How to go
What: Jeff Foxworthy/Larry the Cable Guy
When: 5 and 8 p.m. Saturday, March 12
Where: Taft Theatre, 317 E. Fifth St., Cincinnati
Cost: $42.50-$199
More info: 513-232-6220 or www.tafttheatre.org
Despite the Blue Collar Tour and being friends since 1987, this is the first time that Jeff Foxworthy and Larry the Cable Guy (aka Daniel Whitney) have toured strictly as a duo. They stop at the Taft Theatre in Cincinnati this weekend.
“(Jeff) has been a great friend and mentor,” said Larry, speaking from his home in Nebraska. “We’ll each go out and do our bit, and then we’ll go out together for the second half of the show and do a chat session with the crowd. They’ll ask us questions, and we have no idea what they’ll ask. That’s the fun part, because it’s a different show every night.”
The Larry the Cable Guy phenomenon is an interesting one. When he first broke through in the mid-2000s, he became as famous in certain parts of the country, particularly the South, as any A-list movie star, yet he was essentially ignored by the national media.
“Jeff told me a long time ago I would never get any accolades,” he said. “He told me that if you come from the South and have a Southern accent, they’ll think you’re a David Duke follower or just an idiot. That’s just how they brand you. He was right. He was nominated for a Grammy one year for a CD that sold five million copies, and he lost to a guy who put out a CD of (comedian) Jonathan Winters’ answering machine tapes.”
Larry said he’s undisturbed by critical animosity (or indifference). For him, vindication came in the form of fan support, which has led to him owning a 180-acre farm in Nebraska and a large, welcoming audience in every part of the country he visits.
“I find that people everywhere like to laugh,” he said. “I’ve won the Billboard stuff, the awards that fans vote on. I used to worry about it, but once my career got going, all that mattered was that my fans got it.”
Larry doesn’t worry that his “redneck” persona might affirm stereotypes about the South and Midwest.
“I think most people understand what I’m doing,” he said. “It’s a stereotype of one guy, a small minority of what I grew up seeing. I grew up with cattle guys, and out of 50 guys, there were three that acted like that. They were good guys who would give you the shirt off their back, and I always liked to say that when it came to politics, they made great points, they just didn’t use the right words. I never expected to tour with it. I started doing it on radio, the theater of the mind. People liked it in the 1980s and ’90s, you know, back when we had freedom of speech, where if you didn’t like something you moved on instead of trying to sue or kill you.”
Nevertheless, Larry has never been a political comic, and except for the occasional crack about Donald Trump’s hair being “made in China,” politics remains absent from his act, election year or no. With a group of friendly acquaintances that include the liberal urbanite comic, Lewis Black (who wrote the introduction to his 2006 book, “Git-R-Done!”), Larry manages to be politically aware without being in a constant state of rage.
“Life is too short,” he said. “I’m a conservative, a Christian who believes God is in charge of everything, but nothing offends me. (Lewis and I) are opposites both in politics and as comics. I’m a one-liner comic, and he’s not, but we know how to get along. A lot of people can’t separate that.”
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