Portland comedian Susan Rice releases first stand-up album at 73 years old

Portland comedian Susan Rice has performed on stages across the country since the 1980s. But it was only last year, at the age of 72, that she received wider acclaim after her appearance at a Don’t Tell Comedy showcase went viral. The 10-minute set has now been viewed more than 1.4 million times on YouTube. Following that success, Rice dropped her first stand-up album, “Silver Alert,” earlier this month.

Rice joins us to talk about her long career in comedy and the humor she finds in aging.

Note: The following transcript was transcribed digitally and validated for accuracy, readability and formatting by an OPB volunteer.

Dave Miller: This is Think Out Loud on OPB. I’m Dave Miller. Portland comedian Susan Rice has performed on stages across the country since the 1980s. But it was only last year, at the age of 72, that she went viral. Her 10-minute set at a Don’t Tell Comedy showcase has now been viewed more than 1.4 million times. Following on that success, Rice released her first stand-up album, “Silver Alert,” earlier this month.

Susan Rice joins me now to talk about all of this. Welcome and congratulations.

Susan Rice: Thank you so much for having me. “Think out loud” is like my mantra. [Laughs]

Miller: I thought we could start with a bit from your new album, “Silver Alert.” Let’s just have a listen.

Rice [recording from “Silver Alert”]: I’m gonna sit down here because I can. [Laughter] I bring my little stool everywhere I go, it just adds to my sexual ambiance that I got going on there. [Roars of laughter]

It is really nice and I know that it … I’m workin’ in front of crowds again! I haven’t been working clubs for a really long time because I aged out of ‘em. [Laughter] Well, no, they can’t carry enough insurance. [Laughter] They’re afraid I’m gonna die on stage. They have no idea how many times I’ve died on stage. [Laughter]

But my new comedy clubs have been, for the last five, six, eight, 10 years, independent living, with a side of assist. [Laughter] And you guys, I am no diva. I’ve never had a rider in my contract in my whole life. But for the last six years, I’ve had to put something in there that says, “the first three rows must be cognitive.” [Laughter and claps]

I just love messing with ‘em … I always show up early. Because I’m that age, I show up early. [Laughter] And some of these places are really nice. You go out, and they have these big living rooms and stuff. I like to get there early and I just sit out there, cause I know that eventually somebody from behind the desk is gonna wonder what the hell I’m doin’ there. [Laughter]

They always come up and go, [speaking in a soft voice] “hello dear, how are you?” [Laughter]

“I’m wet.” [Roars of laughter and claps]

Miller: That was from my guest Susan Rice’s new album, “Silver Alert.”

Rice: Oh my god … [Laughs]

Miller: When we got to right near the end, when you started to set up the last joke there, that you go to these places early, you covered your face like you were embarrassed about what was going to come.

Rice: Cause I knew what was coming!

Miller: But this is your joke …

Rice: It is my joke. But it’s just weird to have you sitting here talking to me about me being “wet.” [Laughs]

That is actually a true story. I’ve actually sat out there a couple times and just waited for them to come over and talk to me.

Miller: I was curious. So, you have done shows at independent living, as you say, “with a side of assist” homes?

Rice: Oh yeah. And in fact, I’m doing a couple comin’ up.

Miller: What time are these shows?

Rice: Well, like Calaroga Terrace has a happy hour, and that’s a great time to do it.

Miller: Like 6 p.m. or something?

Rice: No, no, no, 4 [p.m.]

Miller: That early? Does that work for comedy, 4 o’clock in the afternoon?

Rice: Well, it does when you go to bed at 7:30 [p.m.]. They also have dinners, so they have to have … It varies.

Miller: You’re not shy about swearing or talking about sex and drugs in your shows, that I’ve seen, that are in clubs.

Rice: Yeah, I’m not a graphic comic.

Miller: No, but you acknowledge that bodies exist and you talk about bodies, not in graphic ways. But you do swear.

