Taylor Dowdy Waits in Style

From time to time a local Austin com­ic asks us to go on loca­tion. We’ve seen it all, an upscale home, a house­hold in the mid­dle of a move, a liv­ing room table top replete with the cus­tom­ary ​“tools” of a 20-some­thing com­ic (think green­ery of a con­sum­able kind) lifestyle. Tay­lor Dowdy has had an unfor­tu­nate time when it comes to vehi­cles of the four-wheeled kind (a sto­ry unto itself) and rides a motor­cy­cle, but not one he’s com­fort­able rid­ing to my usu­al record­ing spot. Walk­ing into Tay­lor’s home, I felt trans­port­ed in time, every wall told a sto­ry — one wall told of Dowdy’s cur­rent vinyl album favorites and framed poster art, anoth­er yells out ​“yeah, this is an entire wall of VHS tapes, what of it?” I knew walk­ing in that Tay­lor would have a fas­ci­nat­ing sto­ry to tell.

That’s essen­tial­ly Dowdy’s ​“brand”. It’s impor­tant to know a few things about him before you even get to his com­e­dy. First, Dowdy was born and raised in Wyoming, a vast land­scape and a state few (and I’m no excep­tion) know any­thing about and sec­ond­ly Dowdy went to col­lege study­ing art and visu­al design. So, if you want to visu­al­ize his home, visu­al­ize a rus­tic wel­com­ing space. I haven’t even men­tioned the Broth­ers non-elec­tric type­writer with (and this is very impor­tant to Dowdy) let­ter arms (like a piano key, and most cer­tain­ly not a let­ter wheel, you heathen).

On occa­sion, I like to delve into a comic’s fash­ion sense on stage because few comics car­ry off a unique fash­ion style. If you’ve been lucky to catch Dowdy on any stage, whether it be a rou­tine open mic, open­ing for Gareth Reynolds at Cap City Com­e­dy Club this fall, or doing a set for the punk ethos infused Alter­ca­tion Fes­ti­val, Dowdy’s fash­ion sense is very unique, just like his home. But, I don’t know that the fash­ion mag­a­zines would describe some­one’s fash­ion style as ​“rus­tic and wel­com­ing”, so we’ll resort to writ­ten descrip­tion. One night you might see Dowdy in a bolo tie with a west­ern jack­et, anoth­er night it might be a more for­mal jack­et with a casu­al but­ton down. And there are usu­al­ly boots of vary­ing heights that accom­pa­ny. Dowdy, when he steps on stage to share his sto­ries, has already told us a sto­ry with­out ever utter­ing a word. Once he does, you’re in for a treat. Dowdy’s abil­i­ty to weave a sto­ry shows incred­i­ble matu­ri­ty and mastery.

Ok, enough about his styl­ish home décor and his out­fits; what about his com­e­dy? I’ve been for­tu­nate to watch Dowdy over the years, from his ear­ly days in Austin to more recent­ly and his trans­for­ma­tion as a gift­ed sto­ry­teller is noth­ing short of awe-inspir­ing. From briefer setup/​punchline for­mu­las to more elab­o­rate sto­ries with fre­quent punch­lines, it’s clear Dowdy has worked very hard to become a bet­ter per­former. And in the midst of me gush­ing about how great he was the last few times, he admits ​“I’m the last per­son in the world to give myself a com­pli­ment. But I will give myself lim­it­ed cred­i­bil­i­ty and just say that I’ve done noth­ing else but com­e­dy.” There’s more to it than just hard work. Part of his recent suc­cess is due to the sym­bi­ot­ic rela­tion­ship he’s formed with his past. With­out divulging too much, Dowdy hints at a dif­fi­cult child­hood and ear­ly adult­hood, and the incred­i­ble (in that most peo­ple would find them lit­er­al­ly hard to believe) sto­ries that come from that have tak­en him time to dis­tance him­self from the pain of the sto­ries. And with all of the hard work of becom­ing a com­mand­ing stage pres­ence to accept­ing his past, he’s now able to mine some of those incred­i­ble sto­ries for the audi­ences who can laugh all while main­tain­ing an arm’s length dis­tance for his own sanity.

Dowdy’s work eth­ic in Austin has pro­duced one of the longer run­ning shows here, Ground Floor with Tay­lor Dowdy at Hotel Vegas. You can tell from the moment I bring it up that he is incred­i­bly proud of this show­case which recent­ly cel­e­brat­ed its three year anniver­sary. And, since ​“style” is a recur­ring theme, it should come as no sur­prise that every­thing from the per­for­mance space to the fly­er have a sense of style. Not the typ­i­cal repur­posed bar space because the venue is known for its music shows. Dowdy admits that show rep­re­sents a lot of ele­ments com­ing togeth­er for him. ​“Find­ing that venue, start­ing that show aligned with me fig­ur­ing fig­ur­ing out my visu­al aes­thet­ic, and my writ­ing style. All that came togeth­er around the same time.” Anoth­er recent project has Dowdy col­lab­o­rat­ing with Andrew Wag­n­er on a show­case called Beamed Inn which is ​“UFO-themed”, but not nec­es­sar­i­ly ​“UFO-premised”. And final­ly, I’d be remiss if I did­n’t share that Tay­lor is an incred­i­bly gift­ed pool play­er. Crazy good. And he put togeth­er a YouTube show called Scratch City which frankly holds the promise of some­thing that we could see as a recur­ring and tour­ing Com­e­dy Cen­tral show. One can hope.

Big things are ahead for Dowdy; a recent adven­ture to New York City (at the time of record­ing, the trip was still weeks away) affirmed his com­mit­ment to standup com­e­dy and may have giv­en him the itch to trav­el to oth­er cities, but who knows what the future will hold. He does assert ​“I have to remind myself all the time that I’m not even six years into this. I’m rel­a­tive­ly young, in this busi­ness. So it’s like, who knows what’s com­ing up. But that’s part of the fun, too.” We do know that wher­ev­er Dowdy ends up, you can be sure his trusty Broth­ers type­writer with let­ter keys, his vinyl col­lec­tion and his sense of style will be along for the ride. And we know for a fact, he’ll have an inter­est­ing sto­ry to tell us about his adven­tures. We can’t (Tom) Waits.

Catch Tay­lor Dowdy host­ing at these upcom­ing shows:

• Beamed In — Month­ly show­case at Spi­der­house Ball­room 1/9/2020
• Ground Floor — Month­ly show­case at Hotel Vegas 1/10/2020

…and fol­low him on social media:

• Insta­gram — @taylorcdowdy
  
• Face­book — Tay­lor Dowdy
• Do512 — do512​.com/​t​a​y​l​o​r​-​dowdy