Tom Rhodes is one of those comics whose career doesn’t fit in a neat American box. He’s a stand-up lifer who broke out early, toured the planet before most comedians owned a passport, and somehow ended up hosting a Dutch late-night talk show with a bikini-clad “word of the day” segment. His punchlines land in multiple languages. His stage presence? Pure fire-breathing dragon. Rhodes might not be a household name in the States, but he’s been a Letterman-level legend in Holland, a headliner across five continents, and a self-proclaimed “laugh preacher” with zero interest in retiring the pulpit.
“I decided I wanted to be a comedian when I was twelve.”
His father had taken him to an open mic in Washington, D.C., where his uncle was performing. The venue was a shotgun shack of a club, with the stage right at the front door. Some comic saw Rhodes in his Redskins jacket, pulled him onstage, and interviewed him like he was the coach of the team.
“That moment changed my life. Seeing the crowd laugh, all those happy heads… I was hooked.”
Rhodes is a long-game comic. His early gigs were in Daytona biker bars, where just not getting beaten up counted as killing. One of those rooms was shared with a young Brian Regan, already working squeaky clean for rooms full of dudes who looked like they’d knife you over jukebox choices.
“My parents were just happy I wasn’t in jail. They drove me to gigs. Supported me moving to New York at twenty. I never considered anything else.”
“I’m a modern laugh preacher man. I talk politics, I talk travel, I talk family, I do one liners. It’s like being a boxer. You feel a set sagging, you jab back with punchy lines, get the crowd laughing again.”
That sharp, conversational style has made him a killer on stage, but occasionally opens the door to hecklers who mistake intimacy for interactivity.
“That’s the problem with my conversational style. Some people think we’re actually having a conversation.”
In his early days, weed was a recurring subject.
“Jazz musicians and fat girls in Camaros used to come out of the woodwork.”
He still gets occasional post-show invitations to light up, but not like back then. He’s evolved, and so has the act.
“I don’t subscribe to that old rule of opening with your funniest joke and closing with your second funniest. I try to make it all funny. It’s like making a samurai sword. You keep banging on the steel and shaping it. That’s how Carlin and Rock did it. Every night. Working it out.”
Comedy Central tapped him in the early 2000s, back when the channel had teeth. His Two Drink Minimum set blew the roof off. That led to a series of punchy, MTV-style comedy videos filmed in places like the New York catacombs, a real former jail.
“They came out great, but I wanted out of that place.”
Then came the strangest twist. Dutch late-night host.
Living in Holland with his then-girlfriend, Rhodes performed at a club called Toomler, Yiddish for “traveling merrymaker.” Some execs in the crowd saw what they needed. A Dutch network had bought a ready-to-go late show format called The Kevin Masters Show, but had no host.
“They named the guy before they found the guy. They thought Kevin Masters was a snappy name. I’d joke that it represented the white power structure, and Tom Rhodes was too ethnic.”
Eventually they rebranded it The Kevin Masters Show starring Tom Rhodes. It ran weekly, with bikini models teaching him Dutch vocabulary, short films covering everything from the Prime Minister’s debates to local oddities, and a musical sidekick named E Life, then Holland’s top selling hip hop artist.
“It was nuts. It was like having a magic passport in the Netherlands.”
Not every guest was easy.
“We had the Minister of the Arts on once. The band played him on, and I said our band is called Pimp. He looks at me and goes, ‘My, you are really common, aren’t you?’ So I went full nightclub comic on him. Made fun of the guy the whole time. He had it coming.”
Ask him whether TV or live performance is more satisfying, and there’s no hesitation.
“Television’s fun when it’s fun, but stand-up is where the magic is. That charge you get when your thought connects with the room and people throw their heads back in laughter? Nothing beats that.”
He’s performed in places most comics can’t find on a map. Scandinavia. Paris. Estonia. Dubai. Each crowd brings its own rhythm.
“I just did two months in Europe. Holland, Ireland, London, Estonia, Paris. Every crowd’s different. The English don’t laugh at what the Dutch laugh at. When I get back to the States, it’s like unfolding an accordion.”
Some gigs come with rules.
“In Abu Dhabi and Dubai, they told me: no Muslim jokes. In Norway, you can’t joke about Breivik. Every country has its off-limits stuff.”
His worldview, like his act, grew with his passport.
“Performing abroad shaped my comedy. It gave me perspective. Bush being president made it rough for a while, people had a lot of anger toward Americans. But it was good to be out there. To show people what an American actually is.”
Rhodes still writes, records, and evolves. His double-disc album Colossus of Me, recorded at the Comedy Store in Sydney and the Ice House in Pasadena, is available on iTunes and Amazon. His latest hour-long special was filmed at the Boulder Theater. And now, with notebook in hand, he’s back on the circuit building the next hour.
“Not enough writing, honestly. But I’m grinding again. New hour, new material. Gotta keep at it.”
Tom is still on the mic, hosting the Smart Camp podcast, a loose, insightful, globe-wandering audio journal available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and YouTube.
Find Tom Rhodes online at TomRhodes.net, where you can also watch his brand new one-hour special, The Ripest Zebras, available exclusively through his website. Follow him on Instagram @_tomrhodes.
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