Earthquake is done playing nice: ‘You can’t get booed on Twitter’

Earthquake knew he had to change his approach.

The veteran funnyman has been making audiences laugh since the 1990s with classic appearances on BET and Comedy Central and as one of the most popular touring comedians in the country. As a live performer, Quake has never stood still. He loves the stage and audiences love him; so even as stand-up comedy shows became less popular in the 2000s, there was always a place for Earthquake on a stage. But in 2014, he made the decision to put more effort behind one particular facet of his career.

Earthquake had to get back on television.

“I’d been on hiatus — not from telling jokes — but I haven’t put anything on film,” he explains to rolling out. “I just couldn’t get the right collaborators. My daughter-manager was saying ‘You need to put something out here.’ I was going through a lot of trials and tribulations and my comedy isn’t jokes — I elaborate on things I see and what I believe in. So I called the project These Ain’t Jokes because I’m no jokester.”

With “These Ain’t Jokes,” Earthquake made his triumphant return to TV specials. The show aired on Showtime to rave reviews, and Earthquake says that he had to get everything in order before he was ready to make the return to television and filmed comedy.

“I don’t know about my peers, but for me it has to be right,” he says. “I have to have the right people to make it comfortable. I’m an environmental type of comedian; I don’t have a ‘set.’ Some comedians, they go from A to B to C to D. You watch them more than one time and you’ll hear the same thing you heard before. I just wasn’t comfortable with anybody saying ‘Hey, let’s go here. Take this show and let’s film it.’ As a comedian, when you shoot a special, you’re out of your comfort zone. There [are] cameras, lights, the repetition of rehearsal and all that. But my daughter was saying that artistically, it was just time to do it.

“I’m putting one out every year now. I’m going to shoot in October and drop in February and every February, I’m going to put one out.”

Environment is an important factor for Earthquake. He’s learned what works for him and he’s committed to making sure that whatever has his name on it is going to be a reflection of who he is. He’s not some kind of comedic wind-up toy — he’s an artist who needs to know whomever he works with appreciates and understands his art.

“You can’t put a square peg in a round hole. With a comic, you’re going to get a disaster,” says Earthquake. “You have to make them very, very comfortable. That’s when you’re going to get his best. You’ve got to allow them to be comfortable. If you’re not surrounded by people who make you comfortable, you’re not going to be able to do it. You have to make a clown comfortable!”

The comedic landscape has shifted so much since he began his career, but Earthquake sees pluses and minuses. While acknowledging that Black comics don’t have the popular television platforms of yesteryear, he believes that there’s a lot to be said for social media and what it can do to elevate a young comedian’s visibility.

“We don’t have the vehicles that we had when I started; your ‘Def Comedy Jam,’ your ‘Comic View,’ your ‘Apollo,’ ” he explains. “Black comedy right now is the number one driver of the comedy club business. But we don’t own any comedy clubs. There are probably only two or three Black comedy clubs in the country. You’ve never been able to touch your audience like you can now. [With] your Twitter and your Instagram; you can really touch your people. We didn’t have this. A lot of comedians, like your Kevin Harts, really used that. We had to go club-to-club, stage-to-stage, venue-to-venue. You can be a superstar overnight if your talent warrants it. For young comics, it’s hard for them because they don’t have the platforms we had, like TV. But they can find an audience to come see them.”

But Earthquake is still in love with the stage. And he encourages all comedians to embrace the stage — no matter what platforms they use to push their careers forward. There’s nothing like the immediacy of an audience and how it helps shape a comedian.

“They lose the [feeling] of failure,” Earthquake explains. “When you’re what I call an ‘Internet comic’ or a ‘Twitter comic,’ there’s no rejection. One thing about being a comedian onstage, there’s instant gratification or instant failure. You can’t get booed on Twitter. On stage, you get the instant reaction and know if that joke works or if it doesn’t. That’s a very necessary tool to have if you’re a comedian. If you don’t sharpen that and aren’t able to use that, you can never get to that level where I’m at and where other comics are. There are a lot of ‘thumb comedians,’ but you put them on a stage and they get booed or people yell ‘Get your a– off stage!’ then they see what it’s really worth.”