Rice: I know all the words.

Miller: Do you work blue at an assisted living facility?

Rice: My main thing about working assisted living and independent living is I don’t talk down to these people. These people were at Woodstock. Do you understand what I’m saying? They are not children. And a lot of them love to have a good dirty joke. But I don’t curse to be cursing. I curse because I’ve earned it. It’s language. I’m not graphic. If the joke requires a word, it gets it. I’m not gonna back off of it.

Miller: And the people who are booking you are saying, “we’d like some entertainment for our residents” – they don’t give you no go zones?

Rice: Nobody tells me anything, no.

Here’s the deal, now I’m a phenomenon again. When I started out in stand-up, I was a female stand-up. And there were so few of us that we were freak shows, and they billed it as such.

Miller: When you say a freak show that was billed as such, what do you mean?

Rice: If you had an all-woman show, which was so rare, it was billed as a freak show. It was like you were a carnival. “Hey, we got all women, wow,” like we’re gonna take our clothes off. And then if you were also on a show with two other guys, they referred to it as the woman’s show.

Miller: Because there was one woman who was gonna be up on stage, it was a woman’s show.

Rice: Yeah. There were so few women stand-ups, especially working in the road at the time. And it was all new.

Ron Funches, who’s a famous wonderful comic, he’s from Salem …

Miller: And then made it big in Portland, then made it “big” and went to LA.

Rice: Yeah, he’s just a great guy. He called me an “OG” on his podcast. And I got upset cause I thought he’d called me an “old gal.” But I’m an “old gangsta.”

I read my audience really well. I know what can go over and what can’t.

Miller: Let’s go back to the beginning. You said when you started out, there were very few women who were comics and you were treated as freak shows. This was in the early ‘80s. How did you first decide to get up on stage and tell jokes?

Rice: Well, I was a classically trained actress for nine years. And there was a gal in Portland by the name of Leigh Clark-Granville, who was a wonderful actress and a wonderful character actress. She was doing a cabaret show and raking it in. And I went, “I can do that.” Portland had a really wonderful theater scene back then, there was like a million theaters. But I was always cast as the same person. I wanted to branch out. So I wrote a one-woman show, but I needed someplace to work it out.

It was a comedy show, but I had no idea that stand-up was a thing because it hadn’t been. It started in late ‘82. And I stepped on stage at the Leaky Roof Tavern on March 15, 1983. So it hadn’t been around that long. And I walked on stage. I went and looked at it the first time, checked it out and met one of my very best friends for life (didn’t know it then,) Dave Anderson. And I came back the next week and thought, “I’m gonna work my five minutes of the show.” I stepped on stage and told a story, and I never looked back.

Miller: Did it feel really different? At that point, you had spent a lot of time on stage. I imagine you knew stagecraft, how to read a crowd. But this was also in a much more scripted way. Did it feel different to be doing stand-up?

Rice: Well, trust me, one of my biggest problems working with plays was rewriting. [Laughs]

Miller: You mean you would rewrite the script?

Rice: Oh, yeah.

Miller: How did the directors and playwrights feel about that?

Rice: Oh, not well. Shakespeare was mad.

Miller: So you were used to making the material your own?

Rice: Pretty much. It was hard for me to stay on script.

I was 31 years old, so I was old to the game. Everybody else was in their twenties. And it just was like stepping into … it was like coming home. I went, “oh, this is really familiar.”

Miller: Immediately, you felt like you knew what you were doing?

Rice: Yeah, this is what I wanted to do.

Miller: Is it true that you quit your job pretty early on?

Rice: Two years. A year-and-a-half.

Miller: You were working at a bank?

Rice: I worked at U.S. National Bank for eight years, which was amazing I made it that long.

Miller: It seems like just taking a leap, and you were able to make enough of a living doing comedy in the early ‘80s that you could quit a job at a bank?

Rice: I tripled my income.

