I'm Trying to Be Righteous Part 2

This is a continuation of the previous blog based on the "I'm Trying To Be Righteous" video clip from Patrice O'Neal.  He was asked, "What are you trying to do?"
Well, what am I trying to do?  I'm trying to make it.  But what is 'it'?
Early on in my career, I was doing conferences after I received some advice from Don Burnstick.  Native conferences are always looking for after-dinner entertainment.  That's where I come in.  They fly me in, put me up for the night, I do the show, they pay me, then fly me back home.  It was pretty sweet.  But conferences are few and far between.  I've never done the same conference twice, not because they didn't want me back, but because I didn't want to perform at the same conference with the same material.
After I moved to Vancouver, there were different goals.  Visible goals.  There are small comedy rooms, weekly rooms.  They have a local headliner each week.  That was a goal: to headline a small weekly comedy room.  It didn't pay much, but that wasn't the point.  Another goal was to become a middle or an opener at the local comedy club during the weekend.  Or headline the pro-am night at the comedy club.  This was a definite stepping stone.  You would be seen by the club booker or manager who might one day promote you to headliner.  That was a goal.  From there you could become a touring headliner, doing all the comedy clubs as a headliner.  But again, there are only so many comedy clubs.
At one time, that was what I wanted.  And if it was offered to me, I would take it.
The goal has changed now.  I would like to have a large enough fanbase to be able to perform at a theatre every weekend, maybe two or three shows.  Book a theatre, print some tickets and some posters.  Do the show, bring a friend or two to open, sell some CDs, then get out of town.  And just do this for the rest of my career.

I have a radio show and I always bring up Richard Pryor and ask my guest if they have any aspirations to be anything else besides a stand-up comic.  I use Richard Pryor as an example because he is considered by many to be the best stand-up comic ever.  But I always wonder how much better he would have been if he did not do all those other projects, acting, etc.  If he had devoted all his time and energy to stand-up comedy, how much better would he have come?
I'm a stand-up comedian.  That's what I do.  I think I'm good at it.  There's definitely nothing else I would rather do.  I think it's what I was meant to do.
The only way to continue doing stand-up comedy is to constantly produce more material.
I remember when I first started out, I met a guy that said he was a stand-up comic before.  He said, "I had about 15 minutes."  I never knew what he meant.  Now that's all I think about.  I'm trying to build an act, a minute at a time.  If you have 45 good solid minutes, you can be a headliner.  45 minutes is enough for an hour long comedy special.
I have enough material to produce a CD, which I will be recording and releasing in the very near future.  I will be shelving all of that material.  I have already started writing new material for my next CD.  Retiring material and starting over is a relatively new trend in comedy.  The documentary 'Seinfeld: Comedian' is partly responsible for this trend.  It used to be that a comic would build an act, an hour or so, and that was it, that was their act that they kept for their entire career and they travelled the country doing the same act for years.  There were exceptions of course, George Carlin comes to mind, who produced a whole new hour every year it seemed.  But it's now a trend.  Louis CK has about four comedy specials in the last few years.  When he started he had the same act for about eight years.  He had some success with it and even produced two comedy specials.  He wrote a whole new act and recorded it and retired the material.  Now he's one of the most prolific comics out there now.
That's the goal now: to keep producing quality material, enough to fill an hour long comedy special, enough to headline, and do this every year or so.  And to bring my bag of jokey-jokes around the country and not have people say, "He's just doing the same old jokes he did before".