Chris Distefano Took a Page From Taylor Swift’s Playbook to Reclaim Ownership of His Comedy

One of the highlights of the New York Comedy Festival so far has been Chris Distefano, who performed three back-to-back sets at three different locations of the New York Comedy Club. It wasn’t quite the same as Phil Collins playing at Live Aid in London in 1985 then hopping on the Concorde to do the same at the Philadelphia show, but you try making people double over in laughter for three hours in a single day.

Distefano’s Hat Trick — an excerpt is posted below — was more than a stunt. He was taking a page from Taylor Swift‘s playbook, and recording live bits that he performed on previous Comedy Central and Netflix specials, so that he could reclaim ownership of his work. The material will be culled from the Hat Trick shows and released as Chrissy’s Version, a nod to his inspiration, on Chrissy Chaos, one of two podcasts that he hosts. He and co-host Yannis Pappas recently revived the second, History Hyenas, after a four-year hiatus.

Forty-year-old New York-based Distefano, who has been performing stand-up since 2009, is as savvy about the changing nature of the comedy business as he is funny, and he spoke to Billboard about the value of podcasting, fan-building and his love of The 1975 — and as a comic and father whose partner and her family are Puerto Rican, his take on Tony Hinchcliffe’s “floating island of garbage” joke at Donald Trump’s Madison Square Garden rally in October.

You performed at three locations of the New York Comedy Club in one day. What was the impetus behind that?

It was actually Emilio Savone, my manager and the owner of the New York Comedy Club, who was like, “I want to have a headliner come in and do three headlining shows back to back to back at my clubs — something different for the New York Comedy Festival.” He asked me if I wanted to do it. I was like, “Sure.” I was supposed to do the show later in the festival, but I’m going to be in a TV show with Tom Segura and the shooting schedule got changed. So, I did it sooner. And it was fun, man, because I was calling each show Chrissy’s Version — because I was doing old jokes that I did on my Comedy Central and Netflix specials because technically they own the audio rights to that stuff.  

I was going to ask you about that. You name-checked Taylor Swift and her re-recorded albums at the show.

Yeah, Taylor Swift rerecorded her stuff to regain ownership of her songs, and I did it with my comedy that night. We’re going to take a mashup of the three shows that I did — three hours of material — take the old bits, call it Chrissy’s Version and upload them on Sirius XM and wherever. Now I’ll own them outright.

Will there be a video streaming version?

Yeah. Every Sunday at 7:00 p.m. for the past, I think it’s 10 weeks, I upload that week’s material on my YouTube channel —  20-30 minutes of my week of standup  So, this Sunday, I’m going to put up some of that material. Then Emilio’s guys will take the audio version and get it uploaded to SiriusXM and hopefully they’ll start spinning it. This way, I own the rights.

Are you constantly touring? Are you the Bob Dylan of live comedy?

My rule is I typically only go away two weekends a month. I leave Friday, and I come home Sunday. I’ve got family, little kids, so I don’t want to be eternally on the road. I’ll make less money to have more time with my kids. This idea of a world tour seems good in theory, but it’s just too much time away from my kids. I would only go if they could come with me. I enjoy going on the road, getting my material out there for new audiences across the country.  But I try to limit it to one or two times a month, and then the rest of the time I’m usually at one of the New York comedy Club locations or the Comedy Cellar working on my material. Then I’ll post that every Sunday.

You have two podcasts.

Yes, I have Chrissy Chaos, which comes out every Tuesday. Then, I also relaunched my old history podcast, History Hyenas, with Yannis Pappas. We just started doing episodes again. It was really a fan favorite. We took a four-year hiatus, and now that we’ve brought it back, fans are really digging it. [Distefano also co-hosts Teach Me Daddy with Matteo Lane.]

Streaming and podcasts seem to be more and more important to comedy. Do they enable you to cut back on touring without sacrificing too much revenue?

