Don’t judge a comedian by his accent, especially if it’s Trae Crowder. Though the Tennessee-born comedian describes his voice as having more Southern twang than “a racist banjo,” it takes him less than two minutes onstage to show why he’s known as “the Liberal Redneck.” Whether it’s punch lines skewering white supremacists or viral video rants about the Trump era filmed from the front seat of his sun-damaged Jeep, Crowder’s brand of comedy is a mind-melting combination that never minces words about where he stands on major topics related to America from his unique perspective.
His latest special, “Trash Daddy” — released Friday on YouTube via comedy platform 800 Pound Gorilla — swerves among jokes about politics, family and living life as a hick from the sticks while trying to raise California-bred children. Recently Crowder spoke with The Times about his Southern background, including his upbringing in a liberal family in a conservative area and his current life as a fish out of water living in Los Angeles.
What has it been like for you as a touring comic since the presidential election, doing your political material for crowds that might sympathize with a lot of your liberal positions on politics?
People are definitely bummed out and feeling weird. The response has been pretty positive after the shows and whatnot, because I do talk about [politics] a little bit, but then I also talk about a whole bunch of other things that have nothing to do with that and it’s like a welcome distraction for people, so they get a little bit of what they expect but then also a little bit of a diversion at the same time. But when I’m actually talking to people offstage, the morale generally is not super high right now.
How do you feel about the power of comedy when it comes to processing fear or disappointment?
I’ve never really believed that comedy changes too many people’s minds or anything like that. But I do think it can still serve an important purpose. When it comes to things that are hard for some people to think about or talk about, comedy just kind of takes some of the edge off of it. So I do think that can help and be important. Also, people find it relatable. But I don’t think there’s too many comedy conversions happening.
You think people more or less have their opinions set one way or the other when watching a comedian and it just depends on how they view it?
I definitely have talked to people before that have told me I changed the way they looked at a particular subject, or something like that. But generally speaking, I don’t really think it works that way. I do think that for young people when they’re growing up, depending on what they’re watching and listening to, it can go a long way toward shaping what they think as they get older. But for full-blown adults, I don’t think too many of them are gonna hear a stand-up bit and then be like, “You know what, I’m doing a complete 180 on that.”
My first interaction with your comedy was through your “Liberal Redneck” videos on YouTube, with you sitting in your Jeep ranting about current events and frustrations with Trump and the state of the country. Are those videos still mostly the entry point most people have into your comedy?
Yeah, 100%, that’s the main thing. Before the election, if it had gone the other way, which I’m not saying I expected it to — I very much didn’t know what was going to happen in the election — but if it had gone the other way, I was planning on trying to pivot not completely away from politics, to doing just general comedy stuff online that wasn’t political. I do some cooking videos and stuff like that, here and there. But then with the election going what it did, it just feels like, what else am I going to talk about?
But those videos are definitely the main things that people know me for. I started comedy in 2010 living in Knoxville and was doing stand-up in the South. I thought it was going pretty well for my circumstances. But then in 2016 I went viral with one of those videos specifically, and that’s what garnered me the following I have today. Some people also think they’re going to go to my show and I’m just going to be on the stage ranting in that style for an hour — which would be very hard, and also exhausting. So it’s not the only thing I do. But without a doubt it’s the thing that most people know me from still, and it’s been that way since the beginning of my full-time professional comedy career.
What was your motivation going into the new special “Trash Daddy” and what were some topics you knew you wanted to touch on?
I try to strike a balance between doing at least some of a version of what people know me for and also talking about other things. All my favorite comics talked about real stuff — social or cultural issues or whatever. So I always want to do some of that without being too overtly going completely after just one side, or one political party. I have a chunk in there about making fun of the idea of white supremacy. I’m talking about a very serious subject, but in my opinion, that shouldn’t offend anyone but a white supremacist. If you’re a conservative, but you’re not a white supremacist, it shouldn’t bother you to hear me make fun of white supremacy, and so that’s kind of how I try to think about a lot of it.
Growing up, was your family more liberal than most families in rural parts of the South?
Yes, and that is unusual. My wife and a lot of my friends are liberal people from small Southern towns. Pretty much every single one of them is what I call the “blue sheep” — they’re from a typical Southern, conservative family, and they’re the wacky liberal at the table. That seems to be a much more common experience, but that’s not my circumstance. I was raised mostly by my dad. My dad only has one sibling, my uncle Tim, who is openly gay, and him and my dad were very close. On top of that, my family, even my grandparents, were Southern Democrats. My grandpa was what you think when you hear Southern Democrats. He was born in 1935 — he was a little racist or whatever, but he was a Democrat because Democrats used to run the South until that whole switchover after the Civil Rights Act. He just remained a Democrat. And my dad and uncle Tim were Democrats too, not like that kind, just like regular.
Also, I didn’t go to church. My dad didn’t send us to church because they’re very homophobic. My dad ran the video store in my tiny little town, and he was into like, you know, David Bowie and David Lynch and foreign movies and stuff like that. So I pretty much just am the way that I was raised to be. It’s just that that happened in a very odd place for that to happen. I feel bad sometimes because a lot of people, fans and stuff, will ask me for advice on how to deal with their crazy, insane MAGA relatives. And, like I said, I almost feel kind of guilty about it, because I’m like, I don’t have any of those.
After moving to L.A. did you feel more at home, or are there some aspects of living here that caught you by surprise?
I always kind of felt like a man without a country because of everything we just talked about. But I never felt like I really fit in in my hometown, even though I had great friends there, some of which are still my friends to this day. It wasn’t horrific, but I very much wanted to get out. I knew I was leaving as soon as I could because I didn’t feel like I fit in there. And now in L.A., I definitely don’t fit in on the West Coast either. I mean, just the way that I sound, but also we live in the Valley and we mow our own yard and do our own landscaping and stuff like that. It’s weird to people that we mow our own yard, living around there. We drive a Jeep that’s got sun damage on it, it’s kind of beat up and rusty and everything. I don’t even know how to compost or what composting is. My wife showed me a post on Facebook the other day from somebody in that area who was looking for a vegan wedding photographer. All that type of stuff is just pretty alien to me.
And another thing that happens, I take a lot of Ubers and stuff out there, because we just have that one Jeep, and people hear my accent, and ask where I’m from. And if I say I’m from Tennessee, and nine times out of 10, if they then go, “Oh, Tennessee. I love Tennessee!” especially if they say, “I’ve been thinking about moving to Tennessee,” I know that they’re about to go into some conservative right-wing thing. If they’re big fan of Tennessee or whatever, then that means they’re going to start talking about all the problems with California and all the crime and the immigrants and yada, yada.
So how do you handle that in the moment without turning everything into a big argument?
I usually just downplay it and change the subject. If I get in an Uber that has that little box you can check where it says, like, “Quiet, please,” I check it. I don’t think I’m a rude person. I’m just not good at small talk with strangers. So I’d literally prefer to not talk about anything. But when this happens, I usually switch to talking about the weather, sports, or something like that, or try to change the subject, basically, because I’m not trying to have a full-blown argument with my Uber driver in L.A. traffic.
