Video URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y8U5e8_qSSw
the jurgen experience my first joke was something about michael jackson yeah and that was it that's all i remember did you write anything out before you went up there did you no well i i tried writing but my hand my penmanship is so bad been coming out of public school it's a damn shame when you can't even read your own [ __ ] so and my spelling is terrible so that it was like okay it's michael jackson what did i think about michael jackson i took it from there so did did you rehearse it in your head like how did you do it i rehearsed it in the mirror like most comedians and you know the toothbrushes are hollowing and the two places standing up and everything but it didn't translate on the stage that time because when i first started doing i just look up unfortunately looking up at the sky up at the roof of the place like a woman ain't making love for money you know what i'm saying ain't enjoying it at all so i am um that's how i got down for my first one so you just didn't know where to look um did you feel uncomfortable like trying to the insecurity that's why my name is earthquake you know and people keep asking me why your name earthquake i say the reason i named my name earthquake because if this [ __ ] don't work out i ain't gonna mess up my good names so somebody coming they say hey what's up earthquake hey my name is nathaniel i don't know earthquake he was earthquake he was starting nah that was my brother or somebody but my name is nathan you don't even know no earthquake that's hilarious i thought it was just from the reaction you got from the crowd no it was an insecurity that if this don't work out i did not [ __ ] up my goodness that's hilarious because i thought it was the total opposite i thought it was a cocky move no like you're about to cause an earthquake no it was like no if this this don't work out baby you know what i mean i wouldn't be scared i wouldn't scully my good name
it's funny because it's a perfect name for you oh thank you it really is it's like it's in the insecurity of want to protect your name you literally came up with the best nickname ever for you yes yeah and that's how it came i used to tell the joke people like how you came into the earthquake uh this has happened when your mother take heavy precautions and not to have a child and you still get pregnant you haven't it's nothing else you can name that child but a natural disaster that's what i wrote as a joke for it but the truth honestly about it was the insecurity that if this don't work i don't want to mess up my name were you living in florida at the time i lived in florida when i got out i went to atlanta and then from when going to atlanta that's when i started seeing what the comedy clubs was like and that's when we started opening my club two years later so that is so you do open mic two years later you have your own club and you're going on every day yeah wow so every you gotta understand i'm i'm tuesday wednesday thursday friday saturday and sunday three shows on fridays and saturdays one on tuesday one on wednesday one on thursday two on sunday every day for about four straight years wow then it just and you're doing like an hour every night every show every show off the top have you ever read the book outliers no it's a great book is that a malcolm who is that no it's um someone else is malcolm gladwell it's a great book one of the things it's about is uh they detail people who are extremely successful and he talks about the amount of time that's required to get really good at something and how many people that look like overnight successes the amount of time they put in was extraordinary one of the things he talks about is the beatles and the beatles they did all these shows in germany where they were doing like what you were doing or they were doing every [ __ ] night they were doing shows and they had put in hundreds and hundreds and
hundreds of hours doing these shows and so when they first you know air quote made it on the scene they had put in so much time performing so much different than most bands because they had done so many shows nightly over and over and over again yeah there's no substitute for that not at all and it's the foundation of who i am so when i have to sit here i close i go in with the confident knowing all i got to do is make sure my environment is pure for me to be able to write the way i do keep my mind straight and i can come up with our i didn't come up with album and when you were doing this like two years in is a very unusual that's that's not a lot of time for someone to be forget about headlining at all but headlining every [ __ ] night yeah and basically doing being the whole show every night yeah we was um we would get some comedians that come on it but we didn't get any of the main um comedians because uh comedy act wasn't happening that's such a cocky move to open up your own club two years in that's amazing but they were so vulnerable they was in the bad bad part of town they didn't serve uh food and then they the cotton spin morning i mean the one that really would bring them down they were so arrogant with it that they had booked a comic 2 comic for the whole month same comic every week every week oh that's crazy yes i remember it was joe torre um joe torre and ted carpenter and they did the whole month so when i brought my investors there to get the club i said look these same two gonna be here there's 400 people in here they got two waitresses plus they ain't got no food plus they're in the bad part of town so what we're gonna do we're gonna put it we're gonna put the club in buckhead black people don't go there that much right there because they don't go there we're gonna call it uptown and we're gonna we're gonna serve food we're gonna have valet service we're gonna be in a better part of the town and that's how you got it so once you any if you're gonna go up against anybody you first gotta recognize their
