Ben Roy

Last up in this group that evening was Ben Roy, who started off by telling us he was only eight weeks sober. "This is an awful place to do it," Roy said. Indeed. Comedy festivals are full of debauchery. After opening nevertheless with his own take on the case of the blackout drunk mystery, acknowledging that Hess had done so already, Roy got quick laughs from his energy and stage presence. He kept the energy up with an act-out of how he hates summertime based on "douchebags on crotch-rockets," and closed with an awkward yet animated story about a hand job at a strip club in Vegas. He sure sold it. - the comic's comic

And you should catch Denver’s Ben Roy and Austin’s Jesse Case—also hilarious—when they visit our city.

- Time Out New York

For a publication that is, if not a family magazine, one that at least tries to maintain some semblance of decorum, Wrist Deep Productions presents a bit of a quandary. First of all, when you gather three of the four boundary-pushing comedians driving Denver’s underground comedy scene — Adam Cayton-Holland, Greg Baumhauer, and Ben Roy (Jim Hickox wasn’t present) — at a downtown Denver coffee shop, they cuss like sailors or guys in a locker room or the alternative comics they are. So how do you quote them?

[Bleep]ing would up your word count by 10 percent, and substituting “frak” for the offending word starts to read like the transcript to a Battlestar Galactica convention. The only way to keep anything usable is to scrub the F-bombs modifying two to three nouns and verbs per quote.

Then there’s the problem with the name. Most press accounts avoid how the four stand-up comedians came to be named “Wrist Deep” and for good reason.

“I got tired of waiting for Comedy Works to see how awesome I was,” says Baumhauer, who formed the group with Ben Kronberg in 2004 when several young comedians seemed to be rocketing to the top and were hungry for stage time. So he decided to put together his own shows, and seeing that he enjoyed performing with the same few comedians he particularly jibed with, it made sense to put it all under the same umbrella.

Roy, who joined later, says having an official group let you know who was behind the show, even if it wasn’t the same people every week. Plus, “if we each had 20 people who liked us, with the four of us you’d have an audience of 60 or 80.” But first, they needed a name.

The media-friendly explanation is that “Wrist Deep” refers to getting beneath the surface, but we would be derelict in our journalistic duties if we played dumb now that we are privy to the actual story. So in the interest of finding a balance between setting the record straight and maintaining a modicum of decency, let’s just say the name is taken from a story Baumhauer’s brother told that ends with the line, “So, I’m wrist deep [bleep]ing this [bleep], and the boyfriend won’t stop tapping me on the shoulder!”

“I just thought it was a funny term,” says Baumhauer, and now they’re stuck with what the group, sans F-modifiers, calls the “worst name in the world.” Their slogan, not coincidentally, is “comedy that gets its hands dirty.”

That’s not to say it’s all about being crude. Cayton-Holland says beginning comedians tend to mistake offensive for edgy. “One unifying thing about all our comedy is that it’s intelligent,” he adds. With cable and the Internet, you can pretty much find an outlet for anything, but unable to outdo the legendary Comedy Works, the foursome chose to go underground.

Tuesdays at 11 pm, they host an open-mic at a dive called The Squire Lounge on East Colfax where pros test new material alongside half-hearted comics and has-beens. The evening we attended, a dazed young woman, disoriented by either narcotics or mental illness, wandered in and started dancing seductively as if she was alone in the bar.

The real show is Los Comicos Super Hilariosos at Orange Cat Studios on Larimer Street on the last Friday of the month. The name of the show was as equally thought out as the group’s name, thrown off the top of Cayton-Holland’s head. It translates, to use the term loosely, to The Super Hilarious Comics, which Roy says is much funnier in Spanish.

There’s a deejay, and it’s more of a party than a comedy show. They draw a mixed crowd of comedy nerds and seen-it-all aficionados who they can still have rolling in an “I’m-very-uncomfortable-with-what-was-just-said-so-why-am-I-laughing?” kind of way.

