show when she posed in a photo holding a mask of then President Trump dripping what looked like blood. It was actually ketchup, but it took Griffin a couple of years to recover from the controversy.

We get her “My Life on the PTSD-List” tour, which kicks off Feb. 2 in Des Moines, Iowa, and runs through June.

Here are the other big-name concerts heading our way.

Comedian/ventriloquist Terry Fator returns to Desert Diamond Casino on Saturday, Jan. 13, his first Tucson show since 2020. We get the road version of his popular Las Vegas show.

Now that the 2024 presidential election cycle is in full swing, we are betting that comedian/impersonator Frank Caliendo will dust off his best Donald Trump when he plays Desert Diamond Casino on Jan. 20.

Anthony Jeselnik, comedy’s Dark Prince and king of biting one-liners, brings his “Bones and All Tour” to Desert Diamond Casino on Feb. 3. We get him midway into the 2024 leg of a trek that will take him throughout North America from now through April.

Actor/comedian Brad Williams has been called the funniest comedian in the country and apparently it’s for good reason. The pint-sized comedian incorporates his dwarfism into his act as not only comedy fodder but a teaching moment that focuses on our shared challenges and gives us permission to laugh. He’s at the Fox with J.B. Ball on Feb. 4.

Comic magician Justin Willman brings his “Magic for Humans In Person Tour” back to Tucson, this time to the Rialto Theatre, 318 E. Congress, on Feb. 16. He was here last at the Fox in 2022.

Fun fact about comedian Fortune Feimster: She was a debutante. Not that that’s a shock given her North Carolina roots, but it’s just one more layer into the complexities and humor of the former journalist and longtime standup. She brings her “Live Laugh Love!” tour to the Rialto on Feb. 29.

Ryan Stiles and the “Whose Live Anyway” gang (Greg Proops, Jeff B. Davis and Joel Murray) bring their special brand of improv to the Linda Ronstadt Music Hall, 260 S. Church Ave., on March 1.

Comedian/writer Ali Wong is newly divorced, which makes for comedy gold according to reviews of her recent shows. We’re sure she’ll dip into this well when she plays the Music Hall March 2.

New York by way of New Orleans comedian Mark Normand, who has a few comedy specials to his credit, brings his “Ya Don’t Say Tour” to the Rialto March 8.

Brad Upton did his first standup gig in 1984, and two years later, quit his teaching job in Seattle and jumped on the comedy train. Thirty-six years later, the comedian is finally getting noticed after Dry Bar Comedy posted a clip of him on its YouTube site. Upton brings his “Tap Out, Nap Out, Crap Out” tour to the Rialto Theatre on March 10.

So-Cal standup Rene Vaca dropped out of college to pursue his comedy dreams. His show focuses on personal references, including his father’s incarceration when he was a teen. His career has been on an upswing since he won the 16th annual StandUp NBC comedy competition in 2020. He plays two shows at 191 Toole, 191 E. Toole Ave., March 19-20.

When he’s not doing standup, comedian Steve Hofstetter is a prolific author. He plays 191 Toole on April 2.

Demetri Martin The Joke Machine is a one-line machine, hence the name. His show involves spouting out one-liners and telling jokes while drawing on a large pad and playing a slew of instruments from guitar to glockenspiel. He plays the Fox April 6.

The “Bad Friends“ podcast pair Andrew Santino and Bobby Lee will show off their love-hate relationship when they play Music Hall on April 19. The duo has more than 1.25 million subscribers to their podcast, which launched in 2020.

The last time “America’s Favorite Husband” Steve Treviño played a Tucson show was in December 2022. He was at Leo Rich Theatre, which he sold out so quickly they added a second show. On April 20, he brings his “Good Life Tour” to the much larger Music Hall across the plaza.

Actress/comedian Wanda Sykes brings her acerbic style to Fox Tucson Theatre on June 2 with her “Please & Thank You” tour.