From Baltimore to Brooklyn: interview with Myles Toe

I am delighted to showcase some new and old friends that are comedians and musicians from/living in New York City and the surrounding New Jersey area. I had the great pleasure of interviewing Myles Toes a Baltimore native residing in Brooklyn, NY.

So, for those who don’t know you, what is your name?

My name is Myles Peter Toe.

Where are you from?

I’m originally from Baltimore, Maryland, I lived in North Carolina for a little bit, here’s my ID just in case you want to see it [shows ID to the camera] right there. I was like 18/19 (in that photo), born in ‘95.

What is your art?

Like my physical art? Check this out: [reaches for a sketchbook and flicks through it and holds up a page filled with a red inked design with a photograph in the center of it] stuff like this? Art like that? I do comedy to, which is stupid, don’t do comedy, it’s horrible. I also can draw though! [holds up another sketchbook to the camera showing a sketch] it’s way better! Look at that, it’s a little skeleton guy. Ok, what’re we talking about here?

I think we’re talking about your comedy in this case.

I do jokes, [pauses] sometimes.

How long have you been doing it for?

[Pauses for a moment] Five years, I started in Asheville, North Carolina, I did a year there out of school, I would drive, like an hour away from my school every day, to go do standup and then after college I was like “fuck it, I’mma move to New York.”

So, if you weren’t doing comedy what would you be doing?

Mmm! I forgot about this, okay, I think – probably nothing else. I think [mild wheezing laughter] I did want to be a therapist but besides comedy, nah, I’m just too much of a clown. I can’t do anything else.

Why did you want to do therapy?

I went through a lot of childhood trauma and so I was like, I can help other kids but then I was like, that’s dumb. Why help kids when I can help myself? So, I decided to do comedy.

Is comedy an outlet for you, and if so, why?

MT: No. It’s not, because it is just a thing I do. It’s not an outlet for anything. You should always separate your regular life from your comedy life. If it’s an outlet I don’t let it – I don’t want to put anything in my regular life to my comedy life, I keep them separate. I do jokes and then if I have an issue, I deal with that in my regular life.

Why do you think you separate it?

Because comedy’s not real, it’s like this made up human innate response to, I don’t know – outside influences, it’s like this thing that we react to. If I sit down and I’m like – If I’m sad, like, I don’t know [pauses] if my brother gets hit by a car God forbid [quietly laughs]. okay, see I laugh but like I’ll write jokes about it but it’s not an outlet, it’s kinda messed up that I’m making jokes about it but it’s kinda like [pauses] I don’t know. Maybe it is an outlet. I change my answer! It is an outlet!

To some degree it’s an outlet, we’ll go with that.

I changed my answer, yep, ran round in a circle, ran back. [laughs]

Top three moments while doing comedy, the highlights?

This one’s hard, it’s hard for me to say because I don’t really have a top three moments, I have top three places.

Okay, we can do that.

I did comedy on shrooms! That was fun.

Where was it at?

It was on a rooftop in Brooklyn at a random rooftop party and the DJ was DJ-ing all night and he saw me preform and was like “oh you’re really funny, I got some shrooms.” But I didn’t know he had real “DJ shrooms”, there’s regular average human being shrooms then there’s DJ shrooms that make you mix sounds, you know what I’m saying? He can look at sounds and be like [dj noises and hand gestures] that’s shrooms. He was like “ah, take it.” He gave me a whole belly, like an 1/8th this big [gestures size]. I ate the whole thing, then I went onstage and um, the thing about shrooms and comed- there’s a lot of people that can do it, but I can’t do it. I could just do setups, no punchlines. It was kind of like “oh, dating is hard. [imitates freeze frame], you know, like, it is hard.” [freeze frames again], Next joke. There’s no punchline you just keep making setups. “Elephants are weird [pauses], yeah they are.” It was a very odd time.

What else do we have? We have the one of shrooms so that would be one of them.

Oh dude, I thought of one. I did a show in Bangor, Maine, in the middle of fucking nowhere in the boonies. Bangor, Maine is famous for Steven King’s home, his residency. All of his books were based in Bangor, right. It’s the middle of fuckin,’ redneck, white, nowhere land. It’s like snow, me and four other black comics. We go up there and first thing, I get to the door and its literally like all these families, like, white families sitting there and I’m like, shit, it’s gonna be bad [laughs], and then, the guy at the front is like [imitates accent] “aye man, if there’s ever a problem man, just to let you know, I got my gun with me.”, and he shows me his gun. He’s like “this right here man.” And I was like “ohhhh nooo” [panicked face] but then, we do the show, and everyone kills because I realized rednecks and black people? Same people. They loved it. We were up there like “yeah, we love guns! We love drugs!” and [the crowd] they were like “yeaaaaah!” and we were like “We like Trump!” [the crowd echos] “yeaaaah!” and everyone’s like “ahhhhh!”, everyone’s going crazy. Everyone had a great time. Everyone killed and then ended the night some guy did say the n-word we let it slide because it was like, fuck it. He said it in the right context. He was like “y’all n*gga’s are hilarious” and I was like, “okay, cool.” But I didn’t fight back because I was like, you know what? We’re outnumbered.

