MANCHESTER, NH – For Manchester comedian Danny Pee, the cosmic call to perform stand-up comedy didn’t come until later in life.
However, a mere three years after the 40-year-old husband and father of two first stepped onto the stage for the open mic at The Laugh Attic at The Strange Brew Tavern, he is now hosting the show while his own stand-up career is starting to thrive.
“Everything I’ve been able to do was because of that origin point,” said Pee, who was recently passed the torch as host from his friend, mentor and long-time Manchester comic, Ben Davis. “I knew after that first open mic that it would be a slog, but I had to keep showing up and see where it took me.”
Pee said that humor was ubiquitous in his family, growing up in Conway, NH. He recalls his father always telling jokes and keeping copies of the “Truly Tasteless Jokes” books in the bathroom.
“Humor was always appealing and interesting to me. I wanted to see what made people laugh,” said Pee, whose early influences included George Carlin, Billy Connolly and Sam Kinison.
Pee, however, got his first taste for the performance buzz as an adolescent, playing the guitar in a high school cover band named Stalemate. Later—while attending the University of New Hampshire where he earned a bachelor’s degree in English—Pee also played on a stage with a heavy metal band called Roid Rage.
Still, comedy never left him. After giving a toast at his brother’s wedding and soaking in the audience’s laughter, the itch to perform stand-up started for Pee. “The reaction in that room was so fun that I wanted to do it again,” he said.
Then, while quarantined during the pandemic, Pee started seriously working on some bits. “I feel like I had so much bubbling under the surface that I was ready to bust out,” he said.
This led Pee to the open mic at The Laugh Attic in 2021. “You don’t know what the hell you’re doing when you’re starting out,” Pee said. “You have to see what people latch onto, but I was obsessed with making my routine better.”
Anyone who has ever tried to make a room full of people laugh knows it can be a daunting and, sometimes, discouraging thing, but Pee believes that bombing is essential when developing material and growing as a comedian.
“If you haven’t bombed, there’s a problem,” Pee said. “What that means is that you’re putting yourself in front of an audience in comfortable and comforting situations all of the time. You have to bomb to grow because you have to know when a joke sucks.”
While Pee’s material is not child-friendly, Pee said that he does have limits as far as the content he’s willing to broach, drawing the line at using potentially divisive topics simply to be edgy or offensive.
Pee’s material includes bits about parenting and everyday health maladies, along with a healthy dose of self-deprecation.
“The root is authenticity,” he said. “I’m not trying to push hard into uncomfortable territory. With my empathic tendencies, there are things that I can’t make funny. Some people are really good at that, but my thing is to try and find humor in the mundane.”
But Pee also believes that for many comedians, authenticity is often discovered through suffering, which has been argued for all of the creative arts.
“It’s hard to justify getting on stage with a clean bill of life. People don’t care about a lack of struggle, then every joke feels like [the comedian] is punching down,” said Pee.
In order to make it on the comedy circuits, comedians need to start somewhere, and Pee is a strong proponent of the comedy scene in the Queen City.
“I want to convince people that you don’t have to go to Boston to do stand-up,” Pee said. “There’s a rawness to Manchester comedy. Manchester is a place where comics can say what they want to say without feeling like they’re being censored, and there are also some really unique characters [in this city].”
And Pee said that he can use his new role as the host at The Laugh Attic every Thursday night to promote a community for comics. “I’m in a sweet spot right now to foster a culture and an environment, and to make Manchester a place where people want to come and see comedy,” he said.
As far as the longview, Pee has no delusions of grandeur or expectations for his own Netflix special.
“Fame has been corrupted by the environment that we live in,” said Pee. “If you’re famous now, you’re putting a target on your back. I don’t think anyone wants to be famous anymore. We almost live in a post-fame society.”
For now, Pee is happy to tell jokes in the New England region, help his fellow comedians and comedy scene in Manchester grow, and to be a family man, a good husband and father.
And there’s nothing “funny” about those goals.
You can follow Danny Pee on Instagram here.
Open mics at The Laugh Attic are every Thursday at The Strange Brew Tavern.