Cheyenne native Brandt Tobler uses comedy to add a little light to the world in these troubled times

BY MIKE MORRIS
     
     It's 9:15 on a Wednesday night and Brandt Tobler is sitting in front of a camera. Dressed as Elvis. Singing Tracey Chapman.
     The video description on the Cheyenne-native comedian's Facebook Live stream simply reads "HEY BABY let's party!" with a call-in number below.
     What ensues next is a nearly three-hour marathon of uncontrolled mayhem and amusement that, for a fleeting moment,

Cheyenne native Brant Tobler is a comedian who lives in Denver. 

completely suspends the unfathomably heavy reality that we are all living through. The one that still feels like a horrible nightmare each morning when we open our eyes and sit up in bed, until it all sets in again.
     Right now, that's all distant trepidation.
     Comedians from all over the country call in. Tobler discusses the chemical properties and upsides of the medical application of Mad Dog 20/20 ("I've seen that shit permanently stain driveways. It fixed my molar!"). He trash talks a Patriots fan ("Oh yeah, you guys had a nice little run there for like a year or two. Don't make me hang up on you"). He makes inside jokes about Cheyenne (birthday parties at Roller City) and prefaces an ’80s pop song by proclaiming that it was written by Brandt's favorite music teacher at Deming-Miller (Grizzlies, represent!).
     At one point, a Los Angeles stand-up comedian who Tobler is friends with calls in and remarks on his ridiculous attire.
     "You're right. What kind of an asshole puts on an Elvis costume during a pandemic tragedy?" Tobler chides himself.
     "One who has been doing this for a long time," she laughs back.
     "For me, personally, laughter has gotten me through the toughest times in life," Tobler tells me during a phone interview earlier in the night. "I know there are people going through some really, really tough times and I just hope those couple of minutes of laughter can help take their minds off of it."
     Tobler really would rather not be doing this right now. He would rather be performing on stage at a comedy club. Or watching someone else perform. Or dining out in Denver with his girlfriend. Or spending time, actually in person, with his friends and loved ones.
     Just like all of us.
     "I just miss it so much," he pines. "I miss performing like crazy. I crave it. But what are you gonna do?"
     He carries on the comedian's role of keeping spirits lifted when things are bleak, although he, too, has had to grin and bear several big cancellations of shows that affect his livelihood and income.
Tobler was geeked about playing a sold-out gig at the Cheyenne Frontier Days Event Center that would have been held on March 26 in front of boatloads of friends, some of whom had still never seen him perform. But the world changed and so did his performing schedule.
     "At the time, I was disappointed," he tells me. "I was bringing some great comedians from Denver up with me and coming home to perform in Cheyenne is so special to me. Those shows are my favorite. But, knowing what we know now, it was the right call. There was just no way we could go through with it."
     Tobler is Cheyenne through and through (he reps a “Surf Wyo” shirt with his Elvis getup), so there's no doubt it comes from the heart when he says it was painful to cancel. He spent a large portion of his adult life in Las Vegas and Los Angeles and performing in entertainment capitals of the world. But he never once forgot about his hometown.
     "People out there thought it was crazy I saw a buffalo every day in my childhood," he laughs. "We had buffaloes and elk in Lions Park four blocks from my house. Who grows up around that? That's the kind of stuff people in those bigger cities love hearing about. It's just Cheyenne stuff."
     Now, with social distancing shaking up so many of the ways we seek out the diversion and levity we need, Tobler hopes he can continue to entertain his hometown in other ways. His book, “Free Roll,” is a hot item for reading while self-quarantining as he's filling bunches of orders from fans and friends.
     If you're new to Tobler, it's a hilarious read, and he's willing to give special treatment to anyone who orders it from him directly ("I'll autograph it, personalize it, you name it. Jjust email me and you'll get it in the mail").
     He's also taking his podcast — “The 31 — to new heights.
     "All of my famous friends always tell me they're too busy to come on. Now they have no excuse because we both know they'd be lying," he laughs, noting that comedian and actor Brad Garrett was on last week.
     He's also got Facebook content (“Mr. Tobler's Neighborhood” and his off-the-wall Live sessions) if you still need to get your fill.
     "I'm still working really hard," he says. "My girlfriend and I go out for walks, but she's tired of hearing my dumb jokes. So I do the podcast every day and it's keeping me creative. People are going to want and need comedy, now more than ever."
     On the same day that Tobler goes live on Facebook, the death toll of COVID-19 in the United States approaches 15,000, all in the last six weeks. Roughly 10 percent of the U.S. workforce is now unemployed. Jobs and lives all over the world have been — and continue to be — turned upside down. We're isolated from our friends, our families.
     Every trip to a grocery store is filled with apprehension. Some of us are flinching like we're getting out of the way of an oncoming bus wired to explode if it goes under 50 — just because we accidentally acted on the impulse to scratch our noses.
     It's a terribly difficult time right now, and it's hard to get away from it. We're stuck in our homes, social media timelines are depressing, we've already streamed too many shows, sports are canceled (now we'll never know if Hofstra could have won it all). And — on a much, much more real note — some of us are being directly and seriously impacted by this. And, if not, many of us know someone who is.
     So, Tobler — gigless for the foreseeable future — digs a bit deeper to keep laughing, even when it hurts."I don't have shit to do tomorrow, probably not for the rest of my life. So I'm just going to hang out with my friends," he quips, extending the Facebook Live session long into the night.
