With the lights on, it isnât much to look at. Go Bananas Comedy Club in Montgomery isnât shabby, per se, but definitely showing the wear of almost three decades. Low ceilinged and painted in dark hues, its haphazard wall decor includes signed photos of past headliners and humorous paintings, like the one of former President Barack Obama portrayed as Michael Jackson on the Thriller album cover. Tables fan out from the stage (backed by a brick wall, of course), each topped with a lit flame flickering inside a glass votive. Three-paneled menus with a limited food and drink list stand tall beside the candles. Meh with a dash of farce.

Photograph by Jesse Fox
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A place like this, thoughâand there arenât many left nowadaysâdoesnât serve much purpose with the lights on. The comedy club hosts featured headliners who perform multiple shows ThursdayâSunday nights, ranging from big-name national acts like Mike Birbiglia to well-established regional and local comics. But the soul of the venue lives on Wednesday nights, when the place buzzes with anxious anticipation in the minutes leading to the 8 p.m. start of the regular Professional-Amateur open mic night. The lights flick off as a coterie of comics both raw and seasoned gather in the space to tell jokes, work out new material, andâhopefullyâmake people laugh.
âOpen mics here are great,â says Blake Hammond, a Pro-Am fixture whoâs been performing at Go Bananas for years. Lazy-lidded and disheveled with a plaid shirt unbuttoned over a protruding belly, he looks the part of a down-on-his-luck comic. (He knows it, tooâhis set opens with him describing a recent interaction with his childhood priest, who comments on Hammondâs weight gain. âUh,â the comic stammers, before awkwardly responding, âAnd also with you!â) Looks aside, Hammond has developed into a rising star at the club known for a tenacious work ethic. âYou can do whatever and really see if something works,â he says of the Pro-Am sets. âTheyâll listen to you. Thereâs a community here.â
âItâs just a cool environment,â adds Kyle Jeffers, a wiry, wild-eyed yang to Hammondâs yin whose current set revolves around his recent sobriety. (âItâs court-ordered, and it sucks so bad.â) âItâs definitely a special thing thatâs not like other clubs,â Jeffers adds.

Photograph by Jesse Fox
He and Hammond came up alongside each other and have an easy, workmate camaraderie. Noticeably at ease in a horseshoe-shaped booth along the clubâs back wall, you get the feeling each struggles to reach this level of comfort elsewhere in their lives, an observation underscored by Jeffersâs admission to being here whenever the doors are open. He works as a landscaper when possible, but helping work shows at the club when heâs not onstage is his steadiest employment. âIâve worked here for four years now. I cook, bartend, pretty much everything,â he says. âItâs just a good way to get into the club. For me, it was to be able to watch shows and to learn quicker. And youâre just around comics all the time, so itâs a good environment.â
Hammond exhales a plume of vape smoke and shakes his head. âI never wanted to work here,â he says. âI didnât want it to also be my jobâI didnât want to hate it. I wanted to just come in and do comedy.â A trained journalist who used to write for CityBeat, Hammond now pursues comedy as his main source of income. A job at Skyline Chili pays the bills.
As we chat a few hours before the club opens for a Wednesday night Pro-Am, various comics filter in and punctuate the discussion with off-color interjections that Hammond acknowledges with a gracious laugh. Some are here to perform, others to fraternize, but Go Bananasâs hive-like community of funny men and womenâthough, admittedly, thirty-ish white guys are the prevailing demographicâbegins to take shape.
The weekly Pro-Ams are more or less de facto member meetings for the local standup scene. National headliners blow through town to play the Aronoff Center or Taft Theatre, a handful of places have ticketed shows for second-tier comics, and a few bars offer semi-regular open mic nights (some more gimmicky than others), but Go Bananas is the preferred haunt for locals serious about the stand-up lifestyle, even if most are still fighting to make it a feasible one.

Photograph by Jesse Fox
âI came here for like two months. I would show up late and sneak in,â says Jeffers. âEventually they were like, âYouâre a comic, we know you,â and theyâd just let me in for free. Whereas if I wanted to go to the Funny Bone, Iâd have to buy chips, two drinks, and they would never remember who I was.â
âYou canât really hang out at those places,â says Hammond. âYou canât be like, Hey, Iâm a comic. But I can just walk in here on a weekend.â
Hammondâs idea of âhanging outâ isnât the interpretation you or I might haveâfor the comics at Go Bananas, it means studying their peersâ performances and obsessively comparing material. âItâs a small scene, but weâre very competitive. I feel like weâre all trying to be better than each other,â he says. âItâs not a bad competition. If I see him do really well,â he says, pointing to Jeffers, âIâm like, Thatâs good. I want to do better than that.â
âAnd when I see him do great, Iâm like, Dude that was great. Good job,â Jeffers deadpans. âI would never think a bad thing.â
Go Bananas is known for incubating up-and-coming comedic talent. Our conversation, in fact, pre-empts a standing collaboration. âWe do a writing session every week,â says Hammond. âItâs where new guys will come in with an idea they want to do and comics who have been doing it for a little bit, like us, will just give them ideas.â
âKind of show them how to write a joke,â says Jeffers.
âThatâs how I learned to write,â says Hammond. âAnd I still write every day with a lot of different people, because different perspectives are good. Stand-up is such a lone thing, but it doesnât have to be.â
The two have witnessed a number of their most tenacious friends and mentors use the Go Bananas stage as a springboard to writing gigs in New York or Los Angeles: Dave Waite (The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, Last Comic Standing), Josh Sneed (Comedy Central, The Bob & Tom Show), Ryan Singer (Maron). Both Hammond and Jeffers have aspirations to land a coveted standup spot on Conan, the late-night show with a reputation for giving hungry comics their big break. Still, they know the realities of the craft. Most of the comedians currently playing the Pro-Ams wonât make it in the industry.
âItâs hard,â says Hammond.
âAnd itâs a long process,â adds Jeffers. âYouâre not going to be famous in five years.â
âOr even 10,â Hammond jumps back in. âThereâs no guarantee. Thereâs no graduation, no hallmark. You just have to do it all yourself. Weâve been doing it for four, four-and-a half-years. And weâre decentâweâre pretty good. But weâre not there.â

