Comedy - Comedian Evan Fowler looms on the brink of a breakthrough

It’s one thing for famous comics to win ovations from their fans at music venues, or for experienced stand-ups to get laughs from aficionados at comedy clubs. But the real test of a talented comedian is to kill at a half-empty bar on a Tuesday night before an audience of disinterested drinkers.

At one of Limerick Junction’s recent comedy Tuesdays, a pall hung over the crowd to the visible frustration of the first stand-up. The comedians in the lineup began griping at people coughing or getting texts, or stopped their sets cold to review their notebooks for their new jokes. Then Evan Fowler stepped out.

“People a little morose in here?” asked the lanky, curly haired comic, betraying no stage fright. He launched into a high-octane story about being a waiter and serving an unruly family, including a boy who repeatedly drawled, “I WANT FISH! I WANT FISH!” until Fowler snapped “I WANT FISH!” back in his face. “And that’s how I was fired from Chili’s!” he said above the resounding laughter. “But I hear Inserection’s usually hiring for the room in the back with the hole in the wall.” Fowler performed longer than most of the comics that night, but his delivery was so confident, ingratiating, and full of surprises, his set seemed shorter.

At a Buford Highway pho house the next day, Fowler acknowledges that he was never actually canned from Chili’s, but did get fired from a different restaurant 10 years earlier. “I’m an anecdotal, personal observation comedian, telling stories that may or may not be true,” he says. “I try very hard not to make my set about the awkwardness in the room. The more you remark on the awkwardness, the more awkward it gets. I try to be infectious: ‘I think this is hilarious! I’ve got to tell you this!’”

At 30, Fowler projects a bad-boy fondness for drugs and strippers, at least as comedic subjects, and stands out among his local peers as a high-energy troublemaker. When Fowler recounts how he once snuck into a fancy auction to steal some delicious-smelling crab cakes, then almost accidentally purchased an antique carousel, he comes across like a pothead Huckleberry Finn. Named one of AirTran Magazine’s “Top Comedians under 30” in 2011, Fowler has a vague intention to move to Los Angeles some day, but is currently content to stay in Atlanta. “My next goal is to get on the road. I’ve been performing primarily at the same bars for three years,” he says. “Comedy’s an endurance trial. It’s all about feeling comfortable on stage. Everyone says that you have to be on stage more nights per week than you’re not on stage, for five to 10 years.”

A native of Dunwoody who attended the Connecticut School of Broadcasting, Fowler began doing stand-up three years ago at the Star Bar’s open mic night. “When I first started doing comedy, I wrote five new minutes of material every week. Then I got lazy,” he says. Like many stand-ups now, he uses Twitter as another venue for his comedy. “I’m actually pretty proud of my Twitter account. I like short jokes, but I’m not the kind of comic who can sell a lot of short jokes.” Jokes via @ThatEvanFowler often exaggerate his wild man image through lines like “Have you ever been killing a bunch of cats and you think ‘Why am I even doing this’ and ‘I probably shouldn’t have huffed all that Freon’?”

Currently his work mostly consists of stand-up comedy and independent film projects he creates through his production company, StoneCarter Media, with his writing partner, director Sam Carter. Carter and Fowler are currently editing their first feature film, Good Grief Suicide Hotline. “It’s about an altruist who, through happenstance, ends up doing community service at a suicide hotline,” Fowler says. “Everyone else who works there is a horrible sociopath, and through working there, he starts to become one of them. It’s about the death of idealism.” But funny, of course.

Fowler points to Bill Burr and Norm Macdonald as two of his comedic influences, and traces his love of comedy to his mother, who played George Carlin albums for him as a kid. He says, “It was always the only thing I wanted to do, but I forgot about it for years. Now, it’s all I do. It’s the worst decision I ever made! I used to have friends! I used to have women!” On the plus side, Atlanta’s bars are now happier places.