Skip to main content
In case you’re wondering: No, Noah Watson’s parents have not seen the bit he does about them having sex. He’d rather you not mention it to them.
Watson’s first time onstage doing comedy was in high school for a final project for an English class. It went well, but he wouldn’t perform again for years. Not because he didn’t want to. He just didn’t know how to go about it, and the only place for standup was a nearby theater where comics “wore checked yellow suits and big plastic flowers” and did Caitlyn Jenner jokes.
“I didn’t want to do that at all,” he says at the Piedmont Station food carts near his apartment. “I didn’t know what open mics were. I thought if you were funny, somebody made you famous. And then you talked for an hour.”
Watson’s comedy delves into some dicey territory: Alec Baldwin, enemas and school shootings. His laid-back, articulate delivery brings to mind a young Christian Slater, minus a few hot meals.
As a kid in Fairfax, Calif., it was Family Guy, along with Bill Cosby and Louis C.K. (he knows what you’re thinking) that made him laugh. “I used to watch Bill Cosby tapes back to back and rewind them and start them over,” he says. “I grew up conservative and Christian, so I think the stuff I wasn’t supposed to be listening to was the funniest stuff that got to me.”
He moved to Portland five years ago to escape the high rents, intending to pursue a music career that didn’t pan out. “I’m not that good at it,” he laughs. “I started a band when I came up that fell off the rails. It was this bipolar dude I met working at a kitchen. We talked about it every day for six months and played together maybe three times.”
After his equipment broke, Watson realized he could get onstage and try comedy with no need for gear. In short order, he was getting onstage 10 or 12 times a week, a pace he still keeps up.
“The first bit I did was seven minutes long, and I had written the whole thing out like a script,” he recalls. “I was talking about bestiality. I made the bartender uncomfortable.”
Watson admits there are occasional nights he’d rather not get up in front of strangers, but beneath his slacker exterior is a strong work ethic.
“I’m pretty anxious,” he says. “The whole first year of doing comedy is humiliating yourself over and over. You gotta break down your ego and any idea that you have anything important to say because you find out really quick that no one really cares about what you have to say. Your job is to be funny. It’s the hardest thing ever.”
Watson is seven years sober, but he isn’t doing comedy to work out his former demons. “I think the whole idea that you have to be dark and twisted and tragic to be funny is fucking stupid,” he says. “Chances are, the better you’re doing mentally, the better you’re going to perform.”
Even in the midst of the pandemic, Watson found positivity. “After the pandemic, I threw out all my material and started from scratch,” he says. “I had to learn about laughs per minute. I used to have really long pauses and drag my feet a lot. I think anything that happens that makes you have to work harder to feel like you’re doing a good job is good for creativity.”