Today we’d like to introduce you to Chris Fairbanks.
Chris, can you briefly walk us through your story – how you started and how you got to where you are today.
After graduating college in my hometown of Missoula Montana, I followed a girlfriend down to Austin, Texas to pursue an illustration/art career. With a couple of years of experience in improv comedy back in Montana, I quickly decided to pursue stand up comedy in Austin and never looked back. After a few years in Texas, I won the funniest person in Austin contest and acquired a couple of television credits, so I moved to Los Angeles to further pursue a career in show business. Today I still do illustration work for fun, but primarily make my living as a touring comedian, commercial actor, and podcaster. I do a podcast with Karen Kilgariff (my favorite murder) where we pick up comedians at the airport and record in the car as we drive them home. It’s called “Do You Need a Ride?”
Great, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
In the first ten years of doing stand up in LA, it was hard to get consistent work, or enough work to consider “comedy” a career… So I felt lucky that I always had freelance art jobs to focus on during those dry spells. But aside from that, I found the adjustment to Los Angeles an enjoyable one. I’m glad I’d spent a little time in Austin Texas just to get some practice living in a city, because I feel like leaving Montana, and going directly to Los Angeles, would have been a more difficult adjustment.
Please tell us more about your art.
As an artist, I’ve done a lot of illustration work for the skateboarding and snowboarding industries. Mostly magazine illustrations and skateboard graphics. I guess the overlap into Comedy being I’ve done a lot of album mart work for other comedians. As a podcaster, I’ve felt lucky to develop an audience that now shows up to watch my standup performances… So I’m thankful that me and Karen’s show, which started as a fun hobby, has begun to affect my success as a touring comic. In recent years nothing has made me happier than seeing people who listen to the podcast during the day at their jobs, then come out to see me perform stand up when I’m in their city at night…it often it being their first time seeing live comedy. It’s a great symbiotic relationship for me.
Is there a characteristic or quality that you feel is essential to success?
It’s taken me an embarrassing number of years to realize it, but confidence is such an important part of being a successful comedian. And I was kind of raised in a way where I was confusing confidence with cockiness for a number of years. As if confidence was a bad character trait. So my stand up started out as overtly self-deprecating, and at times that was perceived as a lack of confidence. But Overtime I’ve learned to combine self-deprecation, awkwardness, and confidence into a comedy style that works for me.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.chrisfairbanks.com, werenarly.com
- Email: [email protected]
- Instagram: @chris_fairbanks
- Facebook: @ChrisFairbanksComecian
- Twitter: @chrisfairbanks
- Other: https://www.exactlyrightmedia.com/
Image Credit:
Robyn Von Swank photo, Chris Fairbanks art
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