August 6, 2024
Finding your identity and true voice can be an exhilarating mission and a heaping load of faceplants. Sometimes you’re rocketing up, up, up to success. Sometimes you’re plummeting down, down, down to hell. I’ve been in all those places. Maybe you have, too. One of the things I love about Ali Clayton? Ali has experienced it all and she is an epic storyteller. In her new album Country Queer, she spins her life adventures into comedy gold.
In 2009, Ali left North Carolina and arrived on Chicago’s North Side comedy scene. She quickly came up against a wall of gatekeepers. But she soon found a haven at the legendary South Side club Jokes & Notes. With the support of the club’s comedians and owner Mary Lindsay, Ali’s career blossomed. In record time, she was invited to appear on BET’s Showtime at the Apollo in New York. Did it go well? It did not. It was something of a catastrophe. Emphasis on “was.” Now it’s a hilarious and breathtaking story on Country Queer.
Country Queer also includes a party of a tale about a girls’ trip that Ali and another Chicago comedian took to New York with the stated goal of figuring out whether they’re gay. After some stumbling about, there’s an unforgettable evening at a bar followed by a night where the answer reveals itself in no uncertain terms. If that weren’t memorable enough, this story also has a surprise celebrity cameo. You can expect delightful surprises on every track. As Ali says, “I love anything where the audience thinks you’re going one way and then …!”
Country Queer is also the telling of how an eccentric, rollicking upbringing made Ali the woman she is today. Ali is also a disability advocate, a caretaker, an educator, a baker, an actor, a hobby-horse equestrian who has gone viral and a nationally touring headliner. Vulture ranked her podcast Y’All Gay? with fellow Chicagoan Ever Mainard (now a writer in Los Angeles), as one of the top five comedy podcasts nationwide. She has additional exciting projects in the works. I can’t say more, just that you definitely want to follow Ali if you don’t already! Her brand of joy, laughter, resilience and optimism will breathe new life into your spirit.
When I asked Ali why she decided to release this debut album now, I learned that it was at the request of Blonde Medicine, one of the most prestigious labels in comedy. Consistent with Ali’s undeniable star energy, the cover of Country Queer is designed to look like a 1980s country album.
Ali, who now lives in New York, kindly took time out to Zoom with me on a sunny summer morning during a tour stop in Chicago.
STARTING OUT IN CHICAGO
Teme: How did you decide to start your comedy career in Chicago?
Ali: I did a two-week summer intensive at Second City during college. I knew that Chicago was the comedy Mecca. All of my friends were going to New York, but I wanted go to Chicago to learn about comedy. I did all the Second City Conservatory. I studied at Annoyance and iO while doing two to three open mics every night.
I don’t know how I did it in my twenties. I had three jobs and then I would go out, do two to three open mics, or a show and a mic. I was drunk most of the time and still managed to somehow get up and go to work the next day. It was just hustling and grinding, and it was all worth it.
I lived in Lincoln Square. I loved it. My building was just four apartments. We had the biggest backyard. It had a pear tree and an apple tree. I would make apple crisp from those apples. I was there for five years. Before that, I did a year in Wicker Park, a year in Lakeview, and then I felt like I really found my home in Lincoln Square.
Teme: How did Jokes & Notes become your comedy home?
Ali: During those first couple of years, like 2009, ’10, ’11, the boys [on the North Side] were just such gatekeepers. Also, at times, they would use their power to have sex with girls. There was a couple of guys I had sex with where I was just like, “Well, this means he thinks I’m funny.” I’m fucking people to get on shows, but that’s how much I love comedy. I was just so naïve.
I was doing all the mics. I was doing really well and then I would ask to be on a show and nobody would put me on a show. Then I rode over to Jokes & Notes and did that one open mic, and I did really well and that is where I went every single Wednesday for years and years. We would have showcases and I had a sketch group that would do shows there. I did JFL [Just for Laughs] Chicago there.
Any big opportunity in stand-up that I got, I was given those opportunities by Mary Lindsay. If she saw something within you, she championed you. When I was at The Apollo I didn’t have an agent. I didn’t realize all the papers I was going to have to sign. They wanted me to change a joke. So I called Mary like, “Mary, what do I do?” She was always there to give me advice and help me out.
Teme: I’ve heard that the audience at Jokes & Notes had high expectations, especially given the legendary comedians that were there on a regular basis.
Ali: Yes, very much so. But that just meant you needed to work harder. Lil Rel [Howery] ran the open mic on Wednesdays for years. When I started comedy, that’s the open mic I went to every week, which is crazy because he is so famous now. I’m forever proud to be a South Side comedian.
Teme: What are some of the insights from Jokes & Notes that continue to resonate?
