By Steve Hintz

From under a large wooden door that separates the chosen from the exposed, laughter seeps into the Comedy Café’s waiting area . The unheated hallway is the antithesis of the club’s fiery insides, at this point exploding with guffaws and shrieks of delight. 

I sit patiently…ok, by this point I’m a little impatient waiting as the man next to the man, talks to the man that will allow me in so that I can catch the last of the show I had come to see. Kevin Brennan was in town. I saw the sign outside the Milwaukee club lit up against the sky and thought, "Wow, to have my name up in lights." 

Then I thought…

This is Milwaukee. 

But don’t get it twisted. Kevin Brennan is in the limelight. Working comedy clubs throughout the States, this Irish Catholic native of Chicago, has been a comedic workhorse for the past 15 years. I couldn’t wait to hear what he had to say about his latest performance, although I had finally been let in to catch only the last 10 minutes of the gig. The laughter dies down and people return from their comedic highs to deal with the cold reality of their bloated drink bills. 

The owner, a massive Samoan-looking gentleman replete with goatee, finally retrieves a spent Kevin Brennan from the bowels of the club. The Irishman looks like he’s ready for a drink, worn out from a gut-busting gig.

Just as I was getting ready to compliment him on a job well done, he beats me to it

"That show sucked."

Ah. So is the perspective of a comedian. It’s the nuances that one notices after years in "the business," he tells me. And he has spent years in the business. That decade and a half ago, Brennan took the stage in Chicago for open mic night and caught the buzz that comes along with making total strangers bust their guts laughing.

He started getting more regular schticks, albeit small ones. Finally getting real shows, Brennan thought he should tell his parents. "How did YOU become a comic," was the first reaction he received from his parental units to his newfound career . Shortly after the family were clued in to their son’s "secret life," they sneaked into the club on a sparsely populated Sunday night, where Brennan fondly remembered, he "did not do well." When he discovered that his relatives were in the crowd, the first thing he asked them was, "How come you didn’t laugh?" 

Yet someone was laughing, however. Around 1990, Brennan moved his act to New York. "In Chicago, I remember thinking that I can’t go anywhere from Chicago. It’s really not that, since you do it alone. But you have to keep yourself hungry," he asserts. "Once you’re a solid act in the Midwest, you don’t really have to develop your act, you just do it. In New York, you’re constantly competing with guys who are out there making it in television and in the movies," Brennan explained.

Keeping material fresh is important. "I constantly am aware of the fact that I’m supposed to be writing jokes. You mostly just have to be aware…but I mostly write jokes best when I just absolutely have to have new jokes…like after tonight’s show." 

I ask Brennan about his relationship with his brother Neal, the co-writer and producer for the award-winning Dave Chappelle Show. Brennan relates that his sibling is an incentive, outside of normal familial bickering. "The fact that Neal is a lot younger than me and is doing better financially is motivation. I think in a family of 10 kids, you are naturally competitive…and naturally have a sense of humor. It’s almost bad for me, but it’s not. He’s making great connections and entertainment is almost becoming a family business," he replies. 

Another family member involved in showbiz is a brother, Danny, who is just getting his acting career off the ground. The rest of the family is "entertaining."

Brennan’s mark of success in the stand-up world is when the comic has "the ability to make people laugh on a consistent basis."He agrees that as he matured, his act has gotten much better. He can tell when the crowd is with him "They laugh at the set-up, they laugh at the joke, they understand where you’re going. Some crowds are just idiots. I still know when I stink now, but I use it for motivation," he offers.

He realizes that even at age 40, he still appeals more to a younger crowd. According to Brennan, "People’s sphere of influence shrinks when they get older." Playing throughout the States has allowed him to know where he fits in. Younger comics ask him for advice and he says that "you can get a Ph.D. in comedy by doing shows. You have to really just perform a lot, for a lot of different crowds." He adds, "You really have to do it all the time, there are no shortcuts." 

Wise advice.

Having written jokes for Saturday Night Live’s Weekend Update and a couple of comedic pilots that never really went far, Brennan is still knocking at the door of comedic success. He is the first to admit that he is more of a joke guy than a sketch guy, but he still wants to have his own television show at some point. What does he love about stand up? "The late hours. No really, you get to meet a lot of people," he laughs.

Brennan has always been a big fan of Dave Attel of Insomniac fame and of Dave Chappelle, his brother’s writing partner and star of the Dave Chappelle Show and numerous movies. "I was happy for the two, but not surprised when they made it big." 

Brennan’s Irish background seeped into his life in many small ways. All four of his grandparents were born on the Island. "Cork," he believes. His grandmother spoke to the children in an Irish brogue as she mixed soda bread, providing recipes that have passed down to his mother. Brennan says, however, that It’s no joke that he received all of his humor from his father’s side of the family. His uncle Phil "could riff on random subjects like a professional comic."

Although his mom visited the Auld Sod to visit after her mother moved back to Ireland, Brennan hasn’t yet made the trip. Ironically, it’s taken a woman of Panamanian descent, his relatively new girlfriend, to push such a trip to the homeland. "Yeah, it’s funny…she really wants to go," he says.

Although he grew up in a large Catholic family, son of Theresa and Dan Breenan. His dad was an attorney and his mom was a homemaker. Most of the families in his home neighborhood were also large and Brennan doesn’t think of his household as particularly Irish. "We would get sunburned easy…and my dad was a redhead…I guess that counts," he says. When he moved to New York, Brennan saw that being Irish was more of a big deal.

"My first St. Patrick's Day parade there, everybody was throwing up but they didn't all look Irish to me and I thought "they're giving us a bad name." Like we need any help," he quips.

As I wrap up the conversation, I can’t help but wonder out loud what‘s next for the comic. "It’s back to New York for a day, then back out on the road," he replies. 

The road doesn’t sound like such a bad place for a man with a mission. 

I pull out of the comedy club parking lot, and think to myself…I wouldn’t mind seeing my name in lights…even if it is just Milwaukee.