Photographs by Jesse Fox
Go Bananas opened in 1990 after a corporate comedy chain vacated. (The space was a Chinese restaurant before that.) Building owner H.C. Cheng understood the venueâs difficult-to-find location, buried behind an auto dealership at the far end of a strip of international eateries, didnât lend itself to new business models, so he kept comedy going in the space. Twenty-seven years later, the Cheng family still owns it and has a group of longtime employees who run the joint.
âIâve been here 22 years,â says general manager Michael Kurtz. âI came for a Halloween rave in â95, helped out, and they hired me.â Asked why heâs stayed so long, he answers quickly. âCamaraderie. Twenty-two years with no time offâthatâs been a little tough. But I love it. This place is one of the best clubs in the country, and all the comedians that come through here are great.â
âItâs like a family, the environment,â says Jeffers. âLike Lisa, the server? She cuts my hair. Sheâs like my mom.â
With more than two decades of shifts under her belt, Lisa Bunch could be forgiven for no longer listening to the jokesâif that were the case. âWhen a comic is exceptionally funny or the guys around here do new material, I hear it. And I laugh while I work. Itâs fun to watch these new guys grow,â she says. âLike Kyle, for instance. Heâs come a really long way. Heâs getting super funny, so heâll probably be here for another year or two, then heâll move on to New York or somewhere.â
Asked if the departures are bittersweet, Bunch pauses, then smirks. âItâs a little sad, but they come back and headline.â

Photograph by Jesse Fox
The house lights go dark just after 8 on this particular Wednesday as LL Cool Jâs âMama Said Knock You Outâ blares. The spotlight flicks on. In five-minute intervals, comedians of varying experience and talent take the stageâthe only requirement for a Pro-Am spot is that you bring five audience members with you. During the one-and-a-half-hour performance, two losers of fantasy football bets will man the mic. Oneâs prepared a shaky set; the other fails to tell a single joke, instead repeatedly commenting on the bright lights. âHe was not lying, the lights are bright up there,â says Hammond, whose own set followed, opening with a two-minute riff on the previous crash-and-burn appearance. âI wasnât mad at him,â he says later, âbut the thing that weâre trying to do as a career, people do when they lose bets.â
The evening ends with a headliner: Cincinnatiâs own Kelly Collette, a self-described âunconventional sorority girlâ who, in 2012, was one of five finalists on CMTâs Next Big Comic. Her 20-minute set includes a joke about a news item from earlier in the day that she abandons with an acknowledgement itâs not ready yet, moving on to a crafted story of confusion over a $1 coin. (âSacaga-who? A woman on a coin?â she says, feigning disgust. âWhat is this, Canada?â) This mix of tested jokes and new material is a critical part of the Pro-Am.
âWorking out new bits is the most important part of it,â says Mark Chalifoux, another local comic. âI try to have something new in every setâthatâs what keeps it interesting. And while failing those new jokes can be crushing, you have to embrace it. You learn the most from that, and it keeps you motivated to work harder.â
Chalifouxâs material is largely autobiographical reflections of a full-time dad. (âYou treat your first kid the way you would a package marked FRAGILE,â he jokes. âAnd you treat your second kid the way UPS would treat that package.â) An eight-year comedy veteran, heâs one of the most successful comics working Go Bananas right now, with TV appearances on Fox and IFC, national radio time on The Bob & Tom Show and BBC Radio, and a few years as a paid regular at New York City clubs. He headlined a weekend at Go Bananas in November, and this spring heâll record his debut comedy album at the club for Audible Records.

Photograph by Jesse Fox
Chalifoux thoughtfully scans the main room, taking note of which comics showed up for tonightâs Pro-Am. âHaving a widely-respected club like this as a home base has been invaluable,â he says. âItâs such a privilege to be able to go up there on a regular basis. I certainly donât take that for granted.â
Most donât. The comics usually end the night at McLevyâs Pub, the hangout bar next door, mingling with friends and fans who came out for the show. Inevitably, theyâll end up leaning against the bar or sharing a cigarette outside with a fellow comedian, parsing their set or fine-tuning a specific joke. Sure that next week, it will really kill.
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