The first time I ever met Zach Smith was in 2010, when we were introduced by a mutual friend at the Speakeasy right before he took the stage. We shook hands and I did what any insecure young comedian would do, and immediately tried to size him up based solely on his looks alone. He looked like Jake “The Snake” Roberts if he had time-traveled back to his early 20s and had somehow managed to take worse care of himself. Even though he had been doing comedy less than a year, Smith had the mannerisms of someone who had already given up. I couldn’t have been more wrong about him, though.
Smith was the first comic in Oklahoma City who I thought was really, genuinely funny. The rest of the comedians I had seen up to that point were funny, but they were doing material that was mass-consumable. They were telling pedestrian stories about marriage, divorce, kids, etc. — things I couldn’t relate to at the time. I understood that they were funny and respected them for it, but they all seemed older and kind of out of touch. Smith is probably the only comedian I know who has been performing for over five years yet has never told any kind of relationship joke. He was the first person in OKC I saw go on stage and tell jokes with obscure Star Wars references, and used puns so bad that they crossed over to the other side and were funny again. We were of the same generation and I understood the nostalgia when he would casually mention Xanga or Mrs. Doubtfire in his material. He is still, in 2015, the comedian in Oklahoma who can make me laugh the most in regular conversation.
There was short-lived Monday night comedy show in Bricktown back in 2011 that acted as a weekly contest. Comedians were encouraged to sign up to perform and bring their friends. After everyone performed, the crowd would vote on who they thought was the funniest. (I am explaining the rules here to reinforce the fact that if it were being judged by a single person, Smith would have won every week. But it always basically boiled down to who could bring the most friends to cheer for them, regardless of who was actually good or bad.) The first week this contest ever took place, I brought a lot of friends with me, and used every good joke I had, only to end up in a tie for first place. The tiebreaker was for me and the other comic to both go do another five-minute set using different material. I didn’t know what to use for my set because I had already told my best jokes. I looked over to Smith, who had performed his best jokes earlier in the evening, and asked him for help. He gave me a list of his “C-minus” jokes — material he didn’t deem good enough to try when he was on stage earlier in the night. I took them, told them, and won the contest. That’s how great his bad jokes are.
Smith has remained a constant in the OKC comedy scene over the last five years, and he even released his debut album, Scootch, last year. I asked him a few questions about comedy, Oklahoma City, and the Insane Clown Posse.
