Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: RSS
Today we have Dobie Maxwell better known as Mr. Lucky on the show today! I hear Dobie is headed to the National Speakers Association. What’s he’s learned there after being a comedian after all these years that sometimes as a speaker there is a comma in his pay check. Dobie is wondering where any symbol at all has been in his pay check over the years. I explain the difference between speakers and comedians is a speaker gives you something to think about after. I don’t really have message after all these years except maybe don’t kill anybody.
Dobie shares that his message to everyone is whatever he’s done in his life take that do the opposite and success will follow. Next we talk about an upcoming book Dobie has coming out! Dobie shares that the book is about a situation between him and his best friend from childhood. Dobie’s friend was the head of security at a bank and he robbed it, twice. He tried to frame Dobie for one of the robberies so Dobie ended up having to wear a wire and have his friend confess that he had done it. He went to court and put his friend away for 6 years in prison. I asked him how long ago this all took place. Dobie shared that it happened 20 years ago and the day he got out of prison was the day he was starting a new radio job.
I asked Dobie about how he got into comedy, he started in 1983 in Milwaukee but he moved to Chicago in 1985. He shares how easy it was to get bookings every week around that time. Which reminded me of my experiences and I tell people all the time if I had to start doing comedy today I don’t think I would have stuck with it. I was on the road after a year and a half to two years. I look back and people were getting punished every night and somebody was enjoying it I certainly wasn’t. Dobie goes on the share the origins of the title “Mr. Lucky” and all the situations in life that led up to adopting that name. We transition to talking about Dobie’s upbringing and how he was raised by his grandfather. I share about my experiences parenting and how I never got stupider in life than when my kids got hormones. They just woke up one day and the wondered how I managed to make it from day to day. Dobie and I talk about our up bringing and the differences in our childhoods. We share the dynamic of the both of us being being the baby in the family. We talk about how being the last child probably led to comedy and me being on the road 50 weeks out of the year in the 80 when I met my wife.
I then ask Dobie to share about how he’s not teaching comedy at a college, that came from a freak accident where he drove over live power lines he got in a big account and had to lear to walk gain. Someone wrote an article about the incident and a college saw the article and offered him a job while he recovered. He mades it clear to all his students that his class isn’t a class where they can learn to be funny but he was encourage and gave a few tools that have helped him and he’s able to share all of his short comings as lessons for others to learn from.