Friday, April 9, 2004 | 8:31 a.m.
It's not exactly a trade secret that relationships between stand-up comedians and comedy-club owners are often strife ridden. Though these employees and employers are involved in a funny business, creative and financial disagreements -- as well as a slew of others commonly found at most workplaces -- do arise, causing the sides to butt heads.
It would be tricky, however, for Russ Rivas to try and head butt himself.
The comic stepped over to the dark side in 1996 and became a club owner when he purchased Laff's Comedy Club in Albuquerque. Despite overseeing all aspects of the club's daily operations, he maintains a separate stand-up career and takes to the road more than a dozen times each year for shows, including a gig at Riviera Comedy Club through Sunday.
"It's almost kind of what I was born to do," Rivas explained of performing during a recent call from Albuquerque. The former Army sergeant-turned-car-dealership mechanic began his comedy career in 1992 on a dare during an open-mike night at a club in Colorado Springs, Colo. In the years following, he built a "fish-out-of-water"-styled act and worked his way up the comedy ranks, for a time shticking 51 weeks out of each year.
That hectic schedule changed once Rivas and his wife, Tammy, decided to have children (the couple have a 6-year-old daughter and a 5-year-old son).
"I think the most important thing in the world is your family, and if I had to sacrifice going out on the road and cut back my touring schedule, which was very lucrative and a lot of fun," he says he at least wanted to "still be involved in the business I was familiar with, making a living and to be able to get my kids out of school every day."
Rivas had previously performed at Laff's. Though he "never had the aspiration to buy a club," he says he'd long been interested in the business side of comedy and was friends with the club's original owner, Gary Bynum. "I looked at him and he was doing financially really well ... I said, 'I don't mean to seem rude or anything, but you don't seem a lick smarter than I am, you just made better decisions.' "
When the opportunity to buy Laff's presented itself, Rivas took it -- not that he knew much about operating a comedy club.
"Everything I've done in my entire life, if I can't pick up a book on how to do it, then I'll ask someone who's been in my position. There's no sense reinventing the wheel," he says.
What Rivas is knowledgeable about are "the concerns of some of the comedians. When they're coming in, they want a certain amount of money, and I know what the budgets are, and I know what the supply and demand is, and that there's only so much give and take in that situation ... It's their end of the business, and mine as well, to try to think that you should be farther ahead than where you are, and I guess that's what makes people strive to continue writing, to continue touring."
Still, playing the part of fellow comic some days versus the boss on others can be "pretty weird," he says. On the road, 42-year-old Rivas (who rarely takes the stage at his own club) often performs on the same bill as comedians who work at Laff's.
"Some guys can just take it as ... 'All right, he's a comic there, and now he's at the club and he's the owner,' " he explains. Among the comedians who have played at Laff's under Rivas' watch are such heavy-hitters as Damon Wayans, George Lopez and Paul Rodriguez, as well as Vegas frequenters Jeff Burghart and Chris Fonseca.
"A lot of the comics are like rock 'n' roll bands," Rivas says. "You'll see beginning comics doing covers of others' material. And then some people start writing pretty original (material), but they still do covers. The people who really get ahead and who can build a following ... pretty soon they're using their own voice. It takes some people longer than others to find their voice and it's a hard process."
Performing his own act at comedy clubs around the country allows Rivas to size up his business competition.
"I always learn because you can watch and see things and go, 'Oh, that's a really good idea,' " he says. "If you see something that maybe you wouldn't do or maybe you thought about doing but it's not working where you're at, then you can go, 'Well, he saved me a lot of time and money by trying it for me.' "
He's also understanding of the "bad rap" bestowed on some club owners by comedians. "There's some of them who deserve it, just like some of the comics deserve a bad rap, too," he says, speculating about one potential source of animosity: "You would think going into being a comic that there would be no rules and it's like being a clown in the circus. But I'll bet you any money that every clown that's ever been in the circus hated the ringmaster."
Interestingly enough, he contends that being the Boss Man has breathed new life into his own comedy material. During his strictly stand-up days, "I lost touch with being a working person," Rivas contends, "and with that you really can't relate to an audience because you're living (in the hotel) where you're working 45 minutes a night; making more money than you ever have; your golf game is wonderful; your tan is great ... So you sort of start losing touch with the reality of how to work a plunger or how to change a dirty diaper."
Unfortunately, running the show isn't nearly as much fun as headlining it. "The scales are way unbalanced, but I always honor my commitments: I would 10-times rather be a stand-up than a club owner," he says. "But either way, I'd be a Republican because I was employed."
Out for laughs
A couple of corrections to last week's Laugh Lines are in order: The occupation of comic Ron Shock's wife, Rhonda, was incorrectly stated. She is the accountant for the Boys and Girls Club of Henderson. Also, Shock's weeklong gig at The Comedy Stop at The Trop, which began Monday, concludes on Sunday.
Additional dates for "Beacher's Madhouse" ("Comedy" has been dropped from the title) at The Joint at The Hard Rock Hotel have been announced. The show will be staged May 29; June 5, 12 and 19; and July 3, 10, 17 and 24.
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