By JOHN BURNETT By JOHN BURNETT ADVERTISING Tribune-Herald staff writer It’ll be a laughfest, local style when The Jose Dynamite Comedy Tour blows up the Big Island. The tour, emceed by Waimea comedian AAron Sheehan, with Hilo comedian Nehemiah Nihipali,
By JOHN BURNETT
Tribune-Herald staff writer
It’ll be a laughfest, local style when The Jose Dynamite Comedy Tour blows up the Big Island.
The tour, emceed by Waimea comedian AAron Sheehan, with Hilo comedian Nehemiah Nihipali, Kona comedian Kristen Sprague and Honolulu comedian Jason Lamb, aka Pepper, the Misunderstood Evil Genius, hits the Lighthouse Pub in Hawi on Friday, June 7, and Margarita Village in Hilo on Saturday, June 8.
Doors open at 6:30 p.m. and showtime is at 7 both nights. Admission is $10 advance, $15 door for both shows and only ages 21 and over will be admitted. For ticket information on the Hawi show, call 889-5757, and for the Hilo show, call 961-3290.
Jose Figueras is a Honolulu radio account executive and advertising copywriter by day, and, as Jose Dynamite, comedian by night. He’s a known commodity among local comedy fans, having opened for Augie T. for years. He’s also shared the bill with mainland headliners such as Jim Gaffigan, David Spade, Eddie Griffin and Rex Navarrete, but this will be his first foray as a headliner.
“It’s kinda scary and kinda exciting for me at the same time, because I’ve been an opening act for Augie for a number of years, almost a decade,” Figueras said. “I’ve been to the Big Island a number of times, but this is really the first time I’m doing my own show here, so I’m looking forward to it.
“It’s fun to take the shows to the small towns, places like Hawi, and meet the people you make laugh. Most people would rather go to the big cities and we like to go to places people don’t generally.”
Big Island radio listeners are also familiar with him due to his Monday morning segment on KWXX-FM titled “Joke of the Day with Jose.”
Sheehan, who’s originally from Boise, Idaho, has been doing comedy for six years and is trying to get a regular comedy scene started on the Big Island. He hosts a show monthly, every second Friday, at The Script in Kona.
“It’s an open mic and I bring in a headliner, somebody that’s not really big, but who can do about 45 minutes,” he said. “We had our first show last month. We had about 100 people show up. We’ve got about 10 slots for people to try out and do comedy and we had 12 people show up for open mic. I was afraid we’d have only two or three people show up.
“We had a couple of people show up who had done comedy before and a couple who hadn’t but had good joke structure and they were pretty good. And we had a couple who were pretty scary.”
Sheehan is hoping he’ll be able to expand the shows to other venues around the island.
“Live comedy’s so much better than watching it on Comedy Central,” he said.
While admission for the Jose Dynamite show is for 21 and over, both Figueras and Sheehan emphasized that the material will generally be rated PG-13.
“I don’t usually work clean, but I do when Augie T. comes to the island or Jose,” Sheehan said. “… I’m somewhere in between the shock comic and the clean.”
Both comedians also promised an entertaining time for those in attendance.
“This is gonna be so much fun,” Sheehan said. “The Hilo show will be a little bit bigger. I think there’ll be about 150 people. And the Hawi show is gonna be really tight, about 50 or 60 people, shoulder to shoulder. I love working those rooms. The ceiling’s only 8 feet or 9 feet tall and the laughter bounces off of the walls and everyone has a really close-knit time.”
Email John Burnett at jburnett@hawaiitribune-herald.com.