To be honest with you, most of my peers and me could live off the money we make podcasting. I still do the road because I enjoy it but as time goes on, I’m always looking for ways to stay home, stay in New York more, and the podcast is that avenue. Especially Patreon, where History Hyenas lives . That’s the best because that’s all fan-generated. They pay $5 a month or $10 a month to get extra content or to get the episodes early.

Really, my whole career and life changed when I put my career in the hands of my fans. I still respect the industry. I have a TV show in development — I’m doing all those things, while generating income because of my fans. I’m living my dream and doing what I want to do with or without the industry. That’s why streaming, podcasting and all that is very important. More than that, having a direct relationship with your fans is humungous. It’s changing so rapidly before our eyes, and it’s a beautiful thing. You can have relative anonymity this way.

Take a guy like Tom Segura. He sells out arenas all over the country, and he’s still able to go to those towns and the general population won’t recognize him on the street. He’s making $50 million a year, but he doesn’t have to be locked behind gates with security everywhere — because he has a direct connection with his fans. As far as entertainment goes, we’re living in such a transitional period. You might think, “I should go on this television show to promote myself and sell tickets.” I still do it — but I can do the podcasts from my home, and they will be 10 times more impactful than going on a late-night talk show.

It’s the same in the music industry. Maggie Rogers has yet to have a platinum record, but she sells out arenas all over the world because she has a direct relationship with her fans.  

That’s why I like my manager, Emilio. He has adapted to this change. It used to be, a manager booked your flights and set up meetings. That’s not what I need anymore. I can book my own flights on an app with two taps on my phone. I need my manager  to digitally market me. When I’m coming to Salt Lake City, calling into a radio station or going on the local news doesn’t work anymore. What I need is — how do you digitally market me so that when everyone opens up their Facebook or their Instagram, they’re seeing an ad for my show, with a link to click for tickets? Emilio and his team are making it very easy for me. It used to be you needed all these middlemen. Now, you don’t. Some of us recognize this shift, but some of my peers… either they don’t want to admit it or they don’t want to adapt. That’s fine, but the old ways — getting a late-night set or a sitcom — don’t put butts in seats anymore.

In your set at the comedy club, you alluded to Tony Hinchcliffe’s Puerto Rico remarks at the Trump rally in New York. You also talked about the Puerto Rican heritage of your partner, your children and your extended family. Since you straddle both these worlds, how did Hinchcliffe’s joke land with you?

It’s one of those things where, for me, it’s always comedy first. Obviously, I have Puerto Rican family, and I watched the video with them. They were all like, “It was a joke.” You can say, “Is the joke funny or not?” Comedy is subjective — I get it — and I understand that if you’re doing comedy at political rallies, which are non-comedy spaces, you’re definitely opening yourself up to more criticism. Comedy is one of those things where it’s got to be the right setting, the right ambiance.

But I subscribe to comedians that never apologize. The way I look at it is, you can’t be funny and hateful. Hitler wasn’t funny. So, if a joke misses, it misses. Don’t take one thing someone says and say, “This is who this person is.” That’s not going to get us further as a society.

Some of the best comedy pushes against political correctness and the status quo — and even makes light of tragedy. What are your limits when you’re onstage?

My thing is, like — you can say whatever you want and cross that line, as long as there’s an attempt at a joke attached to it. Don’t just say a shock-value word to say that shock-value word. That’s being corny. That’s not what comedians do. My job is to thread that needle of saying something that crosses the line and possibly offends someone, but offends them and makes them laugh by making a heavier subject more lighthearted. It’s hard.

When you come to a comedy show, you have to understand what you’re buying a ticket to. There’s a lot of times we all swing for the fences and miss. That’s part of our job. We’re the group that makes light of a situation with humor. To me, it’s my defense mechanism. The reason I’m a comedian — I really started doing this for me, because I was upset that my mom and dad were divorced. So, I would make jokes and try to make my dad laugh when he would come pick me up. I did this because I was upset that my dad wasn’t there, so I would try to make him laugh to hide my tears.  