Ali: There was such a sense of pride and loyalty amongst all of us, always lifting each other up. When we had JFL [Just For Laughs] auditions, Chastity Washington would call all the gals into the bathroom and we’d stand in the handicap stall and hold hands and Chastity would pray. I remember thinking, “That don’t happen on the North Side.” There was a feeling of inclusion and community no matter who got the spot. Sometimes there’s only going to be one spot for a woman on a show, that’s all they’re going to book, and everybody wants that spot. On the North Side, they would build this sense of competition when we did auditions, but I didn’t feel that on the South Side. And the guys there were so good to me. They would walk me to the car every night. That did not happen on the North Side.
[Another lesson was] being big, being larger than life on stage. I am very expressive and I always have been. Sometimes people will be like, “Why are you doing your face like that?” And I’m like, “I didn’t know my face was doing anything.”
Teme: It’s one of the reasons you’re really fun to watch.
Ali: Thank you. I learned it actually makes things ten times funnier. I learned a lot from Chastity. She would be at the back of a club by the sound booth about to run up to go on, and she would kind of box and kick her legs up, kind of jogging in place, getting ready. I now do that sometimes and it’s like, “Okay, I’m ready to get in there! Put me in, coach!”
LEAVING CHICAGO
Teme: How did you know when it was time leave Chicago?
Ali: Chicago felt like home. I had got to the point where I was a big fish and was playing all around the Midwest. Any showcase I got asked to do, I was typically headlining and there were only one or two opportunities a year for big auditions for stand-up. I realized if I want to keep moving up, I got to move on. It was hard to leave my friends. It was hard to leave the scene.
The hardest thing about leaving was that my day job was taking care of an adult with severe autism. He is like my brother. I’m actually at his mom’s house right now. That’s where I stay when I come to Chicago. I spend my days with Bradley and do my shows at night. We do “Stand Up For Autism” together. He hosts the shows with me. It’s a night for anybody in the disability community to come out. If you have to flap your arms, if you run around the room, if you scream out, nobody’s asked to leave. Everyone’s welcome to be there. We’ve created a beautiful night that merges my two favorite things, Bradley and stand-up.
Teme: What are you sure to do when you’re back in Chicago?
Ali: I typically come back to Chicago every three to four months. I spend a lot of time with Bradley and other friends. Today, me and my friend Nestor are going to Montrose Beach. There’s that little place where you can get food and listen to music, and we enjoy doing that. Now that I’m sober, I don’t do a whole lot of going out at night. I always go to L. Woods in Lincolnwood and get the skirt steak I love a Chicago summer.
COUNTRY QUEER: BEHIND THE SCENES
Teme: What’s your advice for excellent storytelling?
Ali: When I write, I don’t worry about what’s funny, what’s not funny. I write out the whole story. Then I go back in and I either weave in jokes or I cut some things, and then try it on stage. I record every set and go back and listen. And then I’m like, “That was a good try, that one didn’t hit, we need to switch that.”
Teme: How did you decide which stories to tell in Country Queer?
Ali: The flow was really important to me. I start off a little goofy talking about my relationship with my mom. Everybody has something funny with their mom. I warm the audience up first. Then I get into “I love to scissor.” The audience needed to be ready to hear that. They needed to first hear that I’m just a human. When I was touring in the South, there were many times where I said I was gay and somebody would cross their arms. By the end, these people were coming up and telling me “I didn’t think I’d love it, but I loved it.” My Southern roots are very important to me. I’m country and I’m queer, and I’m proud to be both. It was very important to me to have that come across on the album.
Teme: What’s your favorite track from the album?
Ali: Ooh, that’s hard! The two longest tracks, probably. [“Showtime at the Apollo” and “The Hunt of 2009”.] The Apollo story took a good eight years for me to be able to laugh at and not feel mortified. I performed it when I was opening for Roy Wood, Jr. He gave me notes and then I would rewrite it and try it again, and I would send it to Roy, and he’d give me notes again. There are so many jokes within that story that I have to hit, especially the callback at the end. So, it’s the exact placement of certain words and things that have to be said to get the full effect. I love performing it live. I kick across that stage and it’s a good time.
Teme: I don’t want to give too much away from the album, but what about the Apollo? Please talk to me about resilience and coming back from a difficult experience.
Ali: To be standing there with fifteen hundred people booing you … it was like watching the wave at a football stadium but everybody’s getting to their feet to boo. I went in thinking, “Oh, this is my big break.” I was early in [my comedy career] and naïve. I thought this was about to completely change my life and then I bombed so badly. After getting booed off, I immediately went upstairs and started googling, “Who got booed that still made it?”
Something I don’t say in the joke – I used to say it and it seemed to make people more sad than laughing – was that my dad was in the audience. I looked down and my dad’s got a couple tears just coming down. I used to make a joke, “I think he was crying because he paid so much for liberal arts school and this is what he got.”