Miller: Is that because they were paying you so poorly or because you’re making a lot of money doing comedy?

Rice: Well, they were paying me poorly. But I was getting paid anywhere from $25 to $125 a set.

Miller: Wow.

Rice: And I was working every night.

Miller: How many clubs were there at the time?

Rice: In Portland, you could work 31 days without repeating a club. That’s how popular it got. Everybody wanted it.

Miller: It went from zero comedy venues in 1979, to more than 30 four years later?

Rice: Right. La Bamba’s was the first show. Tony DeMicoli, he opened up La Bamba’s, which was down on 2nd. I think it was just a monthly show. But Patricia Campuzano brought in, then she ran the Leaky Roof and then she opened another club. Everybody wanted it. The Portland comics got a ton of stage time really fast. By the beginning of ‘84, there was two full, weeklong clubs. There was One Main Place, and then there was the Last Laugh, which was Harvey’s.

It was golden time. You just got a ton of stage time, which meant your act progressed faster.

Miller: Let’s listen to another part from that special. The brief set up here is that one of your nieces, without your asking, created a profile for you on an online dating site for seniors.

Rice [recording from “Silver Alert”]: I called my oldest niece and I go, “What the hell did you do?” She goes, “Oh, are you getting emails?” I go, “Yeah, what did you think? What picture did you use?!” She says, “Suze, honestly, don’t be mad. Don’t you wanna get married?” [Laughter]

“No!” [Laughter] No, no, no, no! Nobody gets married for the first time at 70! No … not unless there’s a verified pension and a diagnosis. [Laughter and clapping] You just don’t do it.

I said, “Honey, you get married when you’re young and you have your whole life ahead of you, and you have all these dreams and aspirations, and you have somebody to share all that with. Then you grow old together and you blame them for the [beep] you didn’t get to do.” [Laughter] That’s growing old, that’s marriage.

At 70, I am not bringing much to the table. Maybe the smell of CBD oil and Altoids, that’s pretty much it. [Laughter]

Rice: Thank God it’s over! [Laughs]

Miller: I apologize for making you listen to your act. It seems like gentle torture.

Rice: No, it’s fine. Actually, it’s good for me. I gotta work in a couple of days, so it’s good for me to listen.

Miller: So we’re talking about the amazing burgeoning Portland comedy scene in the early and mid-1980s. You were a big part of that. And then you moved to LA What were your hopes …

Rice: Oh, thank you. I will tell you that. But just to go back – I wanted you to know the amount of talent that started out in Portland, Oregon. There were 26 of us that started out in stand-up and 19 of us went pro. And 15 years later, there were still 15 of us that were pro.

Miller: Who were making a living going on stage making people laugh.

Rice: Who were making a living being a stand-up: Dave Anderson, Mike “Boats” Johnson, John Johnston, Art Krug [and] J.P. Linde, who’s an author now and a wonderful actor. The amount of talent was just deep.

Miller: Did you feel like it was a community as well? Was it a group of people who you’d hang out together or swap stories, make fun of each other?

Rice: Yes. I mean, we’ve lost so many. But yes, we were buddies. When we were able to get together we always got together. And I wanted to make sure that people knew that being a woman stand-up was not easy and these guys recognized that. Dwight Slade was an amazing young comic on the scene. He came from Houston and he started stand-up at 17 with Bill Hicks, who was famous. They were a duo and he was Bill’s best friend. He came on the scene, and he and all the guys championed me. They recommended me, I got stage time because of them.

So I was very lucky. That’s not the case anymore as much. And that’s too bad. But Portland has always had a really strong comedy scene, always.

Miller: It also has had this long tradition of when people feel like they’re getting so big and popular that now it’s time to move to LA to hit the big time. At least that’s what it has felt like in recent years.

Rice: Right, LA is not as what it was before. You do have to make a decision to get out of the market that you’re in to test your legs. These kids don’t have the road anymore. The road was my college. I learned how to work cowboys, oil workers and coal miners. I learned how to do all that.

