Michael Morgan is a Texas stand-up comedian, sketch comic and musician. A Marine Corps veteran who grew up in a Pentecostal household in East Texas, Morgan returned to stand-up full-time in 2022 and now tours Texas and beyond with a road-tested 45-minute set, while making sketches and co-hosting the Addictive Nonsense Podcast.
Michael Morgan’s first comedy was a secret. Morgan’s parents pastored a Pentecostal church, and comedy was, in Morgan’s words, “kind of like a secret affair I was able to have”. At six or seven, after the parents had gone to bed on a Saturday, Morgan would creep into the living room and put on Saturday Night Live. “I’d have the volume at like four or five so they couldn’t hear it but I could.”
Jump to: A host before an open mic · Scripted, not improvised · Knowing when to pivot · The notepad at 1am · The highs and the drives home · Who Morgan watches
A host before an open mic
Those late nights meant Richard Pryor, Robin Williams and Mel Brooks’s Blazing Saddles, all well before Morgan was old enough for them. “I understood Robin’s energy more than I did the jokes,” Morgan says. Now a parent, Morgan has rewatched it all and would not let the kids near it.
Morgan made sketch videos as a teenager, but the start in stand-up was unusual. In 2018, a bar near home began running weekend comedy nights, and Morgan simply asked if they needed comedians, without ever having done stand-up. They wanted a host. “I was like, ‘Well, I’m a comedian. I’ll do it.'” So Morgan’s first stage time was five minutes at the top of other comics’ shows.
It ended after about six months, when Morgan used a word on stage that the room and the owners did not want to hear, and was let go. Looking back, Morgan puts it down to not yet knowing how to read a room. “If knowing what I know now, I was like, ‘Yeah, I would have known that environment was not the place to do that joke.'” It was four years before Morgan went back. In early 2022 came the first real open mic. “Just got got addicted to it and just kept going and getting booked on shows.”
Scripted, not improvised
Today Morgan has a road-tested 45-minute set that can be cut down to 25 or 15 minutes on request. “I’m a writer, so my stuff is very scripted,” Morgan says. There is some crowd work, but not much.
It took until adulthood for Morgan to realise that the comics who seemed to make it up on the spot were usually doing nothing of the kind. Growing up on Jim Carrey and Robin Williams, it looked like it all poured straight out of them. “That’s just a testament to how good those comics are,” Morgan says, that you feel the set is “for you guys and for you only”, even though they will do the same jokes for a different crowd the next night.
“It looks so easy on the surface.”
Michael Morgan
That is exactly why people underestimate it. “So many people look at it and go, ‘Well, I could do that. It’s just talking,'” Morgan says. Underneath, there is a formula: premise, setup, punchline, tag. And everyone, Morgan thinks, has to do badly on stage before they realise it. “Oh, that didn’t feel good. Let me let me sit down and write a few things down.”
Knowing when to pivot
Being scripted does not mean being rigid. Morgan has watched comics carry on for 15 or 20 minutes with material the room rejected in the first 30 seconds. The lesson: do your research on the room, and “know when to pivot”. If a joke dies, say so. “It’s okay to do a joke that doesn’t work and be like, ‘Yeah, I guess you guys didn’t like that.'” Morgan’s version: “Oh, you guys didn’t like that, so you guys must be good people.”
“It’s okay to do a joke that doesn’t work and be like, ’Yeah, I guess you guys didn’t like that.’”
Michael Morgan
Crowd work is the escape hatch. When the material is not working, Morgan will “just talk to this guy for the next 5 10 minutes and just hope they’re into that”. Because the set is so well mapped, there is always a clear way back in. Stage comfort came from a lifetime of plays, acting and music, where Morgan was making jokes between songs long before stand-up. “What’s the worst thing they’re going to do is just think I suck.”
“What’s the worst thing they’re going to do is just think I suck.”
Michael Morgan
Music is coming back into the act now too: original comedy songs like “Crocs with Socks”, about the Texas suburban dad mowing the lawn in exactly that, and a two-person musical improv show in development with a podcast co-host.
For another comic who mixes stand-up with songs and crowd play, read our interview with Leah Knauer.
The notepad at 1am
Morgan records every set, to hear the exact inflection that made something land. And the phone’s notepad is always open. “There’s times where I’m laying in bed at like 1:00 a.m. Um, and I will uh just like get my phone, go to my notepad, and start writing a joke.” Some ideas sit there for months. “If you go and look at my notepad on my phone, I sound like a serial killer.”
Sometimes the best line comes on stage. Morgan has a bit about being raised by a religious stepdad, while the biological father “probably has all of your social security numbers”. One night a tag arrived mid-set: the father cannot hack into any of Morgan’s accounts, because all the passwords are Morgan’s birthday. “About half the room laughed and the other half of the room felt very sorry for me.” It has stayed in the set ever since.
Morgan prefers long, personal storytelling to one-liners, and the comics Morgan loves most are the ones who leave you feeling you know them. Morgan served in the Marine Corps for eight years, and the military jokes are the ones that bring veterans up after shows. “They’re like, ‘Yep, that’s you’re right on the money.'” We have looked at how other comics build material in how comedians write their jokes.
The highs and the drives home
Morgan’s home club is Rose City in Tyler, Texas. The biggest room so far was a Dallas theatre of about 800 people, featuring for George Janko at a clean comedy show. But some of the best nights, Morgan says, are clubs of 50 or 60 people “and everybody’s just on the same wavelength”.
And then there are the other nights. Morgan once drove five hours to San Antonio, bombed, got paid a hundred dollars and drove home at one or two in the morning wondering what the point was. “Am I do I just like being punished?” The flip side is driving home after a great weekend, “on such a high and you’re like I’m a I’m a comedic genius”. The trick, Morgan has learned, is to temper both, like a Little League coach. “You lose a couple games, you win some.”
“It didn’t go good, but I will get them next time.”
Michael Morgan
When a joke keeps failing, Morgan does not hide behind “I’m doing this for me”. “You’re also being hired to get up there and entertain.” Morgan keeps what are jokingly called “church jokes”, ones that would land at a church, alongside material built for clubs. For more on this, see how comedians survive their worst nights on stage.
“You’re also being hired to get up there and entertain.”
Michael Morgan
Judy Carter has spent decades teaching comics what to do when a joke dies. Read our interview with Judy Carter.
Who Morgan watches
Morgan’s comedy education also came from SNL, and above all the Andy Samberg era, from 2005, with Bill Hader, Jason Sudeikis and Fred Armisen. “If you ever get the chance, go back and watch Laser Cats. It’s the dumbest thing on earth, but it is hilarious.” What drew Morgan in was “being willing to look like a fool for the sake of a joke”.
“If you ever get the chance, go back and watch Laser Cats. It’s the dumbest thing on earth, but it is hilarious.”
Michael Morgan
The stand-ups Morgan loves include Rory Scovell, Pete Holmes, Dave Chappelle and Taylor Tomlinson, along with Nate Bargatze, Aaron Weber and Dusty Slay. The common thread is vulnerability. Tomlinson, Morgan says, can take her own life experiences and make them “therapeutic for her, but at the same time make it enjoyable” for the audience.
A special is the long-term goal. For now, Morgan is building a following with sketches and stand-up clips, and has a set ready if a show like Don’t Tell Comedy calls. “I got a set prepared and ready to go.”
Watch and follow
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Follow Michael Morgan on Instagram at @michaelmorgancomedy. See our Instagram post about this interview, and follow Hop For Pop at @hopforpop and @thecomicsunseen, and see Michael Morgan’s press kit.
For more conversations like this, read how comedians remember their first laugh, or browse all our comedian interviews.