Jeremiah Watkins Checks In, Volume 7

“The bal­anc­ing act is hard.” 

It’s run­ning theme with Jere­mi­ah Watkins over our last 7 con­ver­sa­tions. Height­ened by the fact that Watkins #1 role is as father to two young sons. But his cre­ative projects nev­er rest and as evi­denced by the start of 2024, there’s always some­thing new afoot. 

The wild­ly suc­cess­ful Scis­sor Broth­ers (Scis­sor Bros to those in the know) pod­cast end­ed its run at the end of 2023 open­ing the door for Watkins to launch Trail­er Tales, a co-host­ed Youtube series with Chel­cie Lynn and Lib­bie Hig­gins. Trail­er Tales is a char­ac­ter exer­cise for all three comics. It does­n’t hurt that the record­ing of Trail­er Tales hap­pens in Nashville when Watkins can trav­el there and in LA when Lynn and Hig­gins can trav­el to LA. The extra trav­el has an added bonus of giv­ing Watkins a chance to per­form (now as a head­lin­er) and take his Stand-up on the Spot to new locations.

While I per­son­al­ly miss hear­ing Jere­mi­ah Won­ders (Watkins’ week­ly pod­cast with dif­fer­ent guests talk­ing about life as a com­ic), Watkins does­n’t rule out a return since sev­er­al of his cre­ative projects were all born in the course of Jere­mi­ah Won­ders, includ­ing Scis­sor Bros, Trail­er Tales, Stand-up on the Spot, and Adam Ray’s Dr Phil Live.

We’ve now men­tioned Stand-up on the Spot sev­er­al times and if you don’t know, it’s a crowd­work impro­vised standup show­case. In its infan­cy, it was held sole­ly at The Com­e­dy Store with most­ly Watkins’ com­e­dy friends. As Watkins has cul­ti­vat­ed the show and tak­en it on the road (and spent a lot of hours on the pro­duc­tion side of post­ing the shows to youtube), Watkins is now rou­tine­ly land­ing big­ger and big­ger per­form­ers for the show. Names like Shane Gillis, Beth Stelling, Ralph Bar­bosa, Kelsey Cook, Andrew San­ti­no, Brad Williams, Bert Kreis­ch­er, and more have per­formed on the show. You can catch new episodes twice a month on the ded­i­cat­ed Stand-up on the Spot youtube chan­nel.

Even with all of Watkins’ cre­ative projects enjoy­ing time in the spot­light, he’s hard at work prepar­ing for his third standup spe­cial. For all the impro­vised and char­ac­ter-based projects he’s known for, he wants to make sure the foun­da­tion of his standup is equal­ly strong. We spend time talk­ing about one of his new­er bits that’s he’s shaped into a joke he’s hap­py with. Based on inter­ac­tions with his son, the dinosaur bit began to take shape about two Moon­tow­ers ago (this is how I mea­sure time, by the way) and after see­ing his per­for­mance of the bit at this year’s Moon­tow­er, it was nice to hear that he feels real­ly good about the con­sis­tent pos­i­tive audi­ence reac­tion he gets with it. Always a phys­i­cal­ly com­mand­ing per­former on stage, it’s also just fun to watch Watkins play with move­ment and vocal range as both come togeth­er in a delight­ful­ly amus­ing way for this joke.

As we close out our annu­al tra­di­tion, we spend a bit of time on one of my favorite inter­views and one of Watkins’ best friends, Brad Williams. Fresh off his first head­lin­ing per­for­mance at Para­mount The­ater, Watkins and I shared how fun it’s been to watch Williams’ career pro­gres­sion all accom­pa­nied by the fact that Williams is a gen­uine­ly nice per­son. So much so that when the Moon­tow­er edi­tion of Stand-up on the Spot had a last minute sched­ule change, when Watkins asked if Williams might step in, he respond­ed with ​“I got you.” Which says some­thing about Williams’ eager­ness to help out but also every­one wants to sup­port Watkins and his pas­sion project.

It’s been an amaz­ing expe­ri­ence to chron­i­cle Watkins’ career over these sev­en episodes. It’s always a lit­tle bit of a sur­prise where it will go, but one thing’s for sure, it’s always big­ger and bet­ter. It makes per­fect sense that Watkins would choose poised as his lat­est word for his future. When he thinks of some­one being posed, he thinks ​“they know exact­ly what they’re doing, they know exact­ly where they’re head­ed, what they want, it’s some­one you can feel com­fort­able around.” All of which makes the 2025 (vol­ume 8) install­ment in the chron­i­cles of Jere­mi­ah Watkins some­thing that I can hard­ly wait for.

Fol­low Jeremiah

• Web­site — www​.Jere​mi​ah​Watkins​.com
• Twit­ter — @jeremiahstandup
• Insta­gram — @jeremiahstandup
• Face­book — Face​book​.com/​J​e​r​e​m​i​a​h​.​W​a​tkins
• Youtube
  • Stand-up on the Spot — Youtube​.com/​@​s​t​a​n​d​upots
  • Trail­er Tales / Scis­sor Bros — www​.youtube​.com/​T​r​a​i​l​e​r​T​a​l​esPod or Youtube​.com/​S​c​i​s​s​o​rBros
  • Jere­mi­ah Won­ders — Youtube​.com/​J​e​r​e​m​i​a​h​W​o​nders

Jere­mi­ah can be seen and heard:

• Spe­cials
  • New Spe­cial: Jere­mi­ah Watkins: Daddy
  • Debut Spe­cial: Jere­mi­ah Watkins: Fam­i­ly Reunion (Ama­zon, Google Play, Apple TV)
• Pod­casts (avail­able on Youtube and your favorite pod­cast player)
  • Trail­er Tales
  • The Scis­sor Bros
  • Jere­mi­ah Wonders
  • The Build­ing Years
• Album — Regan and Watkins (2019)
• Host­ed Shows — Stand-up on the Spot at The Com­e­dy Store and around the country
• Pre­vi­ous appear­ances on our podcast
  • Jere­mi­ah Watkins: ​“You’re the Best” (2017)
  • Jere­mi­ah Watkins Returns, 2018 Moon­tow­er Series (2018)
  • The State of Jere­mi­ah Watkins (2019)
  • Check­ing in With Jere­mi­ah Watkins: From Father to Bros (2021)
    
  • Jere­mi­ah Watkins: Still the Best (2022)
    
  • Jere­mi­ah Watkins: It’s Dad­dy Time Again (2023)