Kat Harlton
Vancouver-based comedian Steev Letts, recently released his loud, hilarious, and self-deprecating debut comedy album, ‘Burger Queen’, with the “Comedy Here Often?” label on February 20th, 2020. Letts says it was his family and early childhood experiences that led him down the comedy path, “I come from a really funny family. My aunts, my cousins, my uncles have always been funny, and my grandfather when I was little always seemed like the most beloved person in the family and he was also the funniest. So I just kind of made that connection at a young age, that if you want love, be funny. When I was in kindergarten, there was a kid who was funnier than me, and he used to make the girls laugh hysterically in a way that I never could and it just made me so insanely jealous, and I’ve always sought to just be the funniest person in the room. The funny part of that is, now that I do stand-up and comedy, I’m constantly surrounded by people who are much funnier than me.
Signed to 604 Records’ comedy label imprint Comedy Here Often?, Letts shares it took a few years to build a name for himself, before starting work on his debut album, “Out in Vancouver we have a really amazing label 604 Comedy Here Often?, and they are really actively searching for talent in and around Vancouver. I built a pretty reasonable name for myself in Vancouver over the last two years and I got the attention of a guy name Kevvy whose produced most of their comedy albums, so he got me a meeting with 604 and then it became a matter of figuring out which material to put on it. I was lucky last summer, that I got booked for a bunch of Pride shows and that allowed me to practice the hour of material and get down timing. We then recorded it at Yuk Yuk’s during Vancouver’s Gay Pride last summer and then it was six months of sort of tinkering the audio part of it, and figuring out the art direction we wanted to go in and shooting the cover, all of that kind of stuff.”
Letts won Vancouver’s Funniest Amateur Comic contest in 2016, won the 2018 Vancouver Yuk Off Comedy Competition and the 2019 Vancouver Comedy Award for breakout artist of the year. He has performed on showcases for Just For Laughs, JFL Northwest and the Winnipeg Comedy Festival. Currently signed with Yuk Yuk’s, Letts has also headlined a number of Pride shows across British Columbia this past summer. Lett’s says he looks too comics from his early years as influences, “The first comic that really blew my head off was Chris Rock for his special Bigger and Blacker, and then Dave Chappelle. Picture all us kids in rural British Columbia listening to hip hop and watching Chappelle show, it was such a cultural force when it came out, that was a huge influence. I’m influenced and inspired by everyone, whether it be local or big name level. Hannah Gadsby was such a big deal, and that kind of changed things the past couple of years.”
When asked if he had any advice for emerging artists, Letts says it’s all about practice, “Just try it, the only way to get better at it is by doing it. They say it takes 10,000 hours to become an expert at anything, and in stand-up you’re going to be doing that in 5 minute increments, so just get cracking would be my only advice. The cardinal rule is, you can get away with anything if it’s funny. You can take any subject, but as we always say, don’t reach down. Present it in a way that sort of everyone feels in on it, I think that’s the key.”
For more on Steev please visit: https://www.steevletts.com