For obvious reasons, this is not a play by play we can win [laughs], gotcha.

And my last one? The first time I ever bombed onstage. I was in Asheville, North Carolina. Okay, so in Asheville, they had this thing where you do the open mic and whoever had the best set at the open mic got to do a fifteen-minute set. So, I had only done comedy for like a month but I got drunk and told my friends just keep writing my name in the bucket so I can win, right? So I won but I didn’t have fifteen minutes so I go up there and I had printed out all these jokes and I was so nervous I did about like three minutes and it was just - I kept bombing, I kept bombing.

The problem was- so when I first-, I had this dumb joke a long time ago. I had this thing called a “whiskey salad” where I like to have a whiskey salad. It’s basically where you pour whiskey in a salad, and you throw away the green stuff. It’s a dumb joke but this guy at the bar loved it he was like “here man, I’ll buy you shots.” So, the second time I came for my fifteen-minute set he bought me five shots Jameson in a row. I’d never drank Jameson, so, I got fucked up. So, I was really, really, drunk and I was onstage I was bombing so badly so I couldn’t even stand up. I bombed so badly, that I was supposed to do fifteen-minutes; in five, I literally threw my notebook walked off stage started screaming and had a panic attack and I had to get my buddy to choke me out, it’s a true story. He’s like a jujitsu guy and I was like “I can’t, I can’t get my mind to calm down, I’m freaking out. Like, can you choke me out?” and he was like “I don’t wanna do that.” And I was like “Please do it!” and then he puts me in a chokehold for like ten minutes? I knock out and then I wake up and the I was like “I feel fine.” If you’re ever panicking, put yourself in a chokehold.

When is your next show, if any?

I will tell you the shows in the future so they can come to those:

On Thursday, April 4th, I’m in Connecticut. Friday, Saturday, and Friday midnight shows, old man hustle comedy club. On Saturday I’m doing a show in Brooklyn, it’s on my story on Instagram @Myles Toe follow me. Sunday I’m doing CoC which is like a comedy fight club and then at 10 pm old man hustle again for this show called “elite art only” it’s this black show at old man hustle comedy club amazing show, hosted by Eric Andre and –, not Eric Andre the guy you know, there’s another Andre Myrie (Gas Digital) this girl named Princess Gohan (NYCF) she’s a former stripper and now she’s reformed Christian comic, not the Christian part buts she does the comedy I don’t know why I said that, too much information on my part.

And then on Monday I think I’m doing Broadway comedy club I’m not sure either comedy in Harlem but if this comes out on the 23rd, in three weeks on April 29th, I will be back in Connecticut doing 30 minutes at the elbow room so you guys can come up to that, I mean this magazine is based in the U.K. right?

Do you think you’ll do comedy forever?

Yeah dude. Oh! I’m thinking about writing a play I can’t tell you what about but I’m gonna write a play.

Oh okay, what about?

I can’t tell you. I’m gonna write a play and I had this idea for a long time ago I saw my buddy do a play in New York and I was like this is great and I was like I’m gonna write one but ahhh I kinda wanna fucking tell you but I don’t know if I can tell you.

Give me a general gist, give me a logline for it.

What’s a logline?

For those who don’t know me I’m also a screenwriter a logline is if you can sum up the whole thing in about one or two sentences.

Okay, I have the title, it’s called “The West Play Ever”. It’s the life and times of Kanye West.

Okay, interesting is it going to be comedic, dramatic, a tragedy?

It’s gonna be – just imagine if Kanye was kanye his entire life from birth to now, like every moment he is just being himself like coming out the womb he’s like “haaaa!” he’s just like comin’ out “I wanna be the docta’” he just like births himself like that’s how how Kanye is I wanna make like old school kanye where he was super high confident, super arrogant and like him going throughout every part of his life. Just imagine him, I don’t know, little league and he’s like, “nah fuck that I wanna go to the MLB” and he just makes it you know what I mean, I just wanna exaggerate every part of kanye west ‘cuz kanye west is my favorite artist, producer, musician of all time so I wanna do like a funny comedic play about kanye west called “west play ever” it’s already copyrighted so if you try to steal it I will sue you.