Comedian Nate Bargatze Launches ‘The Be Funny Tour’ With a Little Help From His Friends

The Nashville-based comedian, Nathanael “Nate” Bargatze, is a contradiction: Selling out massive arenas while coming across as an everyday dad; unremarkable physically but slinging jokes that’d turn a boring PTA into a night at the Improv.Mr. Bargatze, named “the Nicest Man in Stand-Up” by the Atlantic, lived up to that moniker at Newark during an early appearance in his “The Be Funny Tour” across North America. He needed none of George Carlin’s seven dirty words nor to take the name of God in vain.Nate Bargatze’s ‘The Be Funny Tour’ at Newark, New Jersey. Dean Karayanis/The New York SunFour other comics kicked off the night with material that was good, clean fun, too. Instead of choosing acts booked by his manager, Mr. Bargatze brought in old friends: Gary Vider, Jonathan “Jonnie W.” Wethington, Mike James, and Julian McCullough as emcee.It was fun for the whole family in more ways than one with Mr. Bargatze’s father, Stephen, performing. The magician likened his family to a Rubik’s Cube he used for tricks: More compelling with the colors scrambled than when it’s solved. He choked up thanking the audience for what they meant to the family, drawing sustained applause.The Rubik’s Cube was employed with help from a young man in the audience, enduring good-natured ribbing by the elder Mr. Bargatze. It was easy to see that the younger Mr. Bargatze learned timing, performance, and kindness at his father’s knee.The elder Mr. Bargatze introduced the penultimate warmup as “Jimmy Fallon’s favorite comedian,” and it was “The Tonight Show” host himself. The surprise appearance electrified the crowd — like the magic, giving the feeling that anything might happen next.By this point, the audience had been brought not to the edge of their seats but put off-balance in them. The combined effect of the opening performers was to shrink the 19,500-seat Prudential Center into a local bar back in Tennessee.When Mr. Bargatze took the stage in the round, it felt less like the headliner arriving than your funniest friend showing up after being delayed by traffic. “I’ve been on all the exit ramps you can be on” in New Jersey, he said, rather than making those hosting him the butt of familiar cheap shots.“Not being political,” a fellow comedian, Erica Rhodes, said on the Babylon Bee Interview Show, “is the new radical.” If that’s true, Mr. Bargatze is to comedy what the anarchist, Emma Goldman, was to politics a century ago.In his memoir, “Born Standing Up,” Steve Martin describes brooming political material from his act in the 1970s after noticing peers were getting lazy laughs just by saying “Nixon.”Mr. Bargatze’s material was likewise free of current politics. He could perform “The Be Funny Tour” 50 years ago or 50 years hence before an audience of any demographic and it would elicit laughter just the same.With anecdotes about marriage and fatherhood, Mr. Bargatze breathed new life into topics that were already old when Henny Youngman declared, “Take my wife, please,” in the 1930s. “I am from 1979,” Mr. Bargatze said, not as if citing his year of birth but like he’d just stepped from H.G. Wells’ machine. Had he asked if the Beatles were reunited here in 2024, the impulse would’ve been to break the news about John Lennon and George Harrison gently.“We’re in the future,” Mr. Bargatze said with his deadpan delivery, “and I think if you’re 1999, you might as well be 1905,” because you’ll someday sit next to someone born in 2000 who says of the 1900s, “Ew, gross.”Stories about Y2K and the Taliban went over as if the punchlines were torn from today’s headlines. When he expressed an ignorance of history — as “surprised” by the attack in the movie “Pearl Harbor” as “they were” — he wasn’t playing the fool but inviting the audience to laugh at their own shortcomings.“The Be Funny Tour” takes Mr. Bargatze to dozens of cities, with demand prompting him to add new shows often. Catch him if you can and experience the magic. You’ll enjoy it more than any PTA meeting — unless Mr. Bargatze is one of the dads.

Comedian Nate Bargatze Launches ‘The Be Funny Tour’ With a Little Help From His Friends

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