On his website, Houston-based funnyman and former radio personality Ali Siddiq describes himself as a “stand-up comedian and storyteller.”
The storyteller part gets equal billing because it’s so much of what he does. Rather than riff on current events or jump between rapid-fire punchlines, Siddiq draws from his own life. That means he may talk about his current life as a father, the relationship he had with his own largely absent father or the six years he spent in a Texas prison for selling drugs.
Siddiq, who’s bringing his Custom Fit tour to San Antonio’s Majestic Theatre for two shows on Friday, June 26, has spent nearly three decades honing his storytelling craft. He understands pacing and physicality, when to go for a laugh and when to build tension.
And, as he pointed out in conversation with the Current, he wants his stories to feel authentic and lived — something he’s tried to convey to other comics who ask for tips.
“In storytelling, the difference is in the details,” Siddiq said. “They don’t have enough details in their story, and a lot of them are not living a full life.”
The prolific comic’s latest special, My Father, was released June 21, and he has three more in the can. We caught up with him by phone ahead of his San Antonio shows.
I read in past interviews that storytelling wasn’t something you came to immediately. Can you point to a deciding moment that nudged you away from punchline comedy to your current style?
No, but I can say it happened early on. I’ve been doing it 29 years, so I have evolved to a different level over the years. I probably stopped doing political comedy and setups, punchlines and all that probably in year No. 10.
In addition to great storytelling comics such as Richard Pryor, you have cited Benny Hill, Phyllis Diller and Don Rickles among your influences. None of them seem directly adjacent to your approach. Can you talk about their impact on your work?
Benny Hill had a show where he did short stories with no words. So, the physicality and the setup and the emphasis on movement is what I took from Benny Hill. A lot it with Don Rickles was just snappy stories. Phyllis Diller had a Plain Jane life story. She was talking about herself the majority of the time with some indication of how hard it is to be like that as a woman. All of them had a storytelling component in their standup.
It just took different forms.
Correct.
As a storyteller, do you draw influence from movies, TV series or things you read, or is it mainly centered around what people would call the oral tradition?
My particular style is built into me just because of my family. I tell stories because that’s how I learned everything that I’ve ever learned. I learned by being told a story. So, I try to look at movies and things just for pure entertainment, not for inspiration. I get that from my family, from my uncle or my grandmother, my mom — somebody who’s going to tell me a story — and I just look at the different cadences and the different styles of my family and mix and match different levels of how I can develop a story just from them.
Do you worry that tradition is slipping away from new generations?
I worry about that a lot, because communication has declined with the addition of cell phones. People just texting and not really having conversation. So, yeah, that’s definitely a concern.
Earlier this year, your special My Two Sons was nominated for an NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Variety Series. It was the first independently produced standup comedy special to earn a nomination in that category.
Both to get a nomination and to win. I actually won.
Heard. How important to you was it to break that ground for independently produced content?
It’s an incentive for independence, for other independents to keep pushing. Everyone wants to win for their talent, for their contribution to the art. And independents were feeling like they were never going to win due to the … influence the industry exerts and how the industry markets. Just how overwhelming the industry is in their marketing of other specials that they produce, because they have those relationships. So, winning was like a log in the fire to tell independents to keep pushing.
$43-$274, 7 p.m. (sold out) and 9:30 p.m., Friday, June 26, Majestic Theatre, 224 E. Houston St., (210) 226-5700, majesticempire.com.
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