Garrett Buss, Volume 3

Garrett’s move from Austin to Los Angeles wasn’t glamorous — it was scrappy and a little chaotic, which is coincidentally how we've always viewed Garrett's comedy. He crammed his entire life into a car and a U-Haul trailer, misjudged the drive to El Paso and faced brutal winds that made pitching a tent impossible. That didn't deter him all that much: he just laid down on the dirt for an hour and a half—until a bee in his ear woke him up and pushed him back onto the road. It's not a Garrett Buss tale without some level of absurdity, amiright?

Despite all that, his tone about LA is pure delight and optimism, true to form. He talks about finally rolling into “Palm Tree City” and how quickly things started to click—finding housing, reconnecting with Austin comics in LA, and landing his first shows.

Once settled into Palm Tree City, Garrett focused on recreating the creative ecosystem he’d had in Austin. He wanted a “home base” like the one he'd found and curated at Fallout Theater — not just random gigs. That led him to pitch his one-man show Daddy Strong Legs around town, and eventually land it as a monthly show at The Pack Theater. He describes it as a chaotic, joyful mix of characters, sketch, stand-up, and musical comedy—basically his entire comedic brain in one hour.

He’s also steadily seeding Exploraphoria, a variety show featuring experimental comedy. He got his Los Angeles debut of the long-running Austin show at the famed Lyric Hyperion and is seeking a regular spot where he'll book weird and delightful acts as he meets more comics. And while he’s hitting open mics, he notes how LA’s culture is obsessed with filming every set for clips and submissions. We think some of that is happening here in Austin, too.

In this phase, Garrett sounds like someone growing into a more deliberate artist. He admits that when he was younger, he thrived on last‑minute chaos—booking a show and then letting procrastination take hold, basically writing it three hours before curtain. Now, with more life responsibilities (and the very real traffic factor), he treats creativity like a job: scheduled writing sessions at coffee shops, focused time on sketches, and—egads—discipline! The payoff will be a brand new musical, releasing the final season of Lance Vibratto: Astronaut Attorney, and a new Daddy Strong Legs hour.

Even with his positive mind-set, he’s honest about LA’s downsides—the cost of living, the industry‑minded networking, the feeling that shows “need” celebrities. That makes him nostalgic for Austin, where comics felt more like whole people first, industry second.

Garrett celebrated 10 years in comedy in 2025 and the LA move was a chance to start a new chapter in the adventures of Garrett Buss. Despite the new zip code and the many new names to learn, it sounds like a chapter that is very busy, very funny, and as ever, very, very silly.