Ben Bailey, former host of Cash Cab, will be in Memphis to perform stand-up at Black Lodge on Friday, June 14th, at 8 p.m.
And, yes, while you might know him best for asking trivia questions from the driver seat in a taxi on the streets of New York City, Bailey says stand-up is his true calling. “I’ve been a comedian for over 30 years,” he says. “Believe it or not, Cash Cab was for about half that time. We did it for 15 years, on and off. But stand-up comedy is what I really do, not the other way around.”
Still, Bailey is appreciative of his time on the show that earned him multiple Daytime Emmy Awards. He recognizes it’s why a bulk of his audiences comes to see his stand-up. “My goal when they come to see me is to make them forget that I’m the Cash Cab guy because they’re laughing so hard and they’re so caught up in what I’m doing on stage. … My job is to make you laugh hard enough that you forget about the things in your life that suck.”
Bailey describes his comedy as surreal and observational, silly even. “There’s a little twist of crazy,” he says. “Someone once called it, like, the Far Side of stand-up.”
Funnily enough, Bailey fell into comedy seemingly by a chance meeting. He had moved to L.A. with hopes of going into show business. “I was totally lost,” he says, but he got a job answering phones at The Comedy Store, where one night he found himself talking to a comedian.
“I was telling the story in the green room, which is where I sat to answer the phones,” Bailey says. “And the guy thought I was a comedian and asked me how long I had been doing it, and I said I just started. The guy offered me a spot on his show that Saturday, and I said no because I was terrified. But then luckily, he gave me a business card because the next day, I was like, ‘Maybe I should give this a try.’ … I did it the first time, and I got a laugh with the first thing I said. I knew right then that it was going to be what I was going to do for the rest of my life.”
Since then, in addition to hosting more than 550 episodes of Cash Cab, Bailey has starred in two specials for Comedy Central (“Road Rage and Accidental Ornithology” in 2011 and “Ben Bailey: Live and Uncensored” in 2016), and he has appeared in several TV shows and films.
Tickets for Bailey’s show at Black Lodge are $35 in advance and $38 day of show. VIP tickets, which include seats in the first four rows and a meet-and-greet, cost $60 in advance and $65 day of show. Purchase tickets in advance here.