“Don’t worry if you fuck it up. Just go out there and have a good time,” said Jay Leno. That was the backhanded advice he gave Nick Swardson in his dressing room, moments before Nick’s Tonight Show debut a few weeks ago. And Nick didn’t. In the vernacular of stand-up comedians, he crushed.
There’s something creepy and disingenuous about Jay Leno. No, I wouldn’t have been watching, but I owe Nick $100 (he scalped some Radiohead tickets for me last year), and I figured writing about him for The Rake would even our accounts. Regardless of these unusual circumstances, I certainly won’t be the last guy from Minnesota to brag about knowing Nick Swardson. I mean, the guy’s funny enough to skip Letterman. Not many comics love The Tonight Show anymore either. Partly because without Carson behind the desk, booking that show is no longer the crowning moment of a comic’s career, and partly because Jay is perceived as something of an ass. In fact, it was staff turnover that finally opened the Tonight Show door for Nick. “A lot of people really didn’t think my style was Tonight Show,” Nick told me afterward. “The former bookers were old school. And they just thought I was a little too different.”
Nick is different the way Minneapolis rock bands are different. He has that Westerberg impishness that plays as well on First Avenue’s mainstage as it does on a comedy club stage. Sure, he jokes about the “Wheel of Fortune” (“Why don’t the contestants cheat? I would. I’ll take a B, Pat. Sorry, no Bs. I said P, Pat. I’m not stupid, I think I know what I said.”) and his grandmother (“Nicholas! You should fight crime!”), but there’s something a little subversive, a little punk about him. In fact, he talks about his set as if he was fronting a band—Radiohead, to be specific—and says he feels pressure to play the big hits while what he really wants to do is trot out the more experimental stuff. “I just want to do my Amnesiac set because that’s in my head.” Because he’s my friend, and because I’m a Radiohead fan, I forgive him for such a hipster play on words. Besides, his stuff cracks up real rock stars too. Nick recently opened up for band-of-the-moment the Strokes in L.A. after they caught his act in New York.
Ultimately, Nick’s Tonight Show experience softened his opinion of Jay, who asked Nick over to the couch after his performance (there’s still prestige in that gesture). “He was so nice, and that really makes a difference. I really won’t be slamming the show as much,” said Nick prudently.
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