Rebel News - ANDREW CHAPADOS | “I know when I'm being lied to”: Kyle Lucey on how lockdowns almost ruined comedy
Aired: 2021-09-24
Duration: 06:51


=== Why We Started Shows Again (06:50) ===

[00:00:01]  Hey guys, sorry I'm late.
[00:00:04]  Oh my god, Tanner's such a dick.
[00:00:07]  Aw.
[00:00:09]  Cheated on me, but whatever.
[00:00:11]  That's why we have a girls night.
[00:00:12]  What are you guys saying?
[00:00:14]  Do these nerds even work out?
[00:00:17]  You guys got books in here?
[00:00:19]  Yeah, my library is actually closed right now.
[00:00:22]  Man, I could lift this.
[00:00:24]  I could bench this.
[00:00:25]  How many reps could I do with this hand sanitizer?
[00:00:30]  Woo!
[00:00:34]  Both people are so cute.
[00:00:37]  I just want to say I love the top.
[00:00:40]  Both of them, all three!
[00:00:44]  Pretty good too.
[00:00:46]  You guys know how to milk this old cow.
[00:00:50]  Can I have some sushi?
[00:00:54]  you.
[00:00:54]  Welcome back to another episode of Andrew Says My My guest this week was the hilarious and constantly moving and fidgeting comedian Kyle Lucy.
[00:01:08]  You've seen him doing stand-ups in Toronto at Yuck Yuck's, the Bovine, and other places like the first post-lockdown shows with comedian Ben Bankus.
[00:01:16]  Kyle and I got right into it.
[00:01:18]  He's such a nice guy.
[00:01:19]  He was happy just to be given a French vanilla to drink.
[00:01:22]  Let's jump into it.
[00:01:23]  I'm feeling delicious and also nutritious, if I'm going to be completely honest with you, Andrew.
[00:01:28]  Thank you so much for having me on tonight.
[00:01:30]  And thank you for also giving me a delicious cup of French vanilla to start off my day.
[00:01:34]  Boy, oh boy.
[00:01:35]  This has really excited you to an unknown degree.
[00:01:38]  Dude, if it wasn't for Rebel News, I'd be in my apartment right now, in my bed, moaning and screaming at the stucco ceiling like I do.
[00:01:48]  I usually do that as a comedian.
[00:01:50]  You do that until about 5 p.m.
[00:01:52]  Then you roll over, write a few things on the old iPhone, get a call from your landlord saying the rent's due.
[00:02:00]  You mute it and then you get going and do your shows, baby girl.
[00:02:04]  Get it.
[00:02:05]  But now we're here.
[00:02:06]  I feel I'm with around a bunch of lights.
[00:02:08]  I'm looking at a TV right now with me on it.
[00:02:12]  You guys are going to CGI better muscles on me, I hope.
[00:02:15]  Yeah, we're going to do that synthol stuff where you inject oil into your arms.
[00:02:19]  Hell yeah, man.
[00:02:20]  Make me like Vin Diesel Groot or whatever.
[00:02:22]  Make me jacked in like a huge eight-foot tree.
[00:02:25]  We'll see what we can do.
[00:02:26]  Just superimpose a tree over him right now.
[00:02:28]  Gang gang.
[00:02:30]  I'll try to be serious a little bit.
[00:02:33]  You cannot be serious and I'm okay with it.
[00:02:35]  Okay.
[00:02:35]  I want to talk about first thing is the lockdowns.
[00:02:38]  You're from Toronto, yes?
[00:02:40]  I mean, I sort of grew up, I say Ontario.
[00:02:43]  I've lived like all over Ontario, southern Ontario, moved around a lot.
[00:02:47]  But yeah, like I've been living in Toronto for the past seven years now.
[00:02:51]  Lockdown, obviously.
[00:02:53]  I mean.
[00:02:55]  So when this all started, were you just like, were you like everybody, you and your peers, like, oh, this is going to be a few weeks.
[00:03:01]  We can't do shows.
[00:03:02]  Everything will be back to normal soon.
[00:03:04]  How did that, what did that first look like for somebody in your position?
[00:03:08]  And as time went on, what did that look like?