weakness and where you can draw from what they got and that's why i pivoted all my commercials to him that way are you tired of going down to a place you pocket car and you might don't know who to be there and they're begging you for money nah come get your jokes up at uptown comedy corner you know what i'm saying we you don't see the same comedian over and over again and we have food and we have prompt service and everything else come to uptown so i just and as you sit there you give them a comparison by the time people like yeah we like it that's how i got them that's amazing though that you did that two years in like go from your career in the military where you kind of half-ass it you're not really into it and then all of a sudden you find this new thing and you're all in yeah you're all in you're opening up your own club 24 months in that's crazy but what you know it was out of necessity because i got tired of driving night all the way to lakeland florida to get fifty dollars a show and then the biggest one you'll tell a woman you're a comedian and she's like oh i ain't never seen you at the comedy act you know we segregation we're segregated in the black community if you ain't here then you ain't doing it you know what i mean so it ain't done just it wasn't as expanded as it is now that they can even imagine this other club this was the club of all club the only club if you didn't work there you weren't no black comedian so you had this in your head that you wanted to do this and how did you make that happen like who did you get to invest in it like how did you start a club well it was this dude named gary abdul he was booked he was a comedian too and but he booked things in like um he used to do little little small places like denny's for example and put a plywood box up there little small place sit there and he'll throw a show and he'll book me to pay me 150 me ricky smiley rest up and we sit down and say what you need to do is we need to open up a black club so i showed it to him and i said this is how we can get him
what i previously said said good idea so we all went out and tried to get investors i went to all dion sanders dominique all the people in atlanta hey man sean just call this person call this person [ __ ] ain't never do nothing one one of the person was real one person represented was very honest with you listen man quick i get five of these calls a day he ain't gonna do [ __ ] i'm just he can't go to that man ain't gonna waste your time you know what i mean so lucky um gary found um the number one plastic surgeon in atlanta and he invests but he told us give y'all ten thousand dollars if y'all can flip this and show it can work on the small stage then i'll get the club so we went to birmingham a couple places and turned 10 into about 50 to 60 000. and then when we get that from that point on he said you could do it and he gave us the half a million dollars to get the club wow yeah dr tom wow rest in peace my brother wow yeah white dude was great he um he's give put all the titties in the women in atlanta george [Laughter] he was the titty specialist you know what i mean so have you seen any big titties in the 90s in the early 2000s it was dr dob and how did you know him i didn't um my partner gary at the time knew him and he brought him in and we got together he said i found somebody i could do it but just the stipulation for us to do it and uh when i met him and i i was cool it was beautiful do you remember the opening night yes we had 15 people yeah wow yeah it was 15 people i'm so surprised it hold um 250 yeah yeah 250 people some of the people matter of fact um my video person who handles my media for me um star um she was um that's how we met i hired her as my waitress and we've been friends ever since wow then i gave her a job to handle all my um my social media wow so go from there 15 people yes and was you the first guy on stage yeah i had a
couple of uh comedians to um help me out but i was the the main man until we was able because he wants that club closed then all the comedians oh man i'm sorry man then i'm gonna get down because now you're the only comedy club in the city right you know what i mean but till then it was a battle and it was it was a blessing in disguise because it made me the beast that i am today when did it start to catch on after steve left one steve and steve he taught me so much you know because when he came he said i'm gonna do your club cause i couldn't get no headliners nobody that could draw and i was like steve would you do it he was hosting showtime they probably said i'd do it for you and he came in on a wednesday and it was only about 30 people in there and i was like and he came in and look he said give him all their money back and um come pick me up tomorrow at five o'clock when we do media i said what do you mean there's 30 people in here is that steve harvey don't do no show for 30 people okay then and then i i picked him up and he took me to the radio that's when i learned how powerful media and he stopped by he said let's start by dunking donuts because we got to get some donuts and some some orange juice because you got to smooth these jocks egos because they feel you're going to try to take their [ __ ] job and everything you got to be good on them and he um we got in there at 5 30 stayed on from 6 to 9. i tell you joe when we got back when we got back he had sold out two on thursday four on friday four on saturday and two on sunday back in 93 i wrote him a check full 45 000 i didn't even know that kind of money exists in comedy i was like oh yeah i ain't never going nowhere i ain't never going nowhere and when i saw him pick up that kind of money and see what kind of money can be generated as a comedian
i'll say this where i need to be and once all of those people came and seen all the things that club had to offer and we was at and we had valet servers and all the things that it could do it was no turning back after that and they saw me so it was great wow that will change the whole game that's a great story you