Ron White: On Stage, on Showtime, and Coming to MSG

Ron White Interview

Comedian Ron White is a legend on both on tour, and on the charts. He is coming to the Theater at Madison Square Garden on Friday, April 18 for one night only and our own Dan Murphy go the chance to talk with Ron about touring, his tequila company and working on Cameron Crowe’s “Roadies” for Showtime.  Tickets for the Theater at MSG on Friday April 18 are available now,  click here for tickets and more info.

---

The voice on the other end of the phone sounds tired and perhaps slightly cotton-mouthed, though it’s tough to tell through the Southern twang.

“I feel like 100 pesos, or about seven bucks,” Ron White grumbles. “I’m out here in Nashville and last night I was out with a couple of my bar buddies. They were pouring liquor down my throat, and I was letting ‘em do it. So here we sit.” It seems natural that the Scotch-sipping, cigar-loving comedian nicknamed “Tater Salad” would be taking it easy the morning after a night of carousing. If he had called while sipping a latte at Starbucks or after finishing a morning Pilates class, it would have blown my mind. With Ron White, what you see is what you get, on the stage and off.

For the past five years, White has been one of the top three grossing comedians on tour in the United States. He has sold more than 10 million CDs and DVDs, written a New York Times Best-Seller, “I Had the Right to Remain Silent … But I Didn’t Have the Ability,” and has been nominated for a Grammy on two occasions. White is also set to make his return to New York City where he is scheduled to play The Theater at Madison Square Garden on Saturday, April 18. “The past two times I played The City, I played Radio City Music Hall,” White said. “I loved the place, fantastic venue, but I just didn’t think it was right for comedy. It was just too big to steer for just one person on stage. This time, I said let’s try to do something a little smaller, maybe 2,500 or 3,000 seats, which is what I usually play. They came with a building just as big! I don’t know what happened, nobody talks to me, anyway.”

White catapulted to national prominence in the early 2000s as part of “The Blue Collar Comedy Tour” alongside Jeff Foxworthy, Bill Engvall, and Larry The Cable Guy. White’s comedy had bite and nuance that went beyond the “Git-r-done” and “You might be a redneck” catchphrases. White was a bold new voice on the comedy scene, but he had been paying his dues on the comedy circuit for more than a decade before “Blue Collar” hit big.

His interest in comedy dates back to his childhood in rural Fritch, Texas.  “I was a big comedy fan as a kid,” White said. “I had every album. Of course, there were only six or seven comics back in the 1960s that you knew about, but I had all their records. And I was a funny kid. Also, my uncle was a preacher. I used to listen to my uncle preach a lot and he was funny. That’s where I get my stage presence and my cadence, I think.” Then when he was 29, he said they built a comedy club between where he lived and worked. “A guy I worked with went to the first open mic night and said, ‘You’re funnier than these guys. You’ve got to try. So I went down there and talked to them, and they told me to come up with four minutes of original stuff. Four minutes? Good God! That’s a lot. So I wrote it and here we are today.”

White has dabbled in acting with appearances in Jayne Mansfield’s Car, Horrible Bosses, and Sex and the City 2 which he calls “The worst movie I’ve ever seen in my life. But they asked me to do it, and it was a trip to New York, and Margo wanted me to do it, so I did it.”

While White says he is a stand-up comic first and foremost, he said he is excited about Roadies, a pilot he recently filmed for Showtime. Roadies is written, directed, and executive produced by Cameron Crowe and is executive produced by Winnie Holzman and J.J. Abrams.  “It’s the biggest names in Hollywood,” White said. “Cameron has never done television before, so this is his first foray. And he picked me for the part.  I knew when I read it that it was mine. . .This is my role. This is the one I have been waiting for, the reason I said no to all that shit people tried to get me to do. I have been waiting for a role like this to come along.”

White’s first audition for the part didn’t go as planned; he broke down crying. One of his best friends, his former road manager, was at Cedars-Sinai, suffering from cancer. The prognosis didn’t look good. “I said, ‘Hey Steve, I’m going to go read for this part as you, as the road manager,’” White said. “He said ‘Go get ‘em!’ And I go to Cameron’s office for the read, and I open my mouth, and I sobbed, non-stop for 20 minutes. I could not control myself.”

Crowe still wanted White for the part and called him for a second audition. This time, White nailed the part.  “I play the road manager for this big rock band. It’s a fascinating part. He’s a big guy, huggy, smiling guy. He knows more about rock’n’roll than anyone in the world. He carries a gun. He’s as flawed as anyone can be. He laughs hard, he cries hard. It is the role.”  White said he also gets to contributed little “White-isms” for the character, quirky lines and observations that come straight from the comic’s mind.  

In addition to performing more than 125 dates a year and acting, White also co-owns Number Juan Tequila with his brother-in-law. “The critics agree with us – this is some serious juice,” he said. “We have a lot of fun with it, but we work hard. I do bottle signings and I have a huge liquor convention coming up.”

And, of course, there’s a date at the 5,000-seat Theater at Madison Square Garden.

“I’m going all the time. I don’t sit still,” White said. “It doesn’t bother me because I’ve been doing it so long. Hop in a car, sleep on the plane, and do it all over again.”

 

---

Tickets for the Theater at MSG on Friday April 18 are available now,  click here for tickets and more info.  

Follow Ron on Twitter | Get tickets for April 18

Read more original interviews. And visit our home page for the latest comedy news, interviews, and more.