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 Rene Fuentes, a Long Island native residing in Brooklyn, NY. I also greatly appreciate that while on the clock he made time to let me interview him; the clicks and typing sounds that you hear are where that’s coming from.

So, for those who don’t know you, can you please introduce yourself with your full name?

Rene Fuentes.

Where are you from?

Long Island, NY.

What is your art?

I do standup comedy; I also run—I throw shows. I also feel like that's an art in itself too.

Can you tell us a little about the shows?

Um, well, I’ve been doing stand up for like six years, so I’ve been throwing shows for as long as I’ve been doing comedy, and it’s always, uh, they’re like music comedy shows, so I get like music acts and comedy-comedy acts and just combined the two.

Why would you say that’s different from, I guess, the regular comedy scene in New York at the moment?

Well, definitely not the only person who throws music-comedy shows, but uh, you know, I think it adds—it definitely adds a different flair to it than your typical, you know, just straight comedy show. I feel like everyone likes good live musical performances.

So, obviously, you’ve said you’ve been doing comedy for the last six years; if you weren’t doing comedy, now what would you be doing instead?

Um, I don’t know ‘prolly working in a warehouse or something. [laughs]

Interesting, why?

Uh, [pauses for a moment to think] I don’t know. I feel like comedy gave me a lot of like, [mouse clicks] confidence and like [mouse clicks] direction, so I feel like I have that, but I don’t really know what I’d do.

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

Oh yeah, absolutely.

Do expand? [laughs]

Uh, yeah, just because it’s, it’s I always, I’m always a person that, uh, processes things through like humor, so like traumatic events things like that, like I always try to make a joke out of it, you know. Um, so it’s given me tools to like process feelings better.

Top three moments in comedy if you can name them. Anything good, it can be anything good. I know there was a heckler guy you mentioned who was a little crazy at one of the shows.

Oh, that's—that’s like nothing though.

Yeah [laughs], well, any top three stand out moments, shall we say?

‘Prolly that first show I ever thrown just because it was really good it was just uh a warehouse that I used to sublease out in Huntington, LI and uh I didn’t know what to expect, it just yeah, I started doing comedy in August and I threw that first show like December so um obviously that and I’d say um the second would be during quarantine I had a backyard show um this was when the world was shut down it was like what I think September of 2020 so it was like after that first summer of quarantine and uh I – a lot of my endeavors had stopped and I still wanted to do standup and so did everybody, every comic I knew still wanted to do standup and they were trying to find ways to still do it so um in my parents backyard in long island, in Hempstead, Long island I uh – I drew – I put together a show a music comedy show and um I had a Mark Normand come out and he’s a pretty famous comedian right now so um that was pretty cool ‘cuz I had like eighty come to that show and this was during quarantine like covid when it just started so this was super not allowed and it was uh – it was it was just really cool I felt like really, you know proud of like accomplishing that.

Okay, yeah, no, that’s pretty cool. I think I saw like a couple of clips on your Instagram about that show.

Yeah, it was a couple years ago, so yeah, it’s a little far back, but yeah.

When is your next show, if anything?

I was supposed to do a show tonight, but I canceled ‘cuz I’m sick, but probably on Wednesday.

And what’s the name of the show?

Good people comedy.

And you produce that, right?

I co-produced that with my guy Sam Poznak.

Do you think you’re going to do comedy forever?

Yes.

Why?

'Cuz, um, my end goal in comedy isn’t based off of like being famous; it’s just I want to be good at comedy, and um, I just wanna—there's a—yeah, I just wanna be good at comedy. I wanna keep it going, so it’s just like, "Uh, I feel like when you’re tying your creative endeavors to like a monetary end goal like that, you know... you hold yourself; I guess you judge yourself more harshly on things and be like, “Oh, I’m two years into comedy; I don’t have a Netflix special yet; fuck this. You know I’m not going to do this anymore,” like I don’t feel like—that’s not the type, the timeline I’m on.

Right, so the timeline is not monetary, its more skill based?

That and also how good it makes you feel, like, y'know, I—it's like they’re my favorite thing to do so as long as I still feel that way, I’m going to keep doing it.

You obviously had told me about, like, this old Instagram page, which was like a doodling/art page. Tell (for the people who don’t know about dead doodles) a little about that and why you started it at the time.

Well, that was almost like ten years ago, and I think I only had it going for maybe two or three years. It was just—I used to work at a deli, so I would take orders, and we had a lot of scrap paper, so like when someone would come to the counter to order, there was a bunch of scrap paper right there, and um, I spent a lot of my time at that deli just drawing on those scrap papers, and I would draw like crazy things like my—at first, like, my boss would get annoyed and be like, "Yo, get back to work,” but then he’d see what I’m drawing, and he’d be like, "That’s actually really funny,” like he’d keep you know [bursts into laughter] It became something that was like, "What are you trying to– they were curious more about it than they were actually getting annoyed than telling me to stop.

So, I just drew a bunch of them, I kept them, and then I would just—eventually—just start posting them. And uh, that wasn’t anything like too crazy; I think, like I said, before stand-up, I was just uh, working at a deli and trying to figure out what I wanted to do with life, and then that was just—that obviously wasn’t it deaddoodles, but it was just, you know, a creative outlet.

Do you still draw now?

Not really; I mean, yes and no. I mean, I don’t doodle here and there in all the notebooks I have for standup; they all are half-written—I would say eighty percent—and then there’s like twenty percent doodles. I was definitely way better at it when I was younger because I worked on it a lot more, so I feel like when you don’t work on it, you kind of lose it a little bit.

If you had to choose between comedy and any regular job, aside from the warehouse, and it was gun to the head saying, “You can’t do comedy anymore,” what would you do?

And I can pick whatever job I want?

Yeah, any job you want, and it doesn't matter what the ranking is or whatever; you can just pick anything.

Um, I feel like I would do, um, hmm... I would like to be an event coordinator, I feel, which is kind of what I still do now with throwing shows, but I wanna like, run like, festivals and stuff like that, like set/stage design, things like that, kinda like the logistics of like keeping things going. I was always good at that when it came to running shows, so.

Would you do a festival with comedy and music and different arts, or would it be something completely different?

‘Prolly like comedy and music and stuff like that, different arts.

Well thank you so much, Rene, for giving me your time.

No worries; thank you for having me. I’m curious to see how it all turns out.