Veteran comic Dale Jones is a whirling dervish of energy when doing stand-up on stage, mining his own modest background for laughs.
“I didn’t go to college,” Jones proclaimed in a recent stand-up special he posted on YouTube called “I Have a Prescription Part 2.” “This is it! There is no plan B. If I don’t get famous, I’ll end up in a nursing home telling jokes for yogurt. I’ll be the old man that tells knock knock jokes and forgets who’s there!”
Jones, who appropriately lives in Jonesboro, is 54. He’s nowhere near ready for a nursing home. And fame is happening. He has been a headliner for comedy clubs for many years but thanks to heavy TikTok marketing the past 18 months, he is on the verge of graduating to theaters.
In fact, he is taping a special at the 800-seat Grand Theatre in Cartersville at 6 and 8 p.m. this Saturday. He hopes to shop it around to streaming services. Tickets are $25 to $30 at agileticketing.net.
“My crowd is hard-working blue-collar nine-to-fivers who need to forget everything for an hour,” said Jones in an interview with The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
Jones grew up in what he calls “the boonies” of Illinois in a two-story double-wide trailer. “We were pretty white trash,” he said. He always gravitated toward silly humor: the Three Stooges, Abbott and Costello, Steve Martin, Looney Tunes.
A college dropout in his early 20s, Jones decided to try his hand at stand-up during an open mic night at Zanies Comedy Night Club in Nashville on January 12, 1993. “I was talking a mile a minute,” he said. “I then said, ‘I [expletive] that up.’ That was the first laugh I ever got. That was a rush. I was hooked. That place ended up being my college.”
For years, he was the featured act for the late comic Tim Wilson. He built his headlining cred while living in Fort Myers, Florida, making regular stops at the Punchline in Sandy Springs. He was a semi-finalist season six of NBC’s “Last Comic Standing,” the year Iliza Shlesinger won. “My career has had its ups and downs,” he said.
Jones moved to Atlanta with his wife and fellow comic Jodi White in 2018, where his manager Chris DiPetta resides. (DiPetta also manages actor Billy Gardell.) About 18 months ago, he decided to join TikTok. He dug up his old DVD specials and had his son splice them up into 30-second digestible videos.
He now has 428,000 followers on TikTok.
@dalejonescomic I was like one of the Raptors from Jurassic Park… except no one ever called me a clever girl 😢 sstandupcomedyccomedianccomedyf#fyp
♬ original sound - Dale Jones
“It’s helped me tremendously,” Jones said. “Clubs started calling me. At the time, I was doing some cruise ships. Now I can just focus on clubs and sales have doubled.”
Jones is good friends with Leanne Morgan, who broke it big in her mid-50s. “I am so happy for her,” he said. “I don’t see the point of getting jealous. Everybody has a different crowd.”
He is also the rare comic to actually injure himself on stage.
In 2017, Jones was doing a joke about shoe shopping and began pushing his ankles inward and pinwheeling his arms. Then he blew his knee out.
“I was in complete shock,” Jones said. “I had to pop it back into the socket. I was flop sweating. The crowd was laughing until they realized I was actually hurt. A lady gave me an Advil and I sat in a chair the rest of the show. I later found out I had ripped an entire muscle from my knee cap.”
He recuperated. He also doesn’t tell that joke anymore.
At the same time, Jones realized “I could still be funny from the waist up. I didn’t have to bounce around like crazy. So I’ve slowed down a little.”
IF YOU GO
Dale Jones
6 and 8 p.m. Saturday, March 30. $25-$30. Grand Theatre, 7 N. Wall St., Cartersville. agileticketing.net.
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