Most comedians come from a place of — it’s our coping mechanism for the world. The comments about Puerto Rico were one of those things where most of us understood that whether you thought it was funny or not, it was just a joke. It didn’t land, he knows that, and it’s fine.

Do you think the outrage that followed had any impact on the election?

Dude, it didn’t have an impact on the election because most adults don’t give a s–t about that. Most adults were like, “Hey, I can’t buy gas and groceries, so I’m not going to not vote for whomever I want to vote for because of a joke.” That’s when you’re going to have the celebrities coming out on social media. It may have made a difference ten years ago, but [now] nobody cares.

As a matter of fact, it looks worse when you have J.Lo or even someone who’s conservative telling people what to do and who to vote for. It’s like, “Really, you’re going to tell me what to do in your $50 million f–king mansion? I can barely get by here, so shut up.”

But with my career, I have to be a man of the people. You’ll see some comics get humongous, and then they have a comedy special talking about their mansion or their private jet and it doesn’t hit as hard — because the viewers are like, “Wait, wait, wait, where is the comedy?” I’m listening to what the common man is going through every day.

You’re also saying the things they’re thinking but are afraid to say, and making people laugh in the process.

That’s why Ricky Gervais is my favorite comedian of all time — a hero of mine, a guy who I would love to work with one day and who I strive to be like. He is far and away my favorite, because look at what he did at the Golden Globes a few years ago. He just destroyed [the celebrities there]. He said to them, straight up, “You guys are in no position to lecture to the public, so get your little f–king award and f–k off.”

Your exchange with the Norwegian guy who said “Americans are dumb” at your show was fascinating. I couldn’t see his face, so I couldn’t tell if he was enjoying the interaction.

You take a chance going into the crowd. He looked like he wasn’t having the best time, but I figure he’s a guy, he’ll be able to handle it. So, I’m like, “Let me poke at him a little bit.” If that was a woman not having a good time, I wouldn’t mess with that. But a guy not having a good time, you can typically f–k with. I think that he liked it, but I do think he had that European attitude when he said that Americans are dumb and stupid. I was agreeing with him — but I also was like, “I’m the one with the microphone in my hand, so I’ll just overpower you with my stupid American logic.”

When he said that, I imagined there was one of those vintage cartoon thought bubbles above your head with a big juicy steak in it.

Yeah. that’s why I love doing live stand-up because even though I did relatively the same jokes in the same order all three shows,  every set was radically different because of the crowd. I would weave in crowd work with this guy and that would change this joke a little bit or whatever it is. That’s why, I know comedy is all over the internet — and I post it there — but the live stand-up comedy experience to me is still the best. Because you could go see your favorite comic and hear them tell the same jokes you heard him or her say on the internet or their special, but it’s going to be a totally different experience, because every audience is like a living, breathing organism that’s changing little things here and there about the show.

Besides your podcasts, do you have any other projects in the works?

I have my Hulu special coming out February 21. Hulu is doing its first foray into comedy specials — they’re trying to dethrone Netflix, and they have a different stand-up comedy special every month. I think they’re starting off with Jim Gaffigan, Sebastian Maniscalco, Bill Burr, Andrew Santino, and them I’m the month of February so that’s big.

Since this is Billboard, what music are you listening to?

My all-time favorite musician is Whitney Houston. I’m obsessed with anything Whitney Houston. But my favorite band right now, and has been for the past five years — the only band I’ve ever really cared about — is The 1975. I love those guys. Through comedy, I’ve gotten to know Matty Healy and Ross MacDonald, and we keep in contact once in a while. I mentioned my fandom for them on The Joe Rogan Show two years ago, and Matty Healy reached out and we connected.

I wasn’t a big music fan growing up. I never went to concerts. But The 1975 came into my life at a time when I needed them, I guess. Then, I listened to interviews with them where they said they’ve been influenced by Whitney Houston. So I’m like, “Oh s–t, this is all connected.”