Miller: Because the Portland audience was more limited or more homogenized? If you stay in Portland, you don’t learn how to work different kinds of crowds?

Rice: I was on the road. Exactly. Portland is actually hard, because everybody here is very sensitive. And that’s fine.

Miller: Was that the case in the 1980s or are you talking about Portland in the 2020s?

Rice: Oh, God, we had .. well, you’re a news guy. Let’s go back. Mildred Schwab was a city planner. The Bhagwan Rajneesh were in town. And all that stuff was happening during the 1980s – ‘83, ‘84, ‘85. So there was a lot of stuff going on.

But yeah, we had the road. We had Tribble Runs. David Tribble ran these crazy runs all over the West. Sometimes you would drive nine hours to a gig in snowstorms. But we learned. It was a great proving ground. And you came home and you had to get the road out of your act.

Miller: What do you mean by that?

Rice: Well, there’s certain things that you do when you’re working to new crowds. You make fun of the city you come into. You find something that everybody can relate to. Maybe make fun of their mayor. There’s just little things that you had to do to get the audience on your side, and that was a road show.

I moved to LA because there was so much going on. Comics were getting holding deals for $100,000 for sitcoms. And I was an actress. I didn’t even think about New York. I went straight to LA.

Miller: This was when a lot of people who were stand-ups became huge sitcom stars. Seinfeld is maybe the most famous now, but there were a ton of them.

Rice: Oh, there’s Roseanne, there was Rosie O’Donnell, there was Bill Engvall.

Miller: So that was your hope?

Rice: Yeah, that was where I fit. I wasn’t a New York comic.

Miller: How close do you feel like you came to getting a TV deal like that?

Rice: Did I come close? I arrived the same year and almost the same month Roseanne Barr arrived. And Rosie O’Donnell came about three months later. And in LA there was only room for one fat girl. And Rosie wasn’t ever really fat, but she was round. And Roseanne and I had come up. She was out of Denver. And she was a package deal. She was all packaged up. She had a theme, she had a look, she had everything. Which is what Hollywood wanted. They didn’t want to think about what they would do with you. They never knew what to do with Paula Poundstone for God’s sake, who was brilliant.

Did I come close? I met a lot of wonderful people and I did a lot of television shows.

Miller: When you saw Roseanne Barr getting her show, did you say to yourself what you’re telling us now: “Oh, I know the way this town works and they’re not going to give me a show because there was one slot for someone who, in their mind, all are sort of interchangeable?”

Rice: Yeah, it had to be packaged up. They had so many talented comics. Most of them became writers. And a lot of comics wrote for Roseanne. But I was a performer.

And life happened. I was down there for almost 13 years. And in that time I lost a sister. And the Pacific Northwest was always home. I didn’t blink twice, because things were starting to dry up, the boom was over.

Miller: And the boom was over in Portland as well when you came back here?

Rice: Actually, I worked a lot on the road. I would come up here. I came up here a lot during my time in LA, would come up, make money and then go back to LA. I was established up here, I figured it out fast. I wasn’t making another big move.

Miller: How did you end up performing in the Don’t Tell Comedy showcase that has lit a fire under your career?

Rice: Isn’t that something? I said no. I said no to a lot of stuff. The kids are so generous with me. I call ‘em kids, they’re not young, they’re in their 30s. But Brent Lowrey, who is a wonderful stand-up, won the Seattle International [Comedy] Competition. He’s a Portland guy and he’s one of the partners that runs the Don’t Tell shows here in Portland. He called me up one day – he actually called me cause he knows I hate texting. He said, “I want to submit you for a taping down in LA with Don’t Tell.”

