What do you get when you mix an accountant, a teacher, and multiple comedic acts? Well Tim and Andy’s Happy Hour, of course. “It’s different from normal standup,” says Andy Rider, who is an accountant by day. “We bring in comedians people don’t necessarily know about.”
This Saturday’s show is the duo’s third compilation, featuring Columbia S.C.’s Genesis Gonzalez and Charleston’s Jessica Mickey and Jeremy McLellan. The show ranges from sketches to stand-up and starts with Tim and Andy talking to the audience. Both guys have experience doing stand-up and improv and they’re looking to fill a niche that may or may not exist in Charleston.
“There are shows all over town that have four acts bam, bam, bam, and that’s fine, but we wanted to do something different,” says Rider. He also points to the 10 p.m. start time at Theatre 99 as a bonus, “I don’t have to think, ‘Am I offending a person who’s eating dinner?'”
Rider and Hoeckel have a lot of trust in the acts they’re putting on stage, since many of them are their friends, but that doesn’t mean that laughs are guaranteed. “Comedy is such a subjective thing,” says Rider, “maybe it’s not their night.”
Rider says that if it weren’t for Hoeckel he would probably do “a lot of weird stuff without explanation,” but that the two keep each other grounded, putting together a show that’s both new and fresh, but not so strange that it’s alienating. The past two shows have had crowds of about 60 people, and Rider only expects that number to grow as people figure out what the show’s all about.
At a little over an hour (the longest the show will run is an hour and a half), the show usually includes a musical act. While this Saturday’s act had to bow out (he promised to cheer on a friend at an MMA match and you can’t really blame him for that), most shows have a musical aspect. “We happen to know musical people that are funny,” says Rider, explaining that the past two acts have sung about various hilarious things, often focusing on food.
Rider says it’s hard to end a show, especially at the end of a great act. “You don’t ever want the energy to die down. It’s like being at a party and everyone says, ‘Let’s all buy a bar!'”
Grab your tickets for the high-energy variety show here.
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