Like many other professional comics, Fraser Young completely tanked his first stand-up show — an unofficial comedy rite of passage in and of itself.
“It was brutal, oh man,” Young recalls today. “I went up and did five minutes with zero laughs, just on autopilot.”
Fortunately, a comedian’s worth is not judged on that first, awkward performance, but rather on how he or she responds to it — and Young was far from discouraged.
“I was thinking to myself, ‘Well, if it’s this much fun when there are no laughs, it’s gotta be better when there are laughs,’” he recalls.
His career since that initial disappointing night has proven him right. With credits such as a Comedy Now! special, a Writers Guild of Canada Award nomination and a comedy CD, Young’s career is thriving. And it all seemed to fall into place naturally, which is remarkable for a guy who had no grand designs on being an entertainer.
Young grew up near Yonge and Sheppard, after his family moved there from rural New York state. He has a love for the area, no doubt fuelled by his childhood passion for a local Becker’s corner store where he blew his allowance on cavity-causing quantities of candy.
Even as a child, Young’s perspective on the world provoked laughter in the people around him. “I was weird,” he declares. “I would get laughs, but I don’t know if I always understood at the time why I was getting laughs. I was just like, well, this is the way the world makes sense to me.”
Around the time he entered middle school, Young emerged from his “weird” phase and figured out just why he was getting those laughs. He realized that he had a unique perspective.
Young spent three years studying business at Wilfrid Laurier before taking a year off to focus on stand-up full time and see where it led him. During those months, he performed five nights weekly, developing the act that would get him noticed.
He booked his first headlining week within the next year. And as he returned to school in the fall of 1999 for the final year of his degree, he was given the prestigious Tim Sims Encouragement Fund Award, which recognizes talented young performers with less than two years’ experience in their field. Young finished his business degree but it would end up collecting dust as his comedy career continued to build momentum.
“I got a Comedy Now! special after the award, got booked for the Just For Laughs Homegrown Competition and signed with an agent as well,” he says. “I got a bunch of gigs out of that, and I was like, ‘Oh my God, I can make money off of this job.’”
He’s been doing just that ever since. In 2006, he even released his own comedy CD, Everyone Loves a Smug Bastard, titled for Young’s expression on the CD jacket cover. His stand-up material has changed and developed over time, but his style remains consistent.
“Most of my stuff is kind of like anecdotal observation, done in a storytelling style,” says Young.
These days his observations are likely to revolve around road trips with his girlfriend and his challenges shopping for vintage clothing. In the past five years, Young has also expanded his comedy repertoire by writing for television. It started with the job of “punching up” scripts — adding jokes to pre-written dialogue — for the Family Channel show The Latest Buzz and soon developed into the writing of entire episodes, work that earned him his Writers Guild nomination.
He’s presently in his second year as a staff writer for George Stroumboulopoulos Tonight. It’s rewarding work, and all that remains is finding enough time for stand-up. Young plans to further his writing and possibly get some of his own projects into development. And maybe then, that business degree will finally come in handy.