Going back to the South Side after that was tough, too. Looking back and being so much more aware of cultural appropriation, [I realize] I took an opportunity from a Black person. They just happened to invite me, and I wasn’t thinking about any of those things at the time. But [the Jokes & Notes community] fully embraced me.
BEHIND THE SCENES AT HOME
Teme: You have a lot of family stories on Country Queer. Your family is so funny and unique. It sounds they could be a whole album in themselves!
Ali: I don’t talk about it on this album and I really haven’t talked about it in my stand-up. I grew up with exotic animals; monkeys, leopards, zebras. My parents would have these huge parties and judges would be there because my dad was a lawyer, but then somehow also the electrician would be there and the custodian from the school. Just such an eclectic group of people and these crazy animals everywhere.
Originally, we bred and sold miniature horses and donkeys. My dad is a lawyer and would barter with clients. He ended up going bankrupt when I was twenty-one. Animals got taken. Pretty much everything got taken. But it was my dad’s fault. It’s like, “Okay, you can’t go buy three monkeys and then not pay your taxes.” We got our snow leopard from the same guy that sold Michael Jackson his giraffes. That was his big brag. There’s so much there that I want to talk about.
This album was “I’m gay and I’m also Southern.” My declaration of my queerness and why that is a huge part of me, being a lesbian and being a part of the lesbian community and the queer community in general. But there’s so much more that’s happened in my life and there’s so much more to me than being queer.
Teme: How did your upbringing contribute to finding your voice?
Ali: I’m extremely dyslexic. I talk a very little bit about my learning disabilities on the album, but it was a big struggle. I found performance and that’s where I felt I am good at something because I couldn’t excel at any of these things at school. Everybody finished the test before me. Everyone else got a great grade and I didn’t.
One of my favorite stories about my mom was when I was in third grade. At school, they would hand out report cards and everybody in the hallway was like, “What’d you get?” I would start lying like, “My mom says I’m not allowed to share that. I’ll get in trouble,” which was not true.
For grades, “ones” were the best. “Threes” were really bad. I had all threes. I hid under the covers holding my little report card. My mom came home and I had just been crying and crying. She lifts back the covers and goes, “What’s wrong, baby girl?” And I was like, “I’m sorry, mama. I tried my best. I really did.” I handed the report card to her. And she was like, “Threes? Oh, my gosh. Ali, you got all threes? This is going on the fridge. This is amazing!”
I said, “Mama, threes are the worst.” She was like, “Threes are the best you can do.” Just really made such a big deal about it for me. My mama always says, “Give everything 100%, and when you think you can’t get any more, dig a little deeper and give 50% more.” I think I do that with anything in my life. She and my dad inspired me to be a hard worker, to know that things aren’t just handed to you. You have to work for them.
In third grade I started going to a learning disability school called The Hill Center. I was there half a day and then I would go back to the regular school. Everyone knowing you’re different was hard. Then we found beauty pageants – stigmas for sure – but I absolutely loved it. That really helped me as a kid to find confidence. I loved the costumes. I loved that I got to be up on that stage. I loved winning a big trophy. I still have all my crowns. My ex was like, “Do we really need all of these?!” And I’d be like, “Yes. For the rest of my life. I need them.”
For a long time, because of my dyslexia, I didn’t think I would be able to write anything. Then I started doing improv and theater. My degree is in acting. I went to Actors Theater of Louisville after college for an acting apprenticeship. As apprentices, one of our tasks was to do something we’ve always wanted to do but were too scared to try. Mine was stand-up. I wrote five minutes on one topic – different names of vaginas. I mean, a thirty-second bit, sure, but nobody needed a whole five on that. I didn’t just go do an open mic with it. They called the local comedy club and got me a guest spot on a real show. I’d never performed standup before. I go up and I perform and all of it does not land. One lady screams out at me at one point, “You are a bitch!”
But I had one joke in my five minutes that got a little laugh and that was enough to fuel me. That feeling I got when I heard that laugh was, “I want to feel that again!” When that energy comes back at you, there’s nothing like it. I felt that energy in the room the night I recorded Country Queer. Every joke just hit and the room felt electric.
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Country Queer is available on Apple Music, Spotify, Bandcamp and limited edition vinyl LP.
Follow Ali:
Listen to Y’All Gay with Ali and Ever Mainard anywhere you find your podcasts.
Great interview!
Hi Julie! Thank you so much for reading and commenting!
I love reading these interviews! I wish you had a LIKE button.
Hi David! Thank you for reading and commenting! I appreciate your kind words and great feedback very much! I will definitely consider adding a like button-I love when folks share and that would definitely make it easier – so right and thank you!
David, thank you! Share/like button added!