We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Virginia Jones a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Alright, Virginia thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. The first dollar you earn is always exciting – it’s like the start of a new chapter and so we’d love to hear about the first time you sold or generated revenue from your creative work?
There’s a quote about being a professional comedian by Jerry Seinfeld: Just like sex work, the first time you do it for money, you’re a pro. My first time earning money as a comedian was on a road gig in Medford, Oregon at a bar called Ground Zero, which is now closed and which received no Yelp reviews during its existence.
My friend Keith Wallan booked me to feature for him, I think I might have been doing comedy for a year or two.
There was a free buffet at seven and the comedy started at eight o’clock. I remember that the audience had a large crossover with the people who wanted a free buffet, and that the stage for the comedy also had a stripper pole on it. After the show at 10, there was a dance party, so during the last fifteen minutes of the headliner’s act, young people with rhinestones on their hoodies started streaming in.
I wore my favorite vintage dress and was prepared to perform for thirty minutes.
Bombing is too kind a term for what I did there. I could hear people breathing. I could hear their cells replicating. At one point I asked about the pole and a voice in the darkness called out “That’s where the pretty girls dance!”
But even still! I was so proud of that hundred bucks, I was excited about the crappy hotel room they put me up in, I was excited about the long drive there and back, because that was it! I was a professional!
I also wrote a bit about the experience that was my opening for about seven years, so it paid off in a couple of ways.
Virginia, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?
My name is Virginia Jones and I got into comedy because I have stuff to say that is not appropriate for the office.
I have done comedy in laundromats, weed dispensaries, at vegan food fests, in London and Hong Kong clubs, and once in a backyard in Laguna Beach.
I am most proud of opening for amazing comics like Jackie Kashian and Maria Bamford, working with so many of my heroes.
My TikTok is, as the kids say, fire. Are they still saying that? I think they are. My comedy is for smart, mean people who love animals and hate most other people.
Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?
When I started telling jokes 18 years ago, to say that it was challenging for a woman in the industry was an understatement. You had to be a certain kind of grim, determined menace to keep at it. Another woman comic told me, you can’t ever bomb, because you’re representing women everywhere- and that was her truth, and it was sincerely given advice she thought would help me. What I think it did was make me afraid to try new weird stuff, or to go onstage and riff, or to take any risks at all. I held onto material for too long and sometimes overworked it, because I was too afraid to move in new stuff and maybe eat crap. I’m more confident now performing off the cuff, but it took a long time.
Is there something you think non-creatives will struggle to understand about your journey as a creative? Maybe you can provide some insight – you never know who might benefit from the enlightenment.
You know, I don’t really think that there’s any such thing as a non-creative. Everyone has invention in them, I believe that our brains are wired to produce new ideas. Not everyone makes it a large part of their life, but we are, all of us, creatives in some way. I was meeting with a friend recently who is an illustrator and web comic creator, and he was telling me how he was hoping that his “B” job (comics and illustration) would start making enough money to replace his “A” job (graphic design for the tech industry). I said you know, your art doesn’t owe you a living. It just is itself. Also, if it doesn’t earn you a living, it doesn’t mean you’re worse at it than someone for whom it does. It’s a gift to have a “B” job, something that fills your cup and makes you excited to make stuff. I think it keeps you from trying to fill your life with pro wrestling figurines or Beanie Babies or whatever. I think many of our worst compulsions as humans grow out of trying to fill the hole that creatives fill with art.
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