Rathbone brings daily life to comedy routine

By John Benson

The minutiae of daily life is what makes comedian John Rathbone tick.

“I do everyday material,” said the Youngstown native and Canton resident. “I’m what you’d call a generalist. The great thing about my show is I talk about everything people can relate to — family, exercising and driving. I’m also very interactive with the crowd. So each show you see will be unique and not in a way that I make fun of people, but I have a nice way of getting the crowd involved in my show that makes it fresh each performance.”

He added, “So you can put me in front of any group of people and I can make little changes here and there that make it fun for them.”

Making audiences laugh is something Rathbone has been doing for nearly 30 years. Averaging between 200 to 250 gigs a year, the funnyman said his entrance into the world of stand-up comedy was purely accidental.

“I was just lucky enough to be in a place where they started an open-mic night,” Rathbone said. “This was while I was attending Ohio State University, and my very first night I went in and won $50 because it was their first contest and I was the only one to enter. From there, I was lucky, because in the early ’80s they were looking for a lot of comics.”

Finding success on the comedy club circuit at the beginning of his career, Rathbone left Ohio State University and started working regularly. In fact, one of his early gigs came in Canton, where the local newspaper was going to give him coverage. Instead, the paper concentrated on a bespectacled Cleveland-born comedian.

“I was working there in Canton and they were going to write a story about me,” Rathbone said. “So I got up the next morning, got the newspaper and there was no story about me. Instead, there was a story about the fellow that opened up for me, a kid called Drew Carey. That was the first newspaper story written about Drew. And Drew and I became friends after that. In fact, when he was out in Las Vegas for a number of years, he’d bring me out to open up for him at Caesar’s Palace. That was a lot of fun.”

Not only has Rathbone played Vegas, but his career has taken him from Alaska to the Caribbean. Right now he’s looking forward to returning to the Youngstown area for shows tonight through Saturday at the Funny Farm Comedy Club.

“I am bringing the funny,” Rathbone said. “It’ll be nonstop laughter. It’s the kind of show where your cheeks might be hurting, your belly might be hurting. My goal is really to punish you a little bit. We’re going to have a lot of fun.”