[00:03:11]  I mean, for me, like, I remember like, so I produced like my renegade show or whatever, right?
[00:03:17]  And before it was at the Bovine, it was at the Corner Comedy Club.
[00:03:20]  And I remember a comment coming in going like, oh, yeah, like, we're going to have to stop doing stand-up.
[00:03:25]  This COVID thing's coming from China.
[00:03:27]  And it's like, it's really fucked up.
[00:03:28]  I actually just got back from a Western Canada tour.
[00:03:32]  So I was flying a week before the lockdown.
[00:03:35]  I looked at this guy.
[00:03:36]  I was like, bro, this guy doesn't love stand-up.
[00:03:39]  He's a wuss.
[00:03:41]  You know, he wants to, he's got quit already in him.
[00:03:44]  And then literally the day after, lockdown.
[00:03:48]  And I didn't believe it.
[00:03:50]  You know, I still don't really believe it.
[00:03:52]  I was in denial for a bit.
[00:03:54]  But, you know, I was lucky enough to live with some really red pill cool people that just were like, you know what?
[00:04:04]  You know, this is all BS.
[00:04:08]  This is crazy.
[00:04:09]  And then I just started seeing the writing on the wall.
[00:04:11]  I mean, like, something that really bugged me too is like, I don't know if this is like messed up to say, but like, you know, Bill C-10 was passing, Bill C-36 was passing, and then everything that was in the news was native genocide, which I know is an atrocious thing, but we've known about the native genocide.
[00:04:33]  I've known about it for decades.
[00:04:35]  We've known about it for such a long time.
[00:04:38]  Why is that the only thing in the news?
[00:04:40]  Conveniently at the same time, we're about to lose our internet.
[00:04:43]  It's just so, I know when I'm being lied to.
[00:04:47]  It disrupts my frequency.
[00:04:49]  We all feel it.
[00:04:50]  Comedians are like truth, truth, truth, right?
[00:04:52]  So anytime the absence of truth is present, we could, I don't know, it's weird.
[00:04:59]  I could feel it.
[00:05:00]  And so it was terrible.
[00:05:01]  It was terrible, the lockdowns.
[00:05:03]  You know, a lot of my, you know, my comedian family, they lost their businesses.
[00:05:08]  You know, clubs went down, which are comedy clubs are like our homes.
[00:05:12]  They went under.
[00:05:13]  And then we lost our art.
[00:05:17]  And live comedy, you know, it's not like art, like painting where we could doodle at home.
[00:05:24]  It's not like music where I could play, I could jam in my garage with my homies or like you could produce an album, you know, like a DJ would or like a rap artist would.
[00:05:36]  Like we artistically starved for months.
[00:05:38]  So, you know, I don't know any comedian, left, right, whatever you are politically, that was pro-lockdown.
[00:05:45]  Live entertainment, especially stand-up comedy, we were decimated during this, which is why like we have to figure some stuff out, right?
[00:05:54]  Yeah, that was my next question.
[00:05:55]  Once all this stuff started to seem at least semi-permanent or it was lasting for six, eight, twelve months, what was the next move for you guys?
[00:06:04]  Did you get together with some people and say we have to start doing shows again or else we're going to go under?
[00:06:09]  Was there support for many people who ran big clubs?
[00:06:12]  What was it like when you guys started to say we need to start putting on shows again?
[00:06:16]  Ben Bankus was the first guy.
[00:06:18]  Ben Bankus, and he will never get the credit he deserves.
[00:06:24]  He started comedy again.
[00:06:26]  I think not just in Canada.
[00:06:27]  He inspired like people in America were sharing his show.
[00:06:31]  Big comics in New York and LA.
[00:06:35]  And they were like, oh my God, there's this guy who's doing this show in a park.
[00:06:40]  You know what I mean?
[00:06:40]  No one was doing that.
[00:06:41]  No one was doing that.
[00:06:43]  And he was getting close to 1,000 people.
[00:06:45]  1,000 people out in the park.
[00:06:46]  And it wasn't just like happenstance.
[00:06:49]  They all followed him.
[00:06:50]  They all like on In on Instagram.