Now I had known about this. I’ve been doing the Don’t Tell shows here for probably eight years. And I knew that they were taping and they had a YouTube channel. And I said no. And he said, “Why?” And I said, “Because it’s not my scene anymore. It’s your scene. This is your time to go shine. This is your time to build your crowd. I’m fine.” And he said, “No, I think they’d really like you.” I said, “They’ve never taped anybody like me or as old as me. They’re gonna just turn you down, trust me.” And he goes, “Well, I don’t think so.” He left it at that and he submitted me. He grabbed a tape off the internet and sent it in.

I got a call from Kyle Kazanjian, who was the Don’t Tell CEO, and said, “I want to tape you at this date. Are you available?” And I said no.

Miller: You still said no?

Rice: Well, I couldn’t, I had a corporate gig. I had a contract.

I did say, “Listen, you’re really taking a risk. I’ve seen your YouTube channel. I don’t know if they’re gonna accept me or not.” And he said, “Let’s try.” So I shot a 10-minute set – it was actually longer, but they cut it, which is great – [on] January 20 of 2024. And on March 11, after I had had my knee surgery, my life changed.

Miller: It went live and it went viral. How quickly did you know that it was going to be a thing?

Rice: Three days.

Miller: What happened?

Rice: Five hundred thousand views. I mean, it was a lot. They were shocked. And at that time, Andy Huggins hadn’t come along yet. Now I know Andy. Andy is another comic. He’s 75, he’s out of Houston. I’ve known Andy forever. He was one of the Houston Outlaws. He filmed after me and he went even bigger than I did. He’s a one-liner guy, he’s wonderful. He’s a terrific guy.

Miller: How would you describe the relationship you have with the comedians you call kids, people in their 20s, 30s, 40s?

Rice: They’re very sweet to me. I treat them with respect because I do respect comics. It’s a really hard thing to do. I see these guys, they’re married, they’re having babies, they’re doing stand-up. I look at them and I say, “You just gotta have a plan.”

Miller: When you say that, you’re talking about sort of the business or how you make a life out of this when you say “a plan?” And that’s less comedy-specific advice and more how do you make this work, this job?

Rice: Exactly. It’s not cut and dry anymore. There used to be a formula. That formula doesn’t work because there is no road. And road was really hard on everybody’s relationships. I mean, more guys got divorced because they just couldn’t be there for their kids. And women, if you were a stand-up, you had to make a choice.

Miller: Have a family or be a stand-up?

Rice: Have a family or be a stand-up. My best friend had to make that choice. She’s a wonderful stand-up and she was a great writer. She did marry a stand-up and she writes for him. But it’s that kind of thing. Now, I notice these guys are making it work for themselves. They’re creating their own shows, they’re getting stage time in different ways. They’re finding their way onto a stage and still keeping a balance. Which is so smart.

Miller: Do you feel like you control the stage, manage an audience, just perform in ways that are different now than you did 30 or 40 years ago?

Rice: Yeah. Oh yeah.

Miller: In what way?

Rice: Just being better, being a better stand-up. Going out prepared. And being able to look at my audience and really love them. People respond to people that they don’t feel like are going to attack them. And I’m not an attack comic. I will stand my ground. But I don’t get heckled. And if I get heckled, it’s so non-important. I either don’t hear it or … [Laughs]

The audience takes care of me. They are always very, very protective of me, which is lovely.

Miller: But I don’t remember hearing a stand-up saying that they love their audience, but it seems like you really mean that, that you have a tenderness towards the people who paid to have you make them laugh.

Rice: I do, especially right now. Because I have seen audience members come out and they look beat up. They’ve had such hardships. They’re so fearful. All they have to do is turn on the news. It builds up in people. They have chosen to come out and laugh – and I have to honor that.

Miller: Susan Rice, it was a pleasure talking to you. Congratulations.

Rice: Thank you so much for having me.

Miller: Susan Rice is a longtime Portland stand-up. Her new comedy album – her first ever – is called “Silver Alert.” It is available on Apple TV, on Google Play, on Spotify and on Amazon Prime.

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