Comedian Andy Erikson From Small Town Minnesota to Last Comic Standing Final Five
LAST COMIC STANDING -- Episode 908 -- Pictured: Andy Erikson -- (Photo by: Ben Cohen/NBC)
Photo by: Ben Cohen/NBC
If you’ve been watching Last Comic Standing, then you already know Andy Erikson. She’s in the final five, she’s incredibly funny, and she stands out in any crowd. After her invitational round set, Roseanne joked about having a weird voice, and in the semi-finals her awkward stage exit was chosen as the #1 most awkward stage exist in this season’s competition. Andy is fine with being called weird, but it’s the great kind of weird. Quirky, unique, adorable, joyful, a tiny bit cartoon character like, and fun are other words you might use to describe her. And she loves unicorns. It’s not easy to get people’s attention when you are upbeat and friendly in 2015, but her talent is legitimate as is her comedy. Tonight she performs for the last time on the Last Comic Standing stage, as she and the other four finalists compete to see who will walk away with the title.
We talked with Andy last week about being a Last Comic Standing finalist, her home club in Minneapolis, and how she developed her signature stage presence.
Although she’s living and working in Los Angeles now, Andy hails from Minnesota, where the towns are small, the lakes are everywhere and everything is green. She got her start in comedy eight years ago doing an open mic at the same club where she would eventually get her first gig, meet her husband, have her bachelorette party, and even have her wedding– Acme Comedy Club in Minneapolis. But her comedy story goes back a little bit farther than that. Six months before she went on stage for the very first time, she showed up in the parking lot of the Acme Comedy Club, determined to audition for Last Comic Standing, without ever having performed a single joke on stage.
“I was super nervous about going on stage and all my friends told me I should try it,” Andy told me. “They would all go, ‘you should try it you should try it’ and I was like ‘no no no I’m so afraid’,” she said with her voice going a few octaves higher in her familiar Andy-Erikson way. So for a few years, she just wrote blogs before finally getting the courage up to audition. “I actually skipped class,” she said, something that might not be a big deal to others, but it mattered to her.
“This was even before I started doing comedy, I skipped class to audition for Last Comic Standing but I didn’t get there early enough to even get seen by the judges. So that was going to be my first time. My mom dropped me off in the middle of Minneapolis at like 6 am and in the middle of the city and was like ‘alriiight…goooood luck.’ And just drives home, leaves me by myself in a lawn chair. I didn’t mind, but people had been there since the day before so I wasn’t there early enough. But that was going to be my first time which is kinda, I’m kind of glad it wasn’t because it would have been horrible.” When her teacher found out she ditched class to go to the tryouts, he had an unusual response. “He said I won’t mark you tardy but you have to tell your jokes in front of class. So I did, and now he’s been very in my life with comedy. He sends me jokes and gives me tips and ideas and I’m just like ‘woah man.’ But he’s a pretty cool dude.”
The experience gave her the push she was looking for to go back to Acme a few months later and get on stage, but it would still take another six months before she worked up the courage. She remembers being in college, and having her mom drive her to clubs and bars. “I was 20 and it was weird cause you could still smoke in bars and my mom would drive me to the bars and be like, ‘oh my god this is going to be your life, just going to these smokey bars?’ And I would get free drinks at the bars and I couldn’t even drink them so I would give them to my mom and my grandma so they had a fun time.” Andy said she would practice her jokes to her mom in the car on the way to the bars, and her mom would tell her things like “everyone’s going to love you” and “oh you’re going to be the funniest.” Years later her parents admitted that they weren’t exactly thrilled. “I found out this year. She kind of confessed, ‘yeah when you told us you wanted to be a comedian me and your dad cried.‘ She was like ‘what? What is going on? She was supposed to be a doctor or something like that.’ But they never let on. They were supportive.”
Eight and a half years later, she’s moved to Los Angeles, gotten on tv, and just released her debut stand-up comedy album, Secret Unicorn, with Rooftop Comedy Records. She recorded it this past May back at her home club where it all started, the Acme Comedy Club.
She also has a new home away from home at Meltdown Comics in LA. “It’s the comic bookstore where they have the Jonah and Kumail Meltdown show, I love that show. They’ve had me on a few times. And just that whole comic book store and the Nerdist people are awesome and I intern over at the Nerdist school- well I used to, and I run my show there. I love going there.”
Even with eight years under her belt, it’s still been scary. The night her first performance on LCS aired, she was so afraid she was going to get mean comments but says the social media feedback has been so supportive. The judges have also been great. “In the first episode I was on when Roseanne said ‘you have such an annoying voice.’ In my head, I didn’t realize she was making fun of her own voice. So I immediately just thought, oh man I’m too annoying. I can’t be on tv cause I’m too annoying. She hates me. Oh dangit. Well, I did my best. But then I got to move on!”
I think of it as me, when I’m having fun or playing around. It’s an extension of who I am.
And tonight her friends and family are sitting down to watch Andy perform as a top five finalist, and America is waiting to see if she will be chosen as The Last Comic Standing. Whether she wins or not, she’s grateful for the experience. “I never would have done stand up if it weren’t for the show,” she says. “I always wanted to get on tv, and to have it be Last Comic Standing was pretty awesome.”
Watch Andy compete to be the Last Comic Standing tonight, Wednesday September 9 at 10pm e/p, follower her on twitter @AndyErikson. You can order Secret Unicorn on itunes, Amazon or the Rooftop Comedy website. Get more information about Andy, her podcast and where you can see her perform on her website, andyerikson.com.