     That means playing DJ for the rest of the evening with the caveat that he'll only play 20-second clips of the songs, ever conscious of music copyright laws. This results in Tobler hilariously — and repeatedly — getting interrupted by YouTube ads while trying to pull up the next song ("They just keep coming and coming.  Damn it!").
     It's a steady flow of Notorious B.I.G., Salt-N-Pepa, Warren G, Tupac, TLC, Blink 182, Chingy,  2 Live Crew (no, really), Limp Bizkit (no, really — "I used to watch TRL every single day, for like 40 weeks in a row, to get this song to  No. 1"), Ram Jam. It just gets better and better as the night gets later and later ("The kids are all asleep, we can say lots of bad words, you guys. You can even say the F-word!").
     "I'm just here for the Kenny Loggins," one friend writes in the comments.
     "I used to listen to (Loggins) when I would run stairs at Frontier Park in the middle of the night when I was 24," Tobler replies. "I was training for the NBA. That shit got me pumped!"
     It's all over the place and it goes on and on. And people keep watching. I keep watching. Because it's a riot, a deluge of mindless fun. And it's what I need right now. My knuckles are bleeding from washing my hands so often and my nerves have been shot for an entire month so, yes, watching a bearded man in an Elvis getup, in front of a static backdrop, turn nonsense into nonstop comedy is quite welcomed.
     2020 actually hasn't been a bad year for Tobler. He's continued to push his career forward.
     "Technically, I was the last headliner at Comedy Works if they never open again," he laughs, referring to the beloved Denver club. "I was supposed to host that weekend and Bobby Lee canceled, so they asked me if I could just headline all four shows. It was something I always dreamed of doing, having a full weekend at Comedy Works."
     He also opened for Tom Segura at the beginning of March. And even though his performing schedule has stalled — he was sometimes performing four or five times a week before things changed — and he's not performing on a stage ("I'm still writing jokes, but I can't perform them, so I don't know if they're good or if they suck"), he's still staying finding ways to stay positive.
     "During this time, I'm getting a lot of emails that are like, 'Hey, the podcast is really helping me and keeping me going. It's taking my mind off things and giving me a chance to away from all the craziness happening around us,” he says. "That's the best part of being a comedian."
     "It'll come back, we'll get through this," he adds,  noting that he's optimistic his Cheyenne show will be rescheduled when it is safe again. "That's just part of being a comedian. There are so many ups and downs. But it's really not even a job for me. It's just something I truly love to do."
     It's two and a half hours into the stream now. The sunglasses haven't come off and the grin is perma-stuck on his face. There's no telling how stupidly hot it is under the Elvis hat and headphones. The energy never wanes.
     Tobler's looking skyward and he is ether, grooving to Whitney Houston like he's basked in the neon glow of the Cadillac Ranch dance floor. Ginuwine’s "Pony" comes on next and now he's ribbiting like a frog.
     At this point, I really don't even know what in the hell is going on anymore. And  in spite of the fact that I would never tune in for a Facebook Live session the length of Titanic under any other circumstances, it's great.
     Everyone is having a blast, Tobler's just ad-libbing and goofing around, and it's Coors Light in a plastic cup at 11:35 in the beer tent at Frontier Days, where it tastes like top-shelf Cristal. It's Joe Glenn playing "Ragtime Cowboy Joe" on the piano circa 2004. It's CB Potts, it's Cupid's, it's the Capital Lumber jingle.
     I don't really know what I'm trying to say, but its this intangible, familiar, scattershot randomness you never knew you missed joking about. But, in the year 2020, you certainly do.
And that's why the whole virtual room, everyone who comes and goes, is raising their drinks and thanking Tobler for helping life feel normal, for helping them find something — anything — to congregate and laugh about again.
     "It's just a huge group of friends laughing and making jokes," he says, noting that as crazy as this new world we're living in may be, "It's just like hanging out again,  just in separate cities all over the country. That's kind of what everyone needs right now.
     "Humor is just important, man. When my stupid jokes help people take their minds off something heavy and painful, it's the best part of this job. Whether it's through me or someone else, I hope people in Cheyenne, in Wyoming, everywhere can find some laughter.
     “And, when it's finally over, be ready to come back out to a show. Because there will be a lot more laughs waiting."
     Tomorrow we'll all wake up feeling the same ashen grogginess, to the same cruel reality that we have been living in. But perhaps we'll do so each day with a sliver more hope because our social distancing efforts, together, are helping reduce the spread of this virus, maybe even more effectively than what was first projected.
     It's a long road yet, but our sacrifices, together, are hopefully inching us closer to some sense of normalcy. Because, even in this somber isolation, we're getting through this together.
     And those of us who were on that Facebook Live stream — together — we'll also all wake up feeling a little lighter. Because we spent nonsensical hours laughing our asses off, together, with the great Brandt Tobler as our sensei of ’90s club bangers.
     HEY BABY let's party, indeed.

     Mike Morris describes himself as guy you might see walking around Cheyenne in pink pants. He, too, is a Deming-Miller alum.

     (NOTE: Brandt Tobler is a standup comedian from Cheyenne who lives in Denver. If you are interested in purchasing his book, “Free Roll,” you can email him at brandt@brandttobler.com or message his Facebook page to receive an autographed, personalized copy.)