Every year, in honour and celebration of Black History Month, the Underground Comedy Railroad tours Canada. This show is Canada’s first all-Black comedy tour, bringing diverse and thought-provoking perspectives to regions across the nation. They’ve been spreading laughter From Halifax to Vancouver since 2012.
This wonderful event was created by Rodney Ramsey and Daniel Woodrow as an outlet to showcase the voices of Black Canadian comics to new and existing fanbases. Each year, the lineup of comedians is selected based on their hilarious and all-Canadian comedic material that highlights various topics, from race to everyday life.
We’re one of the lucky cities to host the showcase as the Underground Comedy Railroad will be coming to Ottawa on Monday, February 20, 2023.
In anticipation of the show, I had the chance to sit down with one of its creators, Daniel Woodrow, and ask him a few questions.
Daniel Woodrow. Photo provided.
Apt613: What made you want to stand in front of strangers and tell jokes?
Daniel Woodrow: I’m an anxious person by nature, and it’s (for) that exact reason that I wanted to do stand-up comedy. I think it’s because I was socially awkward growing up, and I was thinking, “what’s the most out-there thing I can do for myself?” It’s similar to exposure therapy, as it would be something that forced me to go out and talk to people in all sorts of social situations. It was a battle for a long time, and I found it hard to go out to a show, but now I like it and love doing it. It’s a challenge.
How did you try to get stage time when you were first starting?
I started doing comedy in Ottawa, and there weren’t many places that had open mics. So you may have gotten on stage three times a month max.
So how did you get the extra stage time you need every week to get better?
At the time, the church that my family went to had a youth group, and I had mentioned my interest in comedy while there. They suggested I do announcements to the (congregation) and maybe mix in some jokes. I just came up with a couple of minutes of a comedy set the following week. I tried to make it appropriate and remembered that my friends were laughing, but others found it shocking. I don’t really remember clearly, but for some reason, they asked me to do it again the next week.
How did you get to know Rodney (Ramsey) and what made you two decide to start the Underground Comedy Railroad?
I was on the same show at Yuks Yuks one time and there was another Black comic, and at one point, we just said: “Have you ever been on an all-Black-people comedy show?” and none of us had. So it inspired us to do an all-Black comedy tour. And then we realized that we were the first all-Black comedy tour in Canada. We didn’t set out to be the first, but it kept coming up in interviews when we started the show. The media were the ones that highlighted to us that we were the first. The inaugural show was in Montreal, with Rodney and Andrew, and I got involved when I helped run the first show in Toronto. Now it’s been me and Rodney for like, ten years.
How did the pandemic affect you?
It was hard. During that time, Rodney decided to do (the show) online. He’s the “crazy ideas” guy and I’m the “make it happen” guy. Our goal was to make it much more than a Zoom show. We had a DJ that played at the start of the show, while people were logging in. Rodney likes VR, so he would show up as an avatar and host of the show. All the comedians would have uniform backgrounds so it would look like everyone was at the same show. We just kept doing it, and interest kept on growing. We noticed that during the pandemic lockdown, there were a lot of companies that were looking for team-building events for their virtual workers. Now that things have opened up again, we’re also doing the tour across Canada. The business (end) of things has been a big focus of ours lately, and the tour is like the reward for all the effort of running the business.
The Underground Comedy Railroad Tour stops at the NAC Fourth Stage on February 20 at 8:30pm. Check out the full lineup and get ticket info here.
