Matt Rife shouldn’t need to solicit fans. At this point, the not-quite 30-year-old comedian is a full-on celebrity with a name (and honestly, a face) that invites tabloid coverage. Like, when he recently started dating a fitness model.
His past two Netflix specials debuted in the Top 10 on the streaming service and his last tour sold more than 600,000 tickets in less than 48 hours, a feat that broke Ticketmasker’s website and put him in a category solely alongside Taylor Swift. His current tour, Stay Golden, stops April 12 at the Save Mart Center in Fresno and Rife wants you there, even if you’re not sure about his comedy. “I guarantee you’ll have a great time,” Rife said in a phone conversation with The Fresno Bee last week. Rife has been in the business for nearly half his life. He moved to Hollywood at age 17 and got his start as the youngest member of MTV improv comedy show “Wild ‘n Out.” But he earned a following through the social media app Tik Tok, where he became known for posting videos of himself riffing off of the crowds each night. This crowd work became his signature — even if it was “totally unintentional.” He hadn’t even put on his first special and was still working on his first hours worth of material. But he filmed his show every night (still does) and knew he could post the crowd work without worrying about giving away the rest of the show. “This is something that is new and refreshing,” he said. “It’s never going to be duplicated.” But it isn’t the show and, at this point, the crowd work is like a bonus feature, he said.
Rife has the entire hour written out and enumerated with the stories he wants to tell. Within those stories are moments where he can engage with the crowd. The trick, he says, is being able to switch between the two, to wrangle the audience back into the material he’s written. So, he follows the script, but he isn’t as air-tight word-for-word as some other comedians. “I’m very preset in the show,” he says. “I like to leave room for a little bit of wiggle room.”
Is Matt Rife the new Dane Cook?
Rife considers his comedy as interactive storytelling in the vein the comics he loves: stand-ups like Dave Chappelle and Ricky Gervais.
But his popularity, good looks and embrace of social media have earned him comparisons to another comedian: Dane Cook. Cook became massively popular in the early 2000s by fully-embracing Internet culture at a time when few comedians were. He famously spent $25,000 in savings to build his own site and was big on MySpace, where he had more than 1.5 million friends. “I got my balls busted for a long time when I first started the Web site,” Cook told The Associated Press in 2006. “Those same comics that were busting on me were coming back to me five years later and asking `Hey, how do I set up a MySpace?”’ Rife takes the comparison as a compliment. “It’s nice to be known for something,” he said. And Cook is one of the greatest comedians on the planet. Those who don’t like him are just being haters. Of course, Rife realizes he is many people’s first introduction to stand-up comedy. But his popularity, and that of others on social media, just means more people are seeing comedy on a grand scale. And there are billion people on the planet. Even if each of them were only allowed to like one comedian at a time, there would be no shortage of fans. He hopes his shows activates the passive comedy fans to see more stand-up. “We’re all helping each other,” he said.
“Every single comedian is different. And you may have a way more eclectic taste in comedy than you think.”
He still does comedy club drop-ins
Of course, for all the popularity, Rife isn’t just out playing arenas. He still performs at comedy clubs and basement shows in his hometown. That’s Rhode Island, for those not up on the tabloid news. He bought property there last year. “The whole state is hometown,” he said. While word is getting out, these shows aren’t advertised and are done with the express purpose of testing jokes in front of people who might not be fans. “You don’t always want to perform to people who already like you.”
Time for some Fresno sight seeing?
He won’t be doing any drop-in shows in Fresno.
The scheduling won’t allow it. He may carve a few extra days out of his schedule for certain cities (he likes touring the museums in Washington D.C., for example), but that’s a rarity these days. “I really, like, fly in and do the show, and fly out,” he says. After Fresno, his tour heads to the Viejas Arena in San Diego. The last time Rife remembers being in in town, he was 19 years, doing an opening slot for the late Ralphie May. He remembers the crowds (May’s crowds being what they were), but not much else. So, unlike fellow comedians Bill Burr or Joe Rogan, Rife doesn’t doesn’t have a favorite stop-in spot in Fresno. But that’s something he may ask the crowd. “I’m open to suggestions.”
