In the spirit of The Magnificent Seven, Ocean’s Eleven, and The Dirty Dozen, The Outlaw Comics are seven elite professionals banded together for one mission: Killer comedy shows. Saddle up for an exciting all-headliner show starring the very best in stand-up comedy. Each outlaw has multiple television and streaming credits from NBC, HBO, Netflix, Amazon Prime, Showtime specials and even an Emmy-winning writer from Saturday Night Live and The Tonight Show.

Stand-up comedy in Houston made a name for itself in the ’80s. Now, a new generation is emerging

By Andrew Dansby,
Staff writer
Oct 8, 2024

A comedy performance today at McGonigel’s Mucky Duck prompted me to look back at an era in Houston’s stand-up comedy history that seems thin if measured by active legacy clubs.

But Houston was once a proving ground for comedians.

The bill for tonight’s show, “The Outlaw Comics,” is a deliberate and knowing nod to a storied time in Houston. A collective that called itself the Texas Outlaw Comics in the 1980s created something that can’t simply be forced into existence: They made a scene. 

Befitting the migratory patterns that bring people to Houston, two of the best-known practitioners from that scene were transplants: Bill Hicks, a Georgia native, and Sam Kinison, from Washington state.

Who were The Texas Outlaw Comics?

The Texas Outlaw Comics scene emerged in 1983 around the Comedy Workshop. 

The collective’s name was a nod to the comedy styles wielded by its practitioners, who were disinclined to sand down their rough edges. They were angry, abrasive and original. And also funny. 

Hicks and Kinison were regulars at the Comedy Workshop, along with others like Jimmy Pineapple, Ron Shock, Steve Epstein and Andy Huggins.

Before Comedy Central offered a dedicated platform for comedians on paid cable, these comedians found their way from Houston stages to late-night TV shows and Showtime specials.

Pineapple is the ringleader for this week’s Outlaw Comics show, which includes veteran comedians from a scene that fanned out beyond the Comedy Workshop. 

What is the history of comedy in Houston?

The city’s comedy scene has always been a sprawling one befitting Houston. And it continued to flourish even after the Outlaw scene faded.

In the ‘90s, comedians looked to Houston for a foothold. 

Lewis Black was never a full-time resident here, but he told the Chronicle that the city’s stand-up scene put the one-time aspiring playwright on his path. “Houston is where I left playwriting behind,” he said. “And where I really started doing comedy.”

What is the Houston comedy scene like today?

The city’s stand-up history goes back decades before the Texas Outlaw Comics drew national attention from Houston. 

This city was the site of stand-up’s Big Bang, when Bob Newhart, an ad copywriter at the time, recorded “The Button-Down Mind of Bob Newhart” at the Tidelands on South Main. The album was a huge commercial success. It won an Album of the Year Grammy. And it cut a path for a different sort of stand-up that wasn’t built around one-liners.

Today, the clubs of the Outlaw years are gone. Houston still has an Improv, which is part of a national chain. Smaller venues like the Secret Group and Rudyard’s have filled in at the club level. Houston comedian All D. Freeman has booked the Speakeasy Comedy Lounge for several years.

And the city has turned out today’s comedy stars, too. 

Mo Amer set up a series of stand-up gigs at White Oak Music Hall in late 2023 and early 2024, where he workshopped material for his next stand-up special. Amer has also been working on the second season of “Mo,” the Netflix series he created.

Amer is, in some ways, a quintessential Houston origin story. 

He’s a Palestinian-American whose family fled Kuwait during the first Gulf War. Here, he saw Bill Cosby at the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo in 1991. That event would prove momentous for Amer, who was nine then.

So, his tale is a comedy and an immigrant song braided into an origin story. When Netflix gave him the green light to develop a TV story, Amer pulled from his own background, making the show in Houston, about Houston and for Houstonians. 

And he’s ensuring his adopted hometown is again stepping into the comedic spotlight, this time for the new and next generations. 

Andrew Dansby

ENTERTAINMENT WRITER

Andrew Dansby covers culture and entertainment, both local and national, for the Houston Chronicle. He came to the Chronicle in 2004 from Rolling Stone, where he spent five years writing about music. He’d previously spent five years in book publishing, working with George R.R. Martin’s editor on the first two books in the series that would become TV’s “Game of Thrones. He misspent a year in the film industry, involved in three “major” motion pictures you’ve never seen. He’s written for Rolling Stone, American Songwriter, Texas Music, Playboy and other publications.

Andrew dislikes monkeys, dolphins and the outdoors.

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