They used to run a big-production knockoff of The Gong Show called You Suck! Get Off the Stage! at the historic Oriental Theater that, swear to God, used the actual gong from the show (a guy in Fort Collins worked at the studios and grabbed it when the show was cancelled). The Oriental show was such a huge production, the guys gave it up because they didn’t have time for anything else.

Up to the Elbow
Of the three, Baumhauer is most like his on-stage persona, which is actually a toned-down version of himself. Most of his comedy is drawn from his real-life experiences of being homeless, fleeing the law, doing drugs. This was before he found his calling as a comedian and drag waitress at the Bump ‘n’ Grind Cafe.

“A lot of guys get lap dances, but Greg gives them,” Roy says, although he wouldn’t describe Baumhauer’s cross-dressing persona as feminine by any means. “It’s Greg in a dress.” Cayton-Holland says Baumhauer’s act is, “like hanging out with your older brother who’s telling you some shit you haven’t learned yet.”

If you were first introduced to Roy through his maniacal on-stage routine, you would think him unlikely to be the most domesticated of the bunch. The pleasant man we chatted with has a wife and kid but performs with the energy of a man getting juiced in an electric chair. Roy does not exit the stage so much as he storms out in a frustrated huff that puts the exclamation point on the end of his comic tirade.

Cayton-Holland, whose “What’s So Funny?” column got moved to the The Onion when he was let go from Westword last year, is the most cerebral.

Asked to describe Jim Hickox, his comrades use the words “doughy” and “tech geek.” Hickox does a bit where he uses a Webcam to project his face on the wall with references to dragons and the Renaissance Festival. He even does PowerPoint presentations.

Co-founder Kronberg has since gone to L.A. and appeared on Jimmy Kimmel Live, and they’ve all toyed with the idea of heading out for L.A. at one time or another, but “out there, I’d be just another comedian,” Baumhauer says.

The group has been referred to as having a “punk-rock edge” by The Denver Post. Cayton-Holland says he doesn’t mind the term. He finds “punk,” “alternative,” “indie” or whatever you want to call it more interesting and thinks punk refers as much to the do-it-yourself aesthetic as anything. They set up their own shows and make their own t-shirts and fliers. But signs point to their not staying underground for long.

They’ve managed to convince some big comedians from Comedy Works to come do their shows while they’re in town, including Tig Notaro (The Sarah Silverman Program), Jasper Redd, T.J. Miller, Arj Barker (Flight of the Conchords), and Maria Bamford, all heavy hitters on the indie comedy scene. Wrist Deep has a whole chapter devoted to them in John Wenzel’s Mock Stars: Indie Comedy and the Dangerously Funny, which credits them with helping put Denver on the comedy map. We can’t wait to see what happens next.
- Denver Magazine

Denver-based Ben Roy, who I saw few weeks ago at the Aspen Rooftop Comedy Festival, closed the show— and closed it strong. After telling the crowd he’s eight weeks sober he launched into incredibly energetic bits ragging on frat douches that think riding a crotch rocket-style motorcycle isn’t about the gayest thing you can do. And his story of a brutally rough handjob he received from a Las Vegas stripper, which finds him up against the wall and trying to force himself to ejaculate just so he can escape, ended the early New Faces show with a great swell of laughter from the crowd. - Punchline Magazine

Break-outs in the New Faces comedy showcase over three nights included Ben Roy, Fortune Feimster, Colin Jost, Mike Vecchione, Jesse Case, Nick Vatterott, Jack Whitehall and Adrienne Lapalucci giving their best seven minutes to assembled talent scouts. - The Hollywood Reporter

The entire night was solid, but closer Ben Roy presented perhaps the most compelling set. His unhinged, drunken persona was gloriously erratic, mixing Louis Black’s quivering indignation with Bill Hicks’ vitriol and David Cross’s unapologetic misanthropy. - John Wenzel - Speck Press

"he’s like a skinny, punk-rock Sam Kinison." - Onion

Blurring the line between cutting commentator and cornered, rabid dog, Roy balances bile-spitting rants with deft timing and a sensitivity that reveals his underlying intelligence. He's as likely to lapse into spot-on character studies as he is mystical trances of lacerating social observation. - Denver Post