Comedian finds his way back

February 2, 2012 at 12:00a.m.

Considering it’s been more than a decade since Chuck Krieger last performed in Youngstown, the Pittsburgh-based comedian is confident he’ll have new material when he plays this weekend at the Funny Farm.

Krieger, who has shared the stage with Lewis Black, Mitch Fatel, Jim Florentine, Jim Gaffigan, Artie Lange, Patton Oswalt, The Fabulous Thunderbirds and “Weird Al” Yankovic, has been a working comedian for the past two decades. Right now, when he’s not doing his solo set, he’s been working quite a bit with the Steel City Comedy Tour.

“That’s a group out of Pittsburgh touring around, playing for Steelers fan clubs, Steelers bars and that type of thing,” said Krieger, calling from his Somerset, Pa., home. “We work pretty much every weekend of the year. In Youngstown, I don’t know if I want to refer to the Steelers, but fans of the Steelers are generally more vocal. And I do have Steelers jokes, like basically how everybody from western Pennsylvania is a Steelers fan. And if you move to the area you become a Steeler fans or they kill you — young, old, men, women, gay, straight. Even the Muslim community goes to Steelers games.”

The owner of a commercial cleaning company by day, Krieger said his stand-up career keeps him sane. Plus, it gives him the opportunity to tour around the region doing what he loves most. Whereas many of his peers dream of heading off to the coasts to pursue all avenues of show business such as acting and writing, he’s content visiting cities small and large and making people laugh with stories about his family.

“I have a 93-year-old grandmother who still lives on her own,” Krieger said. “She still hosts the holidays, drives, shops. She’s the eternal optimist. In fact, she just went out and bought a brand-new car with an extended warranty. She just had her 75th high-school reunion. It was at a booth at Denny’s on a Sunday morning. There were two of them. She’s hitting on this old guy up the street, this 85-year-old widower. I said, ‘Grandma, you cougar.’”

The divorced father said much of his material is based around comparing parenting styles from the ’60s and ’70s to 2012.

“Parents today hear it all — ‘Don’t drink and drive; don’t speed; wear a seatbelt; second-hand smoke kills; make sure your kids are in the car seat; don’t smack your kids,’” Krieger said. “I think back to when I was 5 years old, and me and my sisters were bouncing around the backseat of our smoke-filled station wagon. Dad’s barreling at 110 miles per hour, chugging a cold one, smacking the crap out of us. Seat belts? There were no seat belts. The only time my dad used a seat belt in our car was to secure the half barrel [keg] on the way home from the beer distributor.”

Krieger is confident that despite the decade layoff between Youngstown area shows, he’ll get plenty of laughs from the Funny Farm crowd.

“I’m not dirty; I’m not clean,” Krieger said. “I’m right in the middle.”