Mr. Clean
Redding-Based Comedian Dan McGowan…
Stand-up comedy has a well-established tradition of shock, transgression and language that would make your grandmother quietly excuse herself. Dan McGowan is not that guy.
McGowan, a 60-something Redding-based comedian, has built a career — a successful one, with television credits, national touring, corporate clients and a Dry Bar Comedy special — by doing something a significant portion of the comedy world considers mildly suspicious: keeping it clean.
“Clean comedy doesn’t mean you don’t have an edge,” he says. “It just means I deliver the jokes from a different angle.”
He would know. McGowan grew up watching and loving the comics who invented the form — Carol Burnett, Bob Newhart, Dick Van Dyke, Jonathan Winters, Joan Rivers, Phyllis Diller — performers who could level a room without a single word you couldn’t say on network television. It’s a craft he absorbed in his youth and never abandoned. When he started doing stand-up in Southern California, sharing bills with comics who favored what he diplomatically calls “the low-hanging fruit of vulgarity,” his decision was already made.
“I wanted to write material that was clever, clean and still could make people laugh,” he says. “I’m a Christian, and that environment shaped me. Clean comedy just felt natural.”
The road to Redding was not, it turns out, a straight line. McGowan spent years in Los Angeles doing what you do in Los Angeles — acting in commercials for McDonald’s, Chevrolet, Toyota and DISH-TV; picking up minor film roles; writing scripts; doing voiceover work. He appeared on NBC’s “Last Comic Standing” and TruTV’s “You Can Do Better.” He won the Branson Comedy Festival in 2009. He opened for Cheech Marin. He opened for the Pointer Sisters. He appeared on “The Gong Show” … twice.
Then his wife, Kathy — they’ve been married 43 years, a tenure that itself qualifies as a long-running act — felt called to Northern California. McGowan had spent 15 years in Denver working as a church music director, and around retirement age, Redding entered the picture.
“My wife is a nurse, and I was kind of winding down into semi-retirement,” he says. “Just twiddling my thumbs.”
This is where most people take up pickleball. McGowan took up comedy. Again.
When he looked around Redding’s comedy scene five years ago, he found about two bars with occasional open mic nights. For a city of nearly 100,000 people, this struck him as wrong.
“I was shocked by how underdeveloped the scene was,” he says. “I thought that was just crazy.” So he did something about it. He began teaching comedy classes. Out of those classes came comedians. Out of those comedians came shows. Out of those shows came more comedians, more shows and eventually monthly shows at the Riverfront Playhouse, one of Redding’s most beloved performance venues.
McGowan is careful to share the credit — “I am not a lone ranger in building the comedy scene here in Redding,” he insists — but he also acknowledges the counterfactual with characteristic dry honesty: “Without trying to sound like I’m putting feathers in my cap, I think if I were not here, we would not have a comedy scene in Redding.”
A project he points to with pride is Comedy Cares, a show he produced in January. It may have been his most personal act. The event raised awareness of Redding’s unhoused community — a cause he came to through a painful door.
“I have a son who has struggled for years with addiction to drugs, who lived on the streets for a while,” McGowan says quietly. “I used to be the guy who would look at people on the street and my inner voice would say, ‘Get a job, you lazy bum.’ But after living through it with my family, my heart just flipped.”
The show, held at the Redding Performing Arts Center, was free to attend. There was only one ask: Bring a donation for one of five local organizations working with Redding’s homeless population. He recruited seven or eight fellow comics to perform for free. They packed the place. “The audience was eager to learn more,” he recalls. “There was something deeper. It wasn’t just for entertainment.”
On August 22, McGowan hosts his monthly Clean Comedy Showcase at the Riverfront Playhouse — a show that doubles as a showcase for the community he’s been quietly constructing. Headlining is Clint Hudson, one of his former Comedy 101 students who has since been climbing stages all over the region. Also on the bill: comics Benjamin Cogan, Patrick Smith and James Mason, plus ventriloquist Marc Griffiths.
This is, in miniature, what McGowan has built: a pipeline. He teaches Comedy 101 at the Redding Performing Arts Center, a six-week course culminating in a live student showcase. He offers one-on-one coaching for newer comics and old pros alike. He’s a ghostwriter for speeches and corporate presentations and a script doctor for anyone who needs a joke but doesn’t know where to find one. He recently published “How to Build a Comedy Scene in Your Town,” available on Amazon.
“I get enormous joy out of watching my students get on stage and just kill it,” he says. “I know what it takes to craft a 20-minute set. It’s more work than it looks.”
He is also, at this stage of life, less interested in the spotlight than in the footlights he can hand to someone else. “I’m thankful that I’m at a place in my life now where I’m pushing away from making me the main focus,” he says, “and trying to make it more about how I can help these other comics who are up and coming.”
Years ago, McGowan wrote a country song that contained this memorable lyric: “It’s dreams that drive you crazy. But it’s crazy not to dream.” And he has spent his life living a crazy dream.
Not bad for a guy who was just twiddling his thumbs. •
Clean Comedy Showcase, August 22, 7pm
Riverfront Playhouse, 1950 California St., Redding
Tickets: www.riverfrontplayhouse.net
Dan McGowan’s comedy classes and coaching:
www.danmcgowan.com
Article Written by:
Al Olson loves culinary arts, adult beverages and hiking in the North State wilderness. You may find him soaking up the scenery at one of our area’s many state or national parks or sitting in a barstool sipping a cold locally brewed craft beer.
