While there’s a rich tradition of standup comedy at the Minnesota State Fair Grandstand, it’s likely been a long time since a comedian outdrew all of the pop and country acts on the schedule. After all, could one person with a microphone standing relatively still onstage and talking really outdraw arena-rock headliners?
But that might be the case with Saturday night’s monologue by comedian Nate Bargatze. Over the course of a 20-year career, this funnyman from Tennessee has gradually ascended into the pantheon of currently active standup comedians, and a full-to-the-back fence Grandstand is the latest evidence that he’s among those at the peak of the field.
How is it that one man with one hand almost invariably behind his back speaking into a microphone could attract a sellout crowd of 13,570? Well, it helps that Bargatze’s a clean comedian who has a gift for finding common ground with his audiences through typical American experiences like attending a child’s career day at school or going through a drive-through at a fast food joint. But Bargatze has a particular gift for the short short story, engaging an audience in a tale for just long enough, then moving on to the next anecdote.
It’s all very accessible material, and Saturday’s hour-long set was as all-American as it could be. Like countless comedians before him, Bargatze spent a fair amount of his chat with the audience speaking of life at his house, where he makes clear that his wife is the brains of the outfit. Yes, he’s a self-deprecating guy who speaks of himself as rarely making the wisest move in a given situation, but mines every tale for laughs.
Delivering his stories in a slight southern drawl and at a very relaxed pace, Bargatze started his routine with the story of a Little League faux pas, establishing the format that most of his humor is at his own expense. But he’s quite skilled at making an audience feel as if they’re laughing with him, not at him. All of his humorous mistakes and everyday challenges become the kind of comedy that keeps you smiling throughout a set, with occasional bursts of laughter along the way.
On Saturday night, his avenue toward establishing rapport with his audience came via ordering from DoorDash, children having sleepovers, and lighthearted domestic disputes that he knows he has no chance of winning. While he could slip into generalizations that could be a little too close to that old school “Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus” stuff, the best material was the most specific, as when he spoke of his wife being frugal while he’s wasteful (“I married an old man from the Depression”).
There was also the challenge of assisting aging parents (“I walk in front of them like a sherpa, saying, ‘There’s a carpet coming up’”). But the strongest story of the night was his very funny tale of being a meter reader for a water company in Tennessee in 2001, and enlisted to guard his town’s water tower in case of terrorist attack. It was a great example of taking a time filled with fear and trepidation and playing it for delicious laughs.
He was preceded to the stage by four other comedians, each with a style quite distinctive from that of the headliner. Among them, Lachlan Patterson was engagingly low-key and slow-paced, Mike James a master of the twisting punch line, and Nick Thune a guitar-strumming absurdist from the Steven Wright school.
