‘Shut up’: Comic Lewis Black shares views on ‘woke’ outrage ahead of Fort Worth show

No need to worry about Lewis Black.

The acerbic comic who performs at Bass Hall on Saturday, April 15, is healthy at 74, even if you’re sure his heart is about to explode in the middle of one of his iconic, exasperated rants.

In fact, Black has perfect blood pressure and shows no signs of slowing down. He’ll soon co-host “The Daily Show” on Comedy Central (a show he helped put on the map as a regular guest), and he’s reprising his role as Anger in the Pixar sequel “Inside Out 2.”

All the while, however, Black is on the road for his “Off the Rails” tour, with some topics that are likely to hit close to home for us Texans.

Black has a soft spot for Texas. He credits Spellbinders Comedy and Magic Club in Houston for helping instigate his move from struggling broke playwright to stand-up comedy. In the late 1980s, he was working on re-writes of a musical “The Czar of Rock and Roll” he wrote the book for at a theater in Houston. It wasn’t going well.

“The experience I had basically drove me out of theater,” Black said.

Spellbinders hired him as a headliner. He was going to make more money in a week than he made for writing the musical.

“And I had a nicer place to stay. They gave me a car,” he said. “I was treated better, more respect. And I got a better place to stay. I was done. I thought, ‘I’m going to move to comedy.’”

The Star-Telegram spoke with Black ahead of his trip to Cowtown and touched on topics including why he loves Bass Hall, immigration, his early days as a struggling playwright, his desperate transition to comedy, his trademark rants, and his thoughts on woke culture mixing with comedy.

Star-Telegram: What is the current “Off the Rails” tour about? Does it have a theme?

Lewis Black: It’s basically about a country that has everything any country could ever ask for and can’t accomplish anything it sets out to do.

We’re going to talk about immigration. I don’t take sides. There’s no discussion. It’s got to be solved. That’s it. And I go through a whole section on it.

S-T: You’re definitely hitting on topics that hit close to home for Texans.

For you guys, it’s understandable (to be) upset about it. You’ve got to deal with this influx. And then you’ve got South Dakota whining. South Dakota can’t whine about it. You have to get in line.

President George W. Bush had a great idea (how to handle it). So to blame either side or say either side is at fault is ludicrous. Both sides have had the opportunity to do it and didn’t. So shut up.

S-T: You’ve played Bass Hall before. What do you like about the venue?

LB: I played Bass Hall early on, and I think it’s one of the greatest places to play in terms of to which to speak. It’s phenomenal.

S-T: You don’t think of Bass Hall when you think of stand-up comedy, though.

LB: Well, you will now. You don’t because it’s a tough room to get into. Everybody wants to play it. It’s got phenomenal acoustics. I play all over the place, and it buries Carnegie Hall.

In terms of talking, in terms of the spoken word, it certainly does. Somebody came up with amazing acoustics in there that are movable that work for all sorts of performances – classical, rock, or comic.

I’m big on sound. You can really hear it in there.

S-T: A lot of your fans probably don’t realize you’re a playwright.

LB: Yeah, I kept that hidden, huh? It’s what I wanted to do, I wanted to be a playwright. From the time I left high school, I wanted to do something in theatre, and it became playwriting. My father took me to see a lot of plays, and I got hooked on it. I think I’m one of the few who has an undergraduate degree in theater with a major in playwriting. And then, I went on to drama school at Yale.

I was really a playwright until I was about 40. I was doing stand-up kind of on the side for fun.

I had this downstairs theater on 42nd Street (in New York City) below the West Bank Cafe, and two of my friends and I ran this room. I opened every show. I would talk about the play or whatever was coming on. We did more new one-act plays than any place in the country in an eight-year span. And what we discovered was there’s really no interest in the one-act play. But we did it. And it was there that people kind of started to seem to give me more reinforcement as a comic than as a writer.

S-T: How confident were you in succeeding in comedy at that moment?

LB: I certainly had nothing to lose. I was so broke as a playwright.

S-T: When did you start believing you could be successful as a comic?

LB: I basically toured Michigan for the summer to see if I really wanted to do this.

After working in the theater for so long, as a writer, when you watch a production, you pick up rewriting and how to do that. As a comic, I got that. I knew how to change this, or I need to say that.

I did a Bar Mitzvah joke at the very beginning of my set way up in northern Michigan in a room that was really loud and I said the joke, and there was no reaction, even from those paying attention. I realized these people didn’t know what a Bar Mitzvah was. At that point, I said, ‘That’s out. And that’s out. That’s out.’

S-T: You’re known for your style and cadence. What’s the genesis of that performance style?

LB: I was sarcastic, and then I did get worked up later on as I got older.

I’d really get angry. I could really let it rip. Eventually, I realized that was when I was the funniest.

I came off the stage, and a friend of mine said to me, ‘The next time you go on that stage, you start yelling. You’re really angry, and you’re not acting like you’re angry and you are angry.’ And I did it. Literally, from then, it was just a matter of refining it.

It’s that inability to get it all out, to be irritated, and that you could be that mad. A lot of what makes it funny is I’m mad about some things politically, but I’m also mad at things like the weather.

S-T: Have you ever had heart palpitations during one of your rants?

LB: No. I’ve never had that. Here’s the odd thing, my blood pressure is perfect. I’ve always thought I could have some sort of infomercial in which I sell the secret of great blood pressure, and it’s through yelling.

S-T: Have you been affected or annoyed by ‘woke’ culture in the comedy world?

LB: That has never so far affected me because I’m not that big … as Chris Rock or Dave Chappelle. People kind of know I’m going to go off the rails.

I think it’s been established (that I’m opinionated). And also, I’m not that big of a celebrity that there’s nothing to be made of yelling about me. If you yell about Chris, or you yell about Dave or others, you get more attention on yourself. Do I think it’s ludicrous? Yes. The reason I think it’s ludicrous is because if you go to see a show, that show is for a group of adults. When you’re the comic up there on that stage, you’re doing it for the people in that room. And these people who go ahead and send it out (on social media), it’s not supposed to be sent out, jackass. That’s why you’re in the room. That’s what makes comedy unique, much like theater, is you’re doing that show that night. And the next night it might not be the same show, and that line might go away.

It’s like when Gilbert (Gottfried) did the joke about the tsunami. And they were over it. But then he tweeted it out, and that puts it in the public forum, which is tough. And then 12 million people started tweeting it out. And they’re going, ‘Boy, this is awful. Look at this. This is terrible.’ That’s what’s really awful, the people who think what was said is terrible, then go ahead and announce to the world, ‘I’ve got to share something terrible. This was really awful.’ If it’s so awful, shut up.

We have no effect on anything. So stop it. You’re going to come back the next day, wake up and think, ‘Wow, nothing has changed.’ That’s because it doesn’t change. Nothing I have ever said on stage has had an effect on anything. Because if it did, we might be doing something else.

S-T: Did you ever think your work on The Daily Show made a difference?

LB: I never thought about it that way. I thought the only thing that made a difference was I felt we provided insulation, a way to step back from the madness and laugh at it. If you can laugh at it, I call it insulation.

Tickets for Black’s show at Bass Hall are available